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Comment by mcherm | Hacker News Reader

An an American, I also find it outrageous. In fact, as I understand it, our most fundamental law (the Constitution) clearly guarantees "freedom of speech and freedom of the press" which specifically means that the government may NOT shut down a particular publisher because the government does not like what they say, or who it is that owns them.

Unfortunately, our Supreme Court unanimously disagrees with me about what our Constitution requires.

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This constant conflation of speech rules and trade rules is tiresome.

If it was just about content then yes, it'd be unconstitutional.

But security/trade concerns about a geopolitical opponent are not the same thing, have never been the same thing, and it would be crazy to treat them as the same thing.

Not to mention that as a trade issue, China already bans basically all the popular American social media sites, and just a ton of popular US sites in general. Turnabout is entirely fair play and expected when it comes to trade.

> shut down a particular publisher because the government does not like what they say, or who it is that owns them.

I don’t see where that’s in the constitution.

The Constitution does not guarantee any rights to the Chinese government.

However, these rights should be guaranteed to a company operating in the USA and strictly adhering to US law. Of course, if the law is (arbitrarily) changed to make this illegal due to the Chinese government's stake, then it could be forced to shut down, but that would be inconsistent with the constitution.

> However, these rights should be guaranteed to a company operating in the USA and strictly adhering to US law.

ByteDance is a Chinese company with it's headquarters in China. The so-called TikTok ban is a call for ByteDance to sell off it's controlling position over TikTok, otherwise TikTok can no longer operate in the US.

The fact that China is spinning this issue as a TikTok ban is telling.

What would you call Tesla not being able to sell cars in China unless sold to a Chinese company - what might you call that? :)

I'd call it "the way things actually were from 1994 until 2022": https://www.carscoops.com/2021/12/china-will-no-longer-requi...

so not “ban”? :)

Giga Shanghai opened in 2019 while that was still in effect, so no, not "ban".

If they want to do that, of course they can. (And indeed, Chinese car companies are already treated differently in US law to such an extent that they aren't in the US market at all.)

You didn't say why that would be inconsistent with the Constitution, you merely asserted that it is. But it isn't.

Our government gets to decide the terms under which businesses operate in this country. Always has and always will. This is not a constitutional question.

TikTok's problem isn't with what they say openly, it's with the amount of invisible control exerted by a foreign government.

Which they exert through promotion or demotion of speech. In the end it's still a free speech issue in my mind.

Foreign governments don't have a right to free speech in the US. They never have and the very idea is absurd. It's getting really tiresome to have to repeat this.

Not necessarily. China pursues many objectives when it comes to its national security, such as intimidation and coercion of dissidents or opponents of its regime living abroad. Assuming China's equivalent of the Patriot act lets it treat TikTok user data as an open book, there is a lot for them to learn from it.

Isn't this like saying a popular newspaper should be banned because of what they choose to put on the front page?

It is exactly that, but you'll see a lot of mental gymnastics to try to bend around it, or they'll just mask off say "Eh, gotta fight fire with fire"

No, it's like banning a newspaper because it is operated by Chinese intelligence agencies, regardless of what it publishes.

No. Unlike a newspaper, they host videos and photos of a third of (?) the US population, have detailed reader data on who reads what when, who is friends with whom, location history, etc.

This data treasure trove may be stored in US, but it isn't protected from Chinese govt access. It is the same for data by American companies, which US Patriot act lets the US govt access.

We already do that in the electoral process. Campaign contributions are "speech," while at the same time we ban foreign nationals from such speech (although as far as I know the constitutionality of the issue has not been tested beyond the 9th Circuit.)

https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2019/05/16/1...

The CCP does not have freedom of speech in America and it's not press. China has banned American apps including Google, Facebook, etc for decades at this point btw.

I thought that according law they are distributors, not publishers. That’s how they avoid liability for all the damage they do. They really try to have it both ways

They don't have to shut down. They can simply divest.

We don't allow own telephone system to be foreign owned, and those laws have been around for 90 years, and nobody is crying about free speech over that.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the constitution only applies to American citizens, not corporations, and certainly not foreign citizens.

The ban on a communications platform effectively censors people's speech.

Actually, that would be considered a “time, place, and manner” restriction, which has been specifically ruled to be not a violation of the First Amendment.

Interesting. But the time here is basically "indefinitely", the place one that affects 150m+ people, and the manner the most draconian possible. Not a lawyer, but that seems like overreach to me.

I'd say it's more banning of specific communication platform like radio station since other similar type services could be developed and we have already seen attempts with IG reels and YouTube Shorts.

Also, censorship has been allowed by courts time and time again if it's narrow focused to satisfy compelling government interest and not overly broad.

The American citizens responsible for the US part of the business are

Does the constitution apply everywhere?

We take the global world for granted, but it is made up of sovereign states many of them have their own constitution.

The whole thing is moot when you can be banned from platforms for voicing certain speech.

If platforms can do censorship, so can the government.

From a historic standpoint, rights are peacetime luxuries.

The US sees China as an existential threat and TikTok is one of its key weapons. Tiktok is getting banned for the same reason Cuba can't have nukes. It's a national security concern.

I don't endorse it. But I understand it.

America blundered in the 80s by allowing technology transfer to then and still hostile foreign power. It has woken up to its stupidity 45 years too late. But better late than never.

It's not fair.....but love and war Yada yada.

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