The risk from TikTok is possibly not speculative at all. I think it’s quite likely the national security apparatus knows something and informed congressmen because they went from being opposed to it to being in favor of it in a short time.
What party or politicians support individual freedom in this context? How could libertarians support banning an app?
"it is unlawful for companies in the United States to provide services to distribute, maintain, or update the social media platform TikTok, unless U. S. operation of the platform is severed from Chinese control."
If they wanted to do the opposite, they could show us videos from 10/7 (there are a lot), talk to the survivors, show us historians talking about Hamas's particularly insidious brand of extremism, show videos of them hanging gay people from cranes, etc. Whatever agenda they want to push, it's clear how they could do it.
I think they probably do this with other things too, to make us hate our government. Our chaos benefits China. I think the intelligence agencies showed Congress data they collected on this.
I admit, this is a giant mound of speculation, but even if China didn't do that, it's quite obvious they could and seems likely they would. Whether or not they've exploited TikTok in that manner is certainly debatable but I don't wish to leave them the option in the future.
because they calling themselves libertarians don't make them stand for liberty!
Libertarians might actually want authoritarianism, but it's their authority!
I thought this was rather reductionist until TikTok was allowed back temporarily, only for pro-Plaestine slogans to be suddenly banned when it returned.
Is it the only motivation? No. Given the above and the fact that dozens of highly popular Chinese apps continue to be allowed, does it appear likely this is a leading reason? Plausible.
I don't think the closed door intelligence was about that though. I think they probably said that the persuasive power of TikTok was dangerous to the US, but imo, that's very against the First Amendment and the idea of democracy. Americans are allowed to be influenced however which way we want. We run the government, not the other way around
I think a closed door intelligence meeting is unlikely to just be them telling Congressmen scenarios they've already heard. I think they much more likely had some receipts. Some of the Senators in that meeting (from both parties) have sponsored a bill to declassify it and share it with the public, so we may find out.
Wait, what?
Are you suggesting the bill of rights only applies to US citizens? Like, does the 5th amendment not protect foreign entities from illegal search and seizure? Does the 2nd amendment not apply to foreign security companies like Securitas?
"Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down TikTok..." (https://x.com/wideofthepost/status/1787104142982283587)
I couldn’t help but lol when I read that.
This is speculating. In other instances, the national security apparatus has provided specific evidence when it existed which makes me believe there isn’t anything more than “XYZ could happen”.
In any case, I think we can do better than make laws based on secret evidence. This is supposed to be a democracy after all. Or something.
> One key for him is that it’s only a possible threat. Our best intelligence, including in a briefing for Congress from the Biden administration Tuesday, is that the Chinese government has not actually done the things the ban fears.
Also, from a recent All-In interview (https://www.happyscribe.com/public/all-in-with-chamath-jason...):
> I look to Jim Himes, who is the senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, the ranking member. He's in what's called the Gang of Eight. He has the most exquisite access to intelligence. Jim voted against the ban. And I thought, you know what? If this guy is not seeing anything on the national security level.
> [00:44:36] There was an off the record or confidential briefing to the House Intelligence Committee. You think in that meeting, there was nothing that was very meaningful that was disclosed about TikTok?
> [00:44:45] Nothing that I had seen. Is it owned by the Chinese government? Absolutely. But is there a national security risk? I have not seen that.
But he voted yes on the subsequent vote?
https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2024145
Moreover your factoid is misleading because it omits the fact that the chair voted for the ban, along with most of the members. Of the 25 members on the committee, only 4 voted against.
> The decision by House Republicans to include TikTok as part of a larger foreign aid package, a priority for President Joe Biden with broad congressional support for Ukraine and Israel, fast-tracked the ban after an earlier version had stalled in the Senate. A standalone bill with a shorter, six-month selling deadline passed the House in March by an overwhelming bipartisan vote as both Democrats and Republicans voiced national security concerns about the app’s owner, the Chinese technology firm ByteDance Ltd. (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/possible-u-s-tiktok-ba...)
Q90 - John Nicolson: It may happen elsewhere, and I can tell you what your official TikTok response was to this leak. You did not deny that these were instructions. In fact, you confirmed that these were instructions, but what you said was that the company had changed its policy in May 2019. Previously, you instructed your moderators to take down videos critical of China, specifically talking about incidents in Tiananmen Square, separatism in Tibet, all straight out of the Chinese Communist Party playbook. You confirmed that is what your moderators did, but your defence was that you had changed your policy in May 2019.
Theo Bertram: It is highly regrettable that that is what it was, but it is not our policy today, nor has it been for a long time.
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/13247/html/
There's a sentence
For some stuff like this it's hard to imagine why they wouldn't be able to make it public. You need public support if you're going to ban an app that a lot of the public likes. Almost certainly IMO, no substantive evidence existed.
> not speculative
So it is speculative, right? Even your comment is just speculation.
I swear I have heard zero people opposed to the ban who seem to even be vaguely aware of that aspect which is the entire actual issue, and instead are completely confused and think it’s about spyware or hacking. Whether or not you agree with the ban, we need to actually be discussing the same underlying issue.
I'm sorry but I have yet to see a single person who makes this point admit that it's a form of speech suppression. This is classic First Amendment precedent. Just because the speaker is someone you don't like, or its content is anti-American (or what have you), doesn't mean it's not protected speech.
The simplest case for banning TikTok is simple reciprocity. China is no longer a market that needs the level of protectionism they currently have to develop. The second best is data privacy. Just a shame they won't apply the same to US companies yet. And then an additional reason is the one that's being used currently - risk of foreign influence. You'd hate to not ban it "because it hasn't happened yet" just for it to happen in the future. China keeping out US apps seems to have worked out great for their local industry, I'm hardly convinced it wouldn't also be a good thing for US citizens. And with the foreign-country thing tossing Constitutional issues out the window, go nuts.
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The Constitution does not consider Freedom of Speech a positive right, one that can be granted to some but not others. It is a negative right against the government. It's about as broad and as absolute as you can get. This is why the right also applies to legal entities (eg: companies), even foreign legal entities. It is not limited to citizens, it is not limited to persons.
The idea that a foreign, adversarial government would have a Constitutional right to propagandize our citizenry at-scale is obviously not consistent with the societal good (or the "common defense", for that matter), so is outside of the First Amendment's scope/intent.
If you want to make an argument that it's not happening, that's one thing. But, your assertions about TikTok having some blanket "right" here are false.
Again, foreign governments don't have a Constitutional right to propagandize our citizenry.
>Enjoy your slippery slope
There's certainly a slippery slope here—and a strawman, but they ain't mine.
At this point, why even have a negative-right Freedom of Speech if you're just going to treat it like a positive right anyway? Ridiculous.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-tiktok-ban/
So, feel free to take it up with them.
This is my last reply. Thanks for the chat. Take care.
"Apple has a first amendment right to be able to list any app it wants, regardless of source" seems like the only claim you could make. The Lamont case doesn't directly apply since the government isn't an intermediary between Apple and ByteDance saying "are you SURREEEE you want to get this app from them?" And the existence of restrictions on what you can send/receive through the mail make it clear that Lamont isn't a blanket "you can't regulate messages between people" restriction.
So is "hey Apple, don't list things that meet that criteria" different than "hey UPS, don't send things that meet this other criteria"?
AFAICT the Supreme Court didn't really consider it from this angle anyway and just looked at it as a regulation on corporate control, which also seems completely legitimate. Can the US gov't say "certain things require US-person-owned/controlled companies?" They do for other things already.
For someone who believes in the concept of free speech, the fact that US constitutional rights to free speech in practice almost certainly do not protect overseas business interests is really an embarrassing corner case. Even if you do genuinely consider national and foreign actors to be different kinds of entity, so that it could be ethically sound to protect one and not the other, there's a simple technical reason for constantly the distinction to be artificial: Free speech protection can be gained merely by funnelling the speech through an intermediary US citizen.
This case shows that there is a first amendment right to receive.
What is being prohibited is an adversarial government having complete control over an entity that can decide which speech is delivered to which specific audience.
We can either strive for an educated populace that can identify propaganda or we use propaganda ourselves on ourselves. Propaganda is winning.
> What is being prohibited is an adversarial government having complete control over an entity that can decide which speech is delivered to which specific audience.
That seems to imply that certain voices or ideas must be excluded to prevent this control. Isn't that, at its core, a decision that some poisonous thoughts should not be allowed to reach certain people? If not, how do you see this distinction? Does freedom of speech not include freedom to hear what others may find objectionable?
Your solution is to open the floodgates, allowing all manner of military/intel-grade psychological manipulation, bots, AI, etc. to be unleashed on our population, but try to educate the entire population to become professionals at identifying and resisting these tactics?
Seems absurd on its face. It's strange to see someone trying to make that sound like the reasonable option.
Yes that's the literally the idea of TikTok/Douyin https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17544750.2020.17...
Banning TikTok has literally nothing to do with silencing pro-Palestinian content. For fuck’s sake, Trump is trying his best to bring it back while threatening to deport students who engage in pro-Palestinian activism.
Even when TikTok themselves tried to argue that the primary reason was to prevent foreign control over a recommendation algorithm, the Supreme Court said "nope, Congress's primary motive was the data collection."
Frankly the propaganda aspect is the least troubling part of it because you're right, people can make their own choices about information sources.
But figuring out who various military members are connected to, where and how they're moving around, and especially any leaks where people take cell phones in places they shouldn't (remember that ship that installed a Starlink illegally?), they can get quite a bit of intelligence.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1880975630646612254
Speculation, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Trump’s change of heart on the TikTok ban is due to Musk’s influence.
Musk needs to stay in Beijing’s favour due to the size of Tesla’s investments in China, which Beijing could destroy in a moment if Musk overly offended them. Opposing TikTok ban helps Musk stay in Beijing’s good books, supporting it would have had the opposite effect.