What does this have to do with the First Amendment? How would this be different from an antitrust ruling that requires Alphabet to divest Youtube, but Alphabet decides to shut down Youtube instead?
>Petitioners argue that such a ban will burden various First Amendment activities, including content moderation, content generation, access to a distinct medium for expression, association with another speaker or preferred editor, and receipt of information and ideas.
Sotomayor expands on this in her concurrence:
>TikTok engages in expressive activity by “compiling and curating” material on its platform. Laws that “impose a disproportionate burden” upon those engaged in expressive activity are subject to heightened scrutiny under the First Amendment. The challenged Act plainly imposes such a burden: It bars any entity from distributing TikTok’s speech in the United States, unless TikTok undergoes a qualified divestiture. The Act, moreover, effectively prohibits TikTok from collaborating with certain entities regarding its “content recommendation algorithm” even following a qualified divestiture. And the Act implicates content creators’ “right to associate” with their preferred publisher “for the purpose of speaking.”
That might be technically true, but if (1) you're the lawyer representing a party in an important case, (2) you've already appealed that case up to the highest appelate court and lost, and (3) you think there's any chance that the Supreme Court might change the ruling in your favor, then wouldn't it basically be professional malpractice to not petition for certiorari? Of course, they only accept a tiny percentage of the petitions they receive.
Because obviously changing the owner-editor of a media outlet has everything to do with their editorial policy. The SCOTUS just said that censorship is ok (and forcing the change of the editor is censorship, there is no doubt about it), as long as it's against another state's editorial preferences potentially having a significant audience in the country.
It obviously doesn't. That would mean the US Government can ban all foreign press, just by designating countries as "foreign adversaries". And "foreign adversaries" is a euphemism for "countries that don't submit". The SCOTUS just invented another exception to the absolutist interpretation.
>wholly uncontroversial indictments of the owners of Tenet Media
>were charged with failing to register as a foreign agent
This entire narrative together with the banning of Tiktok is wholly hypocritical, given the American media, tech, and NGO's influence/dominance around the world.
The moment someone achieved what the American entities have been doing around the world, the non-stop wailing of "foreign adversaries this, foreign adversaries that" started.
Meanwhile in Georgia, a country bordering Russia, the law requiring foreign-financed NGOs to register was declared to "stigmatize organizations that serve the citizens of Georgia" with accompanying travel bans for the authoritarian evil doers who passed said law by the US state department.