Hacker News Reader

Comment by School-Cotton | Hacker News Reader

So if a particular book were published by a French company, the government could ban it from being sold in the US? I’m sure that’s not true.

View on HN

No, they couldn't ban just one book printed by a French company. They'd have to ban the company entirely. And that's what happened here too. It's not just TikTok that got banned, but all of ByteDance's other apps too, e.g., Marvel Snap and CapCut.

And it's also important that divesting was an option instead. In your analogy, they couldn't ban the books outright, but could demand they be published somewhere else.

No. But they could ban American companies from providing services directly to that French publisher (e.g., a US company couldn't print books for or sell paper to that French publisher). However, a US law could not stop me from legally reading a copy I owned, or from selling or giving that copy to someone else within the US...

The First Amendment case would be much clearer if this was actually about banning access to TikTok (it's not: TikTok self-blocked US users, Amazon/Oracle shut off servers, and app stores stopped distributing to US users). TikTok could choose to operate their service (like many other Chinese companies) using only non-US infra and without relying on American companies to distribute their app; indeed, the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, hosted entirely from Chinese servers, continued to work just fine.

This case is also a reminder of why the iOS App Store is so bad for rights: at least on Android, you could sideload a 'banned' app; Google can comply with the law and US users can still download TikTok. On iOS, you don't have that option.

Using such restraints on foreign trade to censor publications is a very transparent end run around 1A.

It is a big sign that we live in a police state that the courts are willing to be politicized to the point that they are willing to ignore this obvious trampling upon the human rights of both the app publisher and the app’s users.

Also, iOS users can go buy a tablet or phone that can sideload. Also, tiktok.com is a thing that works on everything.

If this law is a trampling of human rights, then so would basically any anti-trust enforcement on media corporations

This isn't an "end run around 1A" - the law doesn't target any speech or content at all. TikTok can keep operating with all the same content, they just need to separate from Chinese ownership first. If this was about censorship, why include that option?

This isn't about censoring content, it's about preventing ByteDance from collecting personal data from 170M Americans that Chinese law requires them to hand over to their government.

Oh please. TikTok isn't a publication. The individual creators on TikTok have not been censored; they've merely been told that TikTok is not permitted to operate in the US, and that they will have to post their creations -- unedited, unaltered -- on other services. And those other services exist, and have wide reach, so it's not like saying "sure, you can continue to create, but your audience is now 5% the size it was before".

> Also, tiktok.com is a thing that works on everything.

Sounds like you're arguing against yourself. TikTok hasn't actually been banned.

yes, tiktok is publication of an application program.

It's not end run around 1A. 1A is a law protecting the people (and their various forms of organization) of the United States. Congress has every right to regulate or ban foreign entities of any kind for any reason from operating in the United States.

The rights enumerated by the constitution are human rights (“endowed by their creator”) and are not specific to americans.

Furthermore, the 1A is a restriction on the government and isn’t related to whether or not someone is a citizen.

There are lots of things congress is prohibited from doing under the constitution, including against foreign entities. Congress can’t ban a foreign religion operating in the US, for example.

> rights enumerated by the constitution are human rights (“endowed by their creator”)

You’re quoting the Declaration of Independence.

Correct.

So not "rights enumerated by the constitution." Which is why the degree to which the First Amendment provides protection does turn on legal status with America [1].

[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C18-8...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com