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Comment by Jimmc414 | Hacker News Reader

First, let me preface that I despise TikTok and I think it is mostly garbage content-wise, however this proposal is simply un-American. Concerns about data privacy and foreign influence are legit, but banning an entire communication platform used by 170 million Americans based on hypothetical threats goes against core First Amendment principles especially considering the government's inability to provide concrete evidence of harm or to explain why less restrictive measures wouldn't suffice. If we allow platforms to be banned based on their parent company's nationality rather than actual demonstrated threats, what is next?

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In a strange way, if it was a blanket China ban, it would almost feel less arbitrary than this, which was crafted to target ByteDance.

The fact they packaged it inside a funding bill that would have been politically unpopular for Congress to oppose also makes me speculate that they felt it wasn't strong enough to stand up to scrutiny on its own merits

The law technically doesn't limit itself to TikTok. It seems to cover any application or foreign company that meets certain criteria, which include (1) the President identifying it and writing some reports, and (2) some restrictions on the nature of the app, which would cover other social media. It is obviously written to cover TikTok initially (the name even appears in the bill) but the powers it grants are broader. Not sure if this is better or worse.

I have to assume that either there is some ulterior motive at play, or the national security risks themselves cannot be exposed for national security reasons and that this is incompatible with the current justice system unless something like a secret FISA court is involved. Of course that would be a convenient excuse if it weren't actually real, but how would we ever know...

It's not a ban, it's a forced divestment from Chinese ownership. The real question is why Bytedance isn't willing to take fair market value for Tiktok instead of just losing everything, since that makes no sense if this was just "business" and there weren't ulterior motives involved.

If I owned a business in another country and that other country coerced me to sell against my wishes, I'd be very skeptical about receiving the proceeds from the sale.

So TikTok sells to a domestic company, domestic company wants to wire over $40bn to ByteDance but before the transfer goes through the Treasury Department decides a $40bn payment shouldn't be sent to a "foreign adversary". It's my understanding that the Treasury has a lot of leeway in this.

No company retains ownership if the purchase doesn't go through. They could also simply require payment up front as part of the sale terms before transfer of the platform. They've had nearlt a year to arrange all of this.

American platforms are already banned in China.

Some of this is a tit-for-tat, I surmise.

<opinion> The embracing of terrorist sympathizers across the platform is not helping. </opinion>

Turns out that US law (and custom) says the US can't do that particular kind of "tit for tat". I wasn't aware that China had a veto over the US Constitution.

Is it? Congress has the authority to regulate international trade. If TikTok was shipping books into the USA no one would be arguing whether it would be constitutional to ban them or not. The constitution hasn't been updated for the internet and smartphones but they absolutely can be governed the same way, as courts have ruled over and over again.

Except your analogy is flawed. Tiktok is selling "books" written and published in the US. It's not like the Tiktok's themselves are all Chinese made.

> Tiktok is selling "books" written and published in the US

The entire argument is about their algorithm. They are not written and published in the USA if someone in China controls what goes in them.

> Is it? Congress has the authority to regulate international trade.

Not as a pretext for speech regulation. And the right to free speech in the US is understood to include the right to listen.

> If TikTok was shipping books into the USA no one would be arguing whether it would be constitutional to ban them or not.

I'd like to think nobody would be arguing, because that would be clearly unconstitutional. But in fact people probably would try to claim it was somehow acceptable. They'd be wrong.

They might get away with a ban on all books from a given country, if they could show it was really, truly intended to affect only the physical process of printing and the market for that service. The instant it's even peripherally intended to affect the content, it's unconstitutional. And the TikTok thing is about content and who controls content.

You could buy obvious Russian propaganda in the US in the middle of the Cold War.

> The constitution hasn't been updated for the internet and smartphones but they absolutely can be governed the same way, as courts have ruled over and over again.

Great. Since banning book imports would be blatantly unconstitutional, so is this bullshit.

> American platforms are already banned in China.

So if Americans are discriminated in China, would you suggest to do the same with the Chinese in US?

That's making a false analogy and is a logical fallacy trying to compare the two. Finding ways to level international trade to ensure fair trading and equal access to markets is definitely within the government's purview to do and within the national interests of our country.

One rule that I would like to see implemented to equalize trade is to not allow foreign citizens or corporations to be able to purchase real estate in this country or become majority shareholders in any corporation if the country of their citizenship or incorporation does not allow the same reciprocity. It is foolish to allow this kind of imbalanced ownership to happen.

You're statement is true, would should not do the same thing in terms of discrimination, but the two situations are a bit different. Your talking about culture, while this deals more with a outside government's influence on our populace.

For me, think the ACLU makes a valid argument, that this could set a bad precedent. But, the Chinese government already has a system to at least partially monitor and influence what some businesses do (requiring corporations to have role for the CCP in their charters). https://www.csis.org/analysis/new-challenge-communist-corpor.... It doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility that the CCP uses tik-tok to influence the US populace (think Russia and its use of social media during the 2016 election of Trump).

Yeah, this situation is pretty messy.

Americans indeed have free speech guarantees, but I don't think it's quite so clear that foreign platforms have a constitutional right to provide a platform for said speech. How far does it go? Does a North Korean or Iranian or Cuban app have a guaranteed right to exist in America because some Americans use it for their speech?

Anyone who receives garbage content on TikTok has likely gotten themselves into a bad set of recommendations. I watched someone yesterday cycling through their feed and it was 100% brainrot.

My feed is very enjoyable: mostly neat cinematography tutorials, AI news, and just a little bit of OIIA.

"my feed good, your feed bad"

Wouldn't seem very un-american to prohibit a radio station with a pro soviet leaning stance during the cold war

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