We have freedom of speech in this country — and for the boogeyman that China was somehow weaponizing their platform, we just removed the voice of countless communities that had formed on TikTok.
Imports of firearms and ammunition from China to the USA have been banned since 1994 [1]. IIRC Chinese companies were caught selling rifles and other gear to known gangs in California and that motivated the law.
Firearms imports are also much more restricted generally than most other categories. More than one manufacturer has reincorporated in the United States because of the regulations.
[1]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/103rd-congress/house-bill/3355...
there is no First Amendment right for Chinese companies to operate within our market. there is no First Amendment right for RT to be carried on US cable networks.
if TikTok were a website, it'd be different. it'd be one thing if the US were blackholing tiktok.com. but TikTok is an app that sells ads, and they're not entitled to sell ads to US businesses or publish on US app stores.
There might be, but it would be the cable network's first amendment right to carry them, not RT's right to be carried.
The argument in court was kind of backwards, nobody violated TikTok's rights by taking them off the app store, but you could fairly easily argue that Apple and Google's rights were violated by telling them that they can't carry it. That would, presumably, require either Apple or Google to bring a lawsuit though, and they seem to want to play nice with the incoming administration.
It's not true, just to clarify it.
Many foreign corporations operating in China, only if they:
1. Keep all user data within the border. 2. Cooperate with censorship
TikTok meets the first condition in the U.S., and I think the issue lies with the second condition.
so Azure in China can only be ran by a Chinese entity
If you look at it from the other side, it's like Tiktok must be hosted by Microsoft/Amazon but not datacenters in China
China is a dictatorship where people have no rights. America was built on the principle that the government shouldn't have the power to tell the common people what to do.
They just move to new place. Loads of online communities have died/migrated for various different reasons over the years.
> We have freedom of speech in this country
This doesn't impose on your freedom of speech at all.
Just because you have the right to say anything, doesn't give you the right to say it where you want.
By this logic, the US government should be able to ban any newspaper that is publishing articles that they don't like: it doesn't encroach on the freedom of speech of the reporters of that newspaper, they can just speak somewhere else. They don't have the right to say anything at that particular newspaper, just in general.
Of course, in reality, banning a publication (TikToK) because you think they may publish stories that you won't like (propaganda for Chinese interests) is an obvious violation of the first ammendment and a form of government censorship.
Freedom of speech is that an American person cannot be blocked by the government saying what they want.
There is nothing in the first amendment that protects you from where you can say what you want, nor is anyone entitled to give you a platform.
That's why the US has "freedom of speech zones" which are basically cages far away from where they should be protesting.
TikTok was banned because it's owned by a foreign government, not freedom of speech. If the Chinese government had removed their connection to it, it would not have been banned.
The reason TikTok being owned by China is considered a problem is because it could allow China to control what American citizens see on their timelines - the content.
> The reason TikTok being owned by China is considered a problem is because it could allow China to control what American citizens see on their timelines - the content.
It's the PRC control part that's the key here though. There's nothing banning even blatantly pro-PRC content on other platforms. You can find plenty of tankies praising China over the US to high heaven on places like Reddit.
Then it's just virtue signaling. If the message is not a problem, then who says that message is irrelevant.
Note: to be clear, I'm neither a tankie nor in any other way supportive of PRC policies. They're a horrible genocidal dictatorial regime with imperialist tendencies who are propping up other similarly horrible regimes like Russia or North Korea.
Just to give an example of what would be concerns of the platform aspect of TikTok, that would be concerns about the ability for the app to deploy malicious code to users' phones, or the amount of data that it siphons off legally. But those are de-emphasised in favor of their control on content, which is precisely what's supposed to be protected by the Constitution.
If we banned China from importing video games into the US, that would be a trade issue.
It's very ironic you bring this up though, since China is famously very strict about what foreign media it allows in, and really about how foreign businesses in general are allowed to operate there.
They would not be allowed to own the publishing company.
> How about guns?
This doesn’t have anything to do with media.
> Can they release major motion pictures?
They would not be allowed to own the publishing company.
> Video games?
They would not be allowed to own the publishing company.
The people in these communities still have a right to assemble and say things to each other. It’s more difficult to do so on TikTok after the US distribution ban but it’s ByteDance who made it impossible with this play; this service shutdown is not a requirement of the law.
Both are publishing stories written by others (reporters for the newspaper, subscribers for TikTok), and taking decisions on which stories to publish (through direct editorial control for the newspaper, through the algorithm + some direct editorial control for TikTok).
The operator doesn’t necessarily have to be American. A European operator would be sufficient. But it can’t be an overtly hostile nation.
All of these arguments have been made ad nauseum.
All social media companies controlled by the CCP will be banned in the US. And since all tech companies in China are controlled by the CCP that means all Chinese social media products will be banned in the US.
It’s not all that complicated. It’s not even that controversial.
The issue isn't money going to CCP. The issue is data and CCP control of the algorithm.
You can say what you want and don’t go in prison, sure, but nobody owes you the platform.
The exact same content on TikTok could be replicated by another company coming from some other country and it would be totally fine and unbannable. Which means it's not actually about speech.
Why does who runs the app matter? Stopping someone from saying something is still silencing them, even if someone else saying it would be okay.
This is just setting the groundwork for the government controlling social media even more than it already does, because they know how influential it is.
I'm not defending the PRC in the slightest. I fundamentally disagree with the government forcing a sale of a company due to its social media app. This is different from every other example of banning PRC-backed companies (ex: Huawei, TP-LINK, etc) because there is genuinely a plausible argument for natsec. With TikTok there just is no such argument, other than the video content being controlled by a foreign hostile entity. And I just fail to be convinced that that's enough to ban it. Do we ban Russia Today?
When it crosses international borders? I'm sorry, but duh?
Do you think websites and apps somehow aren't trade? I'd love to hear your reasons for internationally used online services not counting as trade somehow, that's gonna be fascinating.
I'm sorry, what? You realize they're still making money off you, right?
I don't think "if the product is free, then you are the product" is 100% right, but it's not entirely wrong either.
A business' offerings being ad-supported doesn't somehow stop them from being commercial in nature. Hence: trade.
> If TikTok was made ad-free, would that change your argument?
I think as long as TikTok is generating revenue -- or even plans to in the future, as sometimes happens for startups -- it'd count as trade yeah.