Bingo, bango, boingo. Just another way to help manipulate people into thinking Trump saved the day, once again. TikTok played the propaganda just right.
- A COINTELPRO-inspired diversion undermines the cause: during demonstrations, individuals wishing to speak must wait in line, while women, minorities, and other groups are prioritized.
- This method becomes widespread in media narratives over the next 15 years, fueling focus on these topics and deepening societal divisions while bankers slip under the radar.
- Initially driven by billionaires, the movement is soon co-opted by financial firms, corporations, and government entities.
- Ultimately, Trump is reinstated, while Zuckerberg, Gates, Bezos, and, to some extent, Altman align with Thiel and Musk, reversing their previous stances with a dramatic 180° shift.
There is, it's a few days old, and it's a non-enforcement from the Biden administration, according to the man himself and his staffers, he intends to let it be the next administration's problem.
Whatever the next administration does when it takes power is yet to be seen.
The restrict act was written really strangely, and I assume Oracle required some assurance from someone to not just delete Bytedance's accounts and resources.
That wasn't an executive order, as far as I'm aware it was just a statement. It had no legal value, which was why TikTok asked for more assurance.
The fine to each company (Apple, Google, Oracle, TikTok) was in the order of around $5bn each if they kept the lights on, so I would be hesitant to keep it running too without something in writing.
If TikTok was concerned that Biden’s statement wouldn’t be honored, they wouldn’t have turned service back on today while Biden is still president. They’ve had months to work out some sort of deal with Trump, this whole show they’ve put on the past couple days is propaganda.
What does being veto-proof have to do with it? No president has to sign a bill just because Congress can override him if he doesn't. His signature is literally an endorsement.
Yes, but we're not arguing about whether Biden agreed with the bill, but that turning it off was a stunt on TikTok's part.
Someone said there was an executive order, but there was not. He said he wouldn't enforce it, obviously signaling that it's up to the incoming administration.
The fact that TikTok turned off for only 12 hours makes it pretty obvious they wanted to have a good relationship with Trump by giving him some positive PR. Which is ironic considering banning it was primarily pushed by Trump to begin with, but people have obviously forgotten that.
Trump wants 50% US ownership in a joint venture for Tiktok. Shouldn't be a problem since 60% of bytedance ownership is already non-China (probably a lot of it already US investors - General Atlantic/SIG)
The ownership of the company is irrelevant, it's who has control of the algorithm and where the data flows. If Tiktok US licenses the algorithm from China (which seems likely) then none of the national security issues are addressed.
Is anyone aware of any opinion poll among US population about banning tiktok? This to me feels like one of the issues with potentially largest disconnect between voters and politicians
Edit: found one from Pew. "The share of Americans who support the U.S. government banning TikTok now stands at 32%." Sept 05, 2024. In contrast, 87% US lawmakers voted for the law that caused this.
You know polls are a rotten way to make policy. Easily manipulated. In fact, Hitches said in "Letters..." that any time you see a poll just realize it's someone trying to change your mind with the bandwagon fallacy - isolating your own opinion as wrong and outside the norm or trying to reinforce the "right" opinion by confirming that you're part of the cool-kid club.
Yes, polls are an imperfect tool. But I think they remain the only tool we have to gauge what decisions coming out of Washington are product of broad popular support vs ones product of intense lobbying from shadowy powers.
Most policies aren't the sort of thing that is going to attract broad popular support (or opposition.) Did you look at the opposition numbers? Who are the "shadowy powers?" Lawmakers say that China is the shadowy partner here doing bad things with Tiktok. I don't necessarily trust the US government on this issue, but I was speaking to a Chinese national last year, they asked me why the US was banning Tiktok. When I said "because China is using it to spy on Americans" they replied "Of course they are!" and laughed.
I think there are probably some people who are pushing this for self-interested reasons (American social media apps) but also I think the stated reason for the ban is probably the truthful motivation, and I'm ambivalent about trusting the US government and US corporations not to spy on me, but I tend to trust the US government when they say they are trying to stop China from spying on me. And if zero people spying on me is not an option, well, fewer people would probably be an improvement.
> I was speaking to a Chinese national last year, they asked me why the US was banning Tiktok. When I said "because China is using it to spy on Americans" they replied "Of course they are!" and laughed.
Right. If the Chinese government is not using TikTok to spy on citizens of their adversaries -- or, more likely, influence citizens of their adversaries -- then the Chinese government is full of incompetent fools. And I think it's safe to say that the Chinese government is not full of incompetent fools.
It's not that polls are imperfect, it's that they're often entirely misleading and incorrect. And if the only tool you have to do a job isn't fit for purpose, then that just means that you aren't equipped to do the job properly.
If the only tool we have for measuring Washington's behavior against public opinion is one that doesn't accurately reflect public opinion, then that means that we just don't have a reliable way to measure Washington's behavior against public opinion.
The previous commented made an on-target point about how polls can often be manipulated to produce contrived results. I've seen plenty of cases that corroborate this: differently constructed polls showing wildly different breakdowns of opinion on the same issues among the same population, surveys full of obviously leading and loaded questions, etc.
So given all of that, I think the burden of proof is properly the other way around. Why do you think this particular poll is reliable?
Counterpoint: shadowy powers of lobbying publish the polls to manufacture consent and put pressure on politicians.
Alternate tools include:
* elections, e.g. flipping control of house to party opposite the president.
Numerous examples of badly and broadly worded polls exist to tell you 87% of the country agrees on XYZ. There isn’t a damn thing up for debate in the United States that 87% of the population agrees on, so that’s your first tip-off. A nuanced question garnering 56% may be more believable, but even then, stay highly skeptical of polls: poll MoE, poll audience selection, poll respondents, and poll questions. Together these all make for a house of cards.
You bring up valid point. Did the legislators lie en masse to us about national security to remove a competitive app from the American ecosystem or not. If the national security issues exist, where is the outrage from our elected officials? If not, our government is for sale.
You’re overestimating the number of people that care about it. A good chunk of people really don’t care about privacy, data security and potential exposure to propaganda, no matter how much we (engineers who actually care about it) tell them to.
Lots of people do care about the propaganda thing. Like, most normie voters I know definitely don't give a crap about the data privacy stuff, but they haven't forgotten about the cold war and are not bought into this "maybe it's fine if the Chinese government can control what all the kids are seeing" narrative.
But it's a big problem that the framing has often been about the data privacy thing.
Yes, but you don't have to be alive to understand the problem. I agree with you that the cold war is very old news to the TikTok demographic, but it isn't to people who were born in the 80s and before, and that is who drives politics. By the time the current young people grow up more, they will have their own direct experiences with geopolitical struggle. It remains to be seen where that will lead.
A lot of normie voters care but they are at least one if not two generations removed from the median TikTok user. Generational divides can be pretty stark and it's clear that future generations increasingly don't care as much about internet privacy. In fact, being a public figure on the internet is a good thing these days since you can make a career out of it.
Again, I don't think it is ever again going to be mainstream to care about the privacy thing.
But I think older people do care now about the potential for hostile foreign propaganda affecting our politics, and I think the younger folks who (reasonably!) care more now about losing their favorite entertainment app will grow up and understand the propaganda problem when they're older. That is, I don't think it's a generational thing, I think it's an age thing. And politics is driven by people over the age of 30.
A lot of people hold the view that privacy isn't important unless you have something to hide. They likely wouldn't care about some government on the other side of the world knowing what stupid tiktok videos they watch.
I assume most americans today are already under the impression their government spies on them and facebook/google will gladly give anything that is asked for, how does the chinese spying on them make any difference for the average citizen? If I was a regular american and had to choose I'd take the foreign spy 10/10 times. What will the chinese do to the regular american citizen compared to what his own contry could do with this information?
If you're diaspora and other smaller interest groups for sure, but the general citizen probably wouldn't care at an individual level. I'd argue that the NSA revelations and how everything just got worse and worse since then killed any chance of the public caring about this kind of stuff.
> how does the chinese spying on them make any difference for the average citizen? If I was a regular american and had to choose I'd take the foreign spy 10/10 times
They probably would. But so long as the decisions are made using secret information, how can we know? We can only assume they are lying to us, until they show the proof.
Support has declined and opposition has increased. I don't think there's much of a disconnect here though, since it doesn't seem there are many people with strong opinions counter to what Congress chose to do.
Anytime there are such large numbers of "undecideds" it's likely they are low-information, and an opportunity for Trump (or any unscrupulous politician, but really, Trump) to lie to them and turn them to whatever side they wish.
Since 170M Americans look at TT, I wonder of how much of it was TT propaganda itself.
The amount of propaganda on TT is rather huge, though I won't say any different than US media, just more of it these days oriented to how 'good' China is.
"Not Sure" != "ambivalent". It's a mistake to lump "Not Sure" and "Opposed" together and declare a majority, as the group as a while does not represent a specific stance. Any attempt at nuance for either side gets bucketed into the largest category.
That group seems like the most interesting question... what sub groups do they fall into.
But that's why it isn't a direct democracy. Sometimes government needs to do things that are not popular.
But of course this is always going to be an opportunity for a populist to take advantage of the disconnect. Sometimes, as in this case, that is damaging. But of course it's well within the rights of politicians to play that game.
>Edit: found one from Pew. "The share of Americans who support the U.S. government banning TikTok now stands at 32%." Sept 05, 2024. In contrast, 87% US lawmakers voted for the law that caused this.
The relevant poll would be one right after the ban was enacted on bipartisan support. It's far too politicized now meaning that a huge percentage of people will simply support/reject it purely based off of "their candidate" being for/against it.
The problem with a poll is that the general public is likely not privy to all the information that the people in charge have. I think the best thing to do here is just come out with all of it, lay it on the table, and see what the public thinks then. If you have a good reason then show us.
That is exactly what the government has not done all these years. Why be tight-lipped if there is solid evidence and data, its not some issue of nuclear weapons/military-strategy.
I've suspected that they have evidence that China is using the platform for social manipulation, but we're using the same techniques on other countries and possibly domestically and the government doesn't want to make the general public aware of it. Or it could be that they don't have evidence of actual wrongdoing, but feel that the risk is too large to allow it to exist.
Whatever it is, this has gone off the rails and the public is going to need a real explanation if they decide to move forward with the ban.
My comment was originally in another thread that was a statement from Tiktok on Twitter. It looks like this thread was merged with another one so my comment might not make sense now.
The straight up "shout out" in the pop-up, I almost couldn't believe my eyes.
I don't think I've seen anything like it in a long time. I also don't think an American company would ever do that as it seems "unprofessional." Ironically, it probably got them huge bonus points so they know what they're doing.
I mean, the promise to boosting Trump in the popup is probably literally what got them the promise of an executive order, possibly with the suggestion that if they wanted to stay on Trump's good side they'd best ensure their algorithm was Trump-friendly in future.
Of course, everything he does is quid pro quo. Now he has a sword of damocles he can hang over their head to ensure he can get anything he wants in the future.
How remarkable that our major geopolitical enemies (with the exception of Iran) support our incoming president. He must truly be a great uniter that will usher in a new age of global peace.
Ah ok, enlightened one. I’m sure the trough you feed from is propaganda-free. Care to explain why they are not actually our enemies? Please try to stick to facts and evidence.
Corporations and their wealthy owners have an outsized influence on policies to the near total exclusion of everyday people. Not sure what future you're envisioning here but you might want to consider where you fall in the pecking order before bending the knee to blatant oligarchy.
> I have no issue with American companies trying to change American policies.
For me that's a naive stance that ignores the problem of corporate influence on politics.
Apart from that, how is US corporate influence necessarily better than foreign corporate influence? Neither care about the US general public. Some US companies knowingly harm their own citizens (Philip Morris, Exxon, Purdue, etc.)
One can argue the problem with TikTook is that it's controlled by the government of an adversary nation (from the viewpoint of the US), but it's not just the fact that the company resides in a foreign country.
> I don't think I've seen anything like it in a long time. I also don't think an American company would ever do that as it seems "unprofessional."
Have you been paying attention the last few weeks?
NVIDIA: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/ai-policy/ "As the first Trump Administration demonstrated, America wins through innovation, competition and by sharing our technologies with the world — not by retreating behind a wall of government overreach."
Companies aren't stupid. They know that in order to be successful in today's world, you have to personally fellate Trump. Thanks to the American voters for bringing us this reality.
With other words, while Silicon Valley founders said and pushed that they actually have ethics, morality and "good for the world" ideas, it wasn't actually true and money+extreme capitalism won in the end.
Democrats decided they did not like the results of the “anyone can talk to anyone” social media revolution.
I think they should have tried to adapt, they decided to focus their efforts on putting the genie back in the bottle.
Technological progress has made us more affluent and better off. My father grew up in Europe and his family couldn’t even afford shoes for him or education past the third grade. I am wholly uninterested in anti-tech politics or a politics of stagnancy as seems popular in Europe. Democrats need to stop looking to Europe for inspiration and become the party of abundance, redistribution, and human capital investment. How can we make everyone better off, rather than focusing our energies on finding the next bogeyman to blame.
The key question is whether you think Nazis have the right to express their views freely. It used to be that everyone agreed this to be the case, but we are in the process of learning a very hard lesson that allowing Nazis the right to express their views freely only gives them power to restrict our speech later on.
On the contrary. I'm not afraid of Nazis, I'm afraid of those who would restrict speech for Nazis. Because once you break the seal, it's simply a matter of time until it's another unpopular thing which gets silenced... and another, and another, until we don't have freedom of speech any more. The road to hell is very much paved with good intentions.
Me personally? I am pretty afraid of nazis, that's their whole deal, violence on people, that was kind of the whole big problem with them initially and what led to a world war and genocide. A nazi isn't just someone with different viewpoints from my own, it's people who based their whole ideology on violence, against me, my wife, my children, my friends, my coworkers.
How much time? Because the way free speech absolutists talk about these ideas always seem to imply that we are mere moments from a country like Germany collapsing into authoritarianism. What evidence do we have that the US's level of free speech is truly better than a country like Germany which does specifically restrict the speech of Nazis?
I used to believe this vehemently. It has become clear that that’s a notion from a bygone age.
The internet has created a global town square where the loudest voices are the ones that catch people’s attention, regardless of the veracity of their claims. There is no truth any more, only the cult of personality.
Tomorrow the US installs a racist, rapist, treasonous kleptocrat as president because the majority of people are unable to think objectively and swallow his promises at face value, despite every indication that life will be immeasurably worse if you’re not a billionaire oligarch.
Can you point to a single time that banning the speech of Nazis has led down a vast slippery slope of further speech bans, particularly in a vaguely democratic country?
Russia is allegedly attacking Ukraine due to Nazis there. The issue with these things is that you can easily motivate horrible things with the "but we are attacking nazis!" argument, that is why people hate it when you say that.
i do not agree that this is the key question nor do i find Nazis so compelling that i have to avert my eyes from their speech for risk of becoming convinced myself
The problem isn't that they're scary or compelling but that they bring discourse down to its basest level once they comprise a certain proportion of the environment. Imagine if 90% of HN threads were mostly just discussion about if the author of a submission or comment is Jewish, what their ulterior Jewish motives are, and what repercussions they should face in an ideal world. Many clusters of Twitter are now that.*
A lot of people see the culture shift and start posting less or leave, and then the ratio gets worse and worse. Freedom from government restriction of speech is a good thing, but I disagree that this new era calls for throwing out norms of discussion platforms curating their communities' cultures.
I fully acknowledge there are valid, interesting philosophical reasons to host a site like Twitter or 8chan where "if it's legal it's allowed", but on net I think the benefits do not outweigh the costs.
*(Even many 4chan boards are less obnoxious. In part due to its linear format.)
You’re speaking for yourself now. Millions of [mostly russian but not only] people today are convinced that the extermination of millions of Ukrainians is the morally righteous course of action.
Populations being persuaded into harbouring extremely bad ideas is a thing.
> Democrats decided they did not like the results of the “anyone can talk to anyone” social media revolution.
Wasn't it Republicans that initiated what would eventually lead to the ban of TikTok? Maybe I remember incorrectly.
> How can we make everyone better off
Wasn't it a really long time ago that was the goal in the US? It seems capitalism leads to a very different goal than "redistribute so everyone is better off"
So then by convincing ByteDance to reinstate TikTok, did Trump just spell the end of his popularity, is Trump behaving erratically to reinstate TikTok, or are you projecting because you helped author and canvas for the bill? Moreover if the bill had so much bipartisan support, why did it need to be combined in a foreign aid package to Ukraine rather than stand on its own?
(P.S. Given your deep involvement in the bill and the sheer amount of comments you make on this site trying to convince readers that it's both popular and necessary, I think you should absolutely disclose your position on the bill. I'm a transit and modeshare advocate and I do not discuss specific bills I have helped author and sponsor online without disclaimers.)
Trump is doing what the law permits, granting a 1-time extension of not more than 90 days. In the meantime, he’ll find a way to remove the national security threat.
> why did it need to be combined in a foreign aid package to Ukraine rather than stand on its own?
This is how all bills are passed. I also advocated for the Ukraine bill; that was the weaker (and far more partisan, though not entirely so) of the two.
> I do not discuss specific bills I have helped author and sponsor online without disclaimers
Cool. I do not. (I’ll disclose my involvement if I need to add gravitas or if there’s a conflict. But it’s not a conflict to be arguing for a thing I advocated for, or vice versa. I’m not professionally in politics, after all.)
> Moreover if the bill had so much bipartisan support, why did it need to be combined in a foreign aid package to Ukraine rather than stand on its own?
You've got things reversed. The ban is what the Republicans wanted and the Ukraine support was bundled in to take advantage of that. They wanted the Tiktok ban so much they allowed the Ukraine funding (as part of the larger funding bill).
> the only time there's something bipartisan is when it's to do Israel's bidding
The gay marriage bill was at Israel’s bidding?
I worked on the TikTok bill. I really don’t care about Israel. While it’s tempting to see everything through the lens of your pet issue, it’s myopic to believe everything is motivated by a single cause, particularly a foreign-policy line.
Since you worked on the bill, can you clarify if the driving force behind it was national security concerns which have not been revealed to the public?
Right, but what's the actual demonstration of this? I keep hearing "TikTok can do bad thing" but it's not shown to actually happen and we don't seem interested in making them not do that.
> We all know you don't care about Palestine, you care about Israel
Not sure who "we" are, but they're wrong.
It's not a war I have strong views nor knowledge about. I've never visited either place and while I respect people who have strong views on both sides of the debate, my pet war over the last few years has been Ukraine. (Though even there I'm aware enough not to paint everything through the lens of Russian meddling.)
Nope, just worked on it as a private citizen. (Don't have an account with any Meta service.)
In an ideal world, we'd regulate social media. I've tried and failed advocating for privacy legislation--the people who are passionate about privacy in America, unofortunately, also tend towards political nihilism, which makes the cause a political nonstarter. I'm also concerned about Chinese influence over American society, and care about Taiwan's security, so TikTok sort of aligned between my views on privacy, teen mental health and national security.
Democrats? The government as a whole has been incompetent with regards to tech for years now. That said, there are huge issues with the “anyone can talk to anyone” revolution, namely that some people are a bit easier to talk to and some issues are a bit easier to talk about, and that these are selected on the basis of increasing engagement and use time for advertising. This causes the benefits of said revolution to be buried under a mountain of cynicism and slop.
> after the democratic party decided that their winning strategy would be to villainize tech and emerging west coast values.
Trump proposed the TikTok ban and even tried to enforce it via executive action during his first term. He also said he would put Zuckerberg in prison and attacked big tech companies for almost a decade at this point. The reason Silicon Valley is aligning themselves with Trump’s administration is for strategic reasons. If there are any ideological reasons I doubt these would stand the test of pendulum shifts.
Republican speaker Johnson also still wants to enforce the ban and only considers Trump’s interference as a delay to have TikTok sold to a US entity (which the bill explicitly allows as an alternative): https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/speaker-johnson-2-...
yes, the Trump faction also flirted with anti-tech politics in the 2016-2020 cycle - but there have been shifts since then. i don't disagree with you that a significant part of this alignment is due to strategic reasons - but it doesn't fully explain outsized donations to Trump prior to his election and shifts in donation patterns by regular tech workers. I do think that there has been a real political shift rightwards in SF/SV, especially among the tech elites but percolating downwards.
There has definitely been a rightward shift in SV management and ownership. Maybe a lesser shift in individual workers, but it's really hard to tell. And frankly, that hardly merits a footnote when compared to the sums that the wealthiest can spend on elections now.
This line in particular sums up the cynical stance of these billionaires:
> We are non-partisan, one issue voters: If a candidate supports an optimistic technology-enabled future, we are for them. If they want to choke off important technologies, we are against them.
They simply don't care about society as a whole, they want their businesses to thrive, no matter what.
It’s amazing, really. No matter what, the Dems are always wrong.
Trump is a criminal? The Dems are wrong.
Trump brings up trans issues during elections? The Dems are wrong.
Trump lies constantly? Somehow, the Dems are still wrong.
Let’s be fair: we can only blame the Dems. Because how do you blame a force of nature like Trump? Bring up any substantiative discussion, and you get identity politics and gotchas.
Facts don't matter, because "everyone has their own facts.", even when they dont.
People arent really discussing reality. They're fighting for their teams. But the least thing we can agree, is that the Dems had to have made some mistakes, since they didnt stop it. They didn't win. So the Dems are wrong.
The reality distortion field that the world builds around Trump and against democrats is literally insane. I unironically believe the source is an IRL SCP object (they have to exist otherwise no explanation for no cornucopia on the fruit of the loom logo) - and trump lucked out into being in possession of one or being that object!
Biden said it best: The USA has gone through the greatest economic recovery story NEVER TOLD. Democrats do great policy work and NEVER get credit for it.
Obama was a great president, Biden was a great president, Carter was among our very best of presidents, and NONE of them get the damn respect they deserve.
Trump, yet again, on day 1 gets an insanely good economy, an insanely good geopolitical situation, etc. Why? Because of those no good horrible marxist dummicrats!
Trump voters tomorrow will magically gain 100,000$ in their bank account, an extra house, 1$ gas, eggs, and groceries, and 500 more guns. And the day trump walks out in 2028 (if that happens) and a democrat comes in, they will instantiate become papurs again.
"Sucking up" implies there’s a meaningful choice—that firms or individuals can realistically be expected to show courage now. But voters chose this, knowingly. Blaming firms for bowing to public will misdiagnoses the issue and wastes emotional energy fighting a false battle.
Whats the realistic alternative? Standing up to Trump? The president who has explicitly said he will retaliate against firms and individuals who oppose him.
The same president who was re-elected even though everyone knew this was coming?
If this bothers you, and you want to address it, focus on identifying the real root cause and work toward changing that.
And if you genuinely believe firms would act differently, make the case. But let’s be honest—how many rational people would stand up to someone who:
- Faces no accountability,
- Has the Supreme Court and legislature backing him,
- Is in power for a second term,
- Commands an incredibly effective political machine (Fox-GOP),
- has die-hard voters behind him?
Damn, this is the simplest, most accurate breakdown on what’s actually happening that I’ve come across. The incoming administration is pretty transparent in the bend toward corruption, and these folks know exactly how to manage that as a business challenge.
Why don't you detail why you believe only the Chinese government operates that way. It's MY government, the US government, not the Chinese government that is the subject of these bribes and flattery. It's a human trait not a trait of the nation of China.
> We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office.
Additionally, an extract from TikTok's later statement [1]:
> In agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring service. We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive.
What the fuck? That's some incredible bootlicking by TikTok. They've done a great job making Biden seem like the bad guy for banning TikTok, while Trump saves the day by rescuing them. This is especially ironic considering Trump was the one who wanted to introduce the ban in the first place until he gained 15M followers on the platform.
Please don't put words in my mouth, I did not comment on who bears the most responsibility for the ban. It is undeniable that Trump laid the groundwork for it though:
How? The law as written only gives the president the authority to give one 90-day extension, only if certain conditions have been met. And those conditions have not been met.
The problem is most readers still think theres a discernable difference between the parties. The "90 days" rhetoric is exhausting. Tiktok won't sell ans its an obvious attempt to buy time to allow Americas oligarchy to find a way to save face and walk away from a huge mistake (exiting a platform they need in order to spread the propaganda of hegemony and western liberal values.)
Are you familiar with Malcolm X's speech about the fox and the wolf?
Given the past four years have seen things like shutting down labor strikes, support foreign wars, expanding arctic drilling at record pace, increased police budgets, erosion of women's rights, erosion of lgbtq rights, and a steady increase in corporate power... I think the difference we'll see is in degree, not in direction.
Numerous pieces of anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ legislation have passed at a state level under the Biden presidency. You might argue that that's outside of the purview of the federal government, but that certainly wasn't the case in the 50s and 60s where federal military force was used to enforce civil rights legislation. The federal government failing to use its sovereign power is 100% erosion of rights.
You're arguing Biden should have used the military, and because he didn't do that he's clearly sympathetic to anti-LGBTQ sentiment and that makes it the Dems fault? Well, that's certainly a take. It feels like it ignores the current government dynamics.
That seems an unreasonable expectation as to what the Dems can do. It's sets them up to fail, and make it's easy to say they are the same, when you set up an unreasonable scale where one is trying to remove the rights and the other isn't fighting hard enough become the same.
I'm not the one setting liberalism up to fail, it seems to implode catastrophically every few decades. Last time was during the interwar period. The failure of liberal governments to exercise their sovereign powers in the face of social and economic crises is exactly what handed electoral victories to fascists in the decades after WWI. Their failure was baked in and you were duped from the start for thinking that liberal democracy could be a sound basis for human emancipation.
The Dems are writing and sponsoring anti lgbtq laws nationwide. Biden removed anti lgbtq discrimination rules, permitting local municipalities to discriminate against trans kids. The Dems aren't just side liners here, they are active participants in the erosion of lgbtq rights.
Read up on 1557 changes and title ix changes, which include language that specifically permits institutions to say, "we do not discriminate based on criteria X, y, z" when they discriminate against trans people.
It also affirmed that they felt they could supersede state law to protect caregivers (doctors, etc) who provide care against the law in their state (gender affirming care). They declined to exercise that authority and explicitly said they would not.
They also said they would consider provider discrimination only on a case by case basis (which they are not funded to do, and leaves poorer people more likely to suffer discrimination).
They added language stating "nothing in this rule imposes a requirement that covered entities provide gender affirming care".
They specifically struck the following language: "a providers belief that gender transition or other gender affirming care can never be beneficial for such individuals is not sufficient basis for a judgement that a health service is not clinically appropriate." Basically giving doctors the explicit right to say "I don't believe in gender affirming care and will not provide it".
Most of that legislation is to protect the sex-based rights of women and girls, or to safeguard children from medical harm. When you examine the details it's not really going against anyone's civil rights.
Ah, the great American rhetorical tradition of masking discrimination in the language of civility. Just like pre-Jacksonian restrictions on voting protected the rights of the propertied from the depredations of the masses. Or how Jim Crow protected the rights of white southerners from those uneducated undesirables threatening orderly society. Or how restricting gay marriage protected the rights of Christians...
You should elaborate on why you believe these are comparable.
For example, consider a male convict who desires to be incarcerated in the female prison estate. Is it really civil rights discrimination to deny him this? If so, how?
Most importantly, what about the civil rights of the female prisoners he would be incarcerated with, if this were permitted?
American prisons violate any notion of humaneness and rights from the outset. The abject subjects who are condemned to dwell in them cannot be used to illustrate anything about civil rights, other than the fact that the state regularly uses its sovereign power to violate them.
If I was under constant threat of rape or murder, I would do anything to get to a situation that I thought might be less dangerous.
It's worse than this, actually. Biden administration removed anti discrimination statutes that both Obama and Trump had in place around discrimination in healthcare care and education. Biden changed the rules to permit discriminatory behavior by states as long as it was not "systematic". So, of course, states and municipalities will discriminate against trans folks and then claim they were all unique cases.
Yes, you are right Biden did nothing to protect LGBTQ folks, but he did also take action to harm them.
I don't think those situations are comparable. There is precious little LGBTQ-rights legislation at the federal level, so there's nothing for the federal government to enforce when a shitty state-level government chooses to discriminate against LGBTQ folks. And it's not like Republicans in the federal government will let LGBTQ-rights legislation to pass.
LGBTQ rights are popular. Appropriate legislation could be drawn up and enforced. It would be an authoritarian move, certainly, but authoritarianism just won the election.
A party that wants to kill my and a party that wants to kill me politely are the same. Yeah, sure, I can discern one is smiling, but practically the "choice" I have is die or die (politely), which really isn't a choice at all.
> The problem is most readers still think theres a discernable difference between the parties.
No, the problem is people like you who try to convince others that Democrats and Republicans are the same, when some child-level reasoning is all that's necessary to disprove this tired bit of rhetoric.
Ah, the propaganda GUI element. I distinctly remember covering it in my HCI class. Right between 'How to Design Intuitive Interfaces' and 'How to Influence Favorability Ratings with Popups.'
I agree they know what they are doing by manipulating or perhaps secretly enriching Trump. He posted on Truth social that he is seeking 50% US ownership. That’s very odd. Why not 51% so that there is US based voting control? Or full divesture from China as the law requires?
And then there’s the fact that the conditions for an extension aren’t met as written in the law. There’s no way he can certify to Congress that the conditions are met, which is why he’s trying to use an executive order. But that’s illegal.
The Biden administration signed the thing into law. Of course they need to comply. And people are acting as if somehow TikTok decided to self-ban and have now un-banned. No, it's only those with the app already installed that are able to continue to use it. It's still blocked on the app stores, and will presumably stay that way until tomorrow.
So once again it took the incoming president-elect Trump and for Biden to lose to intervene and reverse this ban and give an extension to TikTok.
If Biden or Harris won the election, TikTok would have been completely banned with zero intervention at all as you have seen with how it went and Biden whilst still being president would have done nothing and it took Trump to stop it.
Seriously the Democrats made themselves look very bad with this situation.
That does not excuse signing a bill into law. If the president opposes a bill, he should veto it even if Congress will override the veto. To do otherwise is to be complicit. So to the extent that you think this bill is bad and shouldn't have been passed, Biden is to blame regardless of how strong the congressional majority was.
The ban had bi-partisan support. So why should Biden stop it if he agrees with it? A major adversary (China) owns a main communication network in the US while the US and other Western countries are not allowed to operate such networks within China. You don’t have to agree with this of course but it’s not unprecedented for the US to restrict the reach of foreign governments. In the past radio waves were restricted in a similar sense.
> So why should Biden stop it if he agrees with it?
That is my point. The Democrats made themselves look very bad with this situation and Biden did nothing and supported the bill anyway and just signed it.
In fact he replaced Trump's original EO with a worse one which includes still supporting the TikTok ban and Biden signed that last year which made it so that if the Democrats won the election, then TikTok would have been still completely banned with no reversal whatsoever.
In effect, those who voted for Biden or Harris also were voting for a TikTok ban, which that is beyond hilarious as everyone saw that he didn't halt the ban.
Trump singed an EO that was reversed. Only one president showed interest in a law. Only one president whipped votes for that law. Only one president signed the law.
The ban had bi-partisan support. Trump was initially for the ban and then changed his mind. On Aug. 6, 2020, Trump signed Executive Order 13942, which sought to ban TikTok in response to national security concerns. Courts struck it down.
He expressed his changed opinion in 2024. Was it because he met with Jeff Yass who holds 7% of ByteDance (which owns TikTok) and is a major Republican donor? Who knows.
But what is clear is that this is again morphing into a talking point against the Democrats even though all of this started with Trump initially.
I don't think that's an accurate read. Everyone was playing chicken and the US won. TikTok will be up for sale again, except this time with way less leverage in negotiating a sale.
... I can't even. How did US win? OP effectively nailed all the facets in which it is overall the worst of all worlds. Few individual political players have won, but it certainly was not US or us.
Trump didn't overturn the Supreme Court's decision. He only gave TikTok a 90-day lifeline. They need a solution to be allowed to operate. Either they will have to cut ties with the CCP and operate truly independently—and provide assurances for that—or they will sell to someone and make billions.
I know which of the two I'd pick, but yeah, I guess you can say they might also restructure out of the CCP's control, which I think is unlikely because China then just gets paid $0.
Another alternative would be for lawmakers in this new congress to change the law they just passed but given the Republican majority is very narrow and there is plenty of support for the ban across the isle, I find it hard to believe they will be able to do so. But sure, that's also a possible scenario.
There was never a freedom of speech argument here, unless maybe you are china. There are endless similar platforms available to individuals to express themselves on. Ones that aren't owned and controlled by China... America's biggest technological rival.
If there’s a genuine interest I’m happy to explain. Reels and shorts are severely different, even from a purely technical and feature-focused standpoint. They lack lack the ability to pause (I think YouTube allows it but reels no) or save to device, and (reels) lacks the wide music catalog that TikTok has. Neither product has a comprehensive video editing platform like TikTok does. Both lack the ability to push timely content and maintain freshness. Reels is fundamentally based on the social graph for recommendations, with some additional signals for things like hashtags. TikTok learns from content itself and recommends based on content. TikTok has a good mix of discovery content as well (I think it’s approximately 10% discovery? Meaning, pushing you things it has no signal on to see if you like it or not, rather than only showing you things you like). Sharing and interacting are incredibly smooth and easy. The ability to stitch videos and do face to face replies, or easily do a video reply to a comment, encourage more face to face two-way conversation.
Aside from the technical features and algorithmic superiority, the community on TikTok is completely different. Have you seen the comment sections on the apps you mention? TikTok has created a beautiful community, and it’s a community that cannot be reached on the other two apps, regardless of their feature set.
I think China is not a role model for freedoms, no one should follow their steps. Censorship is not going to solve your problems and you won’t become China in terms of industry by by banning apps. You will become China sans industry.
This is such a fallacious, misdirecting argument. The speech itself was not targeted by the ban. It was the ownership. If the speech stayed the same then regulators would have been happy.
For those saying there’s no executive order yet or that Trump is not president yet, the point is that they received confirmation that there will be an executive order, meaning they can rely on a 90 day extension of non-enforcement.
So while there is some irony with Trump having previously supported the ban, the practical reality is that he and Susquehanna and the Republicans all are winning big on this one, from a political/financial lens.
The issue is Trump doesn’t have legal authority to issue an executive order delaying the ban, executive orders “execute” the law, delaying would be the opposite of the law, a law that was held up 9–0 as constitutional by the Supreme Court face palm
There is some precedent for doing this. State-level cannabis legalization rests on non-enforcement at the federal level, at which it remains scheduled.
Sure, but there’s no executive order saying we promise not to enforce it (I assume?), that would be counter to the law even if the absence of enforcement is a legal grey area
Either way it feels like there are games being played, and the country is watching because tik tok is so heavily used by so many people
As far as I can tell, what happened is this law was passed in the heat of the moment (Gaza war), but it turned out to be massively unpopular and ineffective at shoring up US support for the outgoing administration's foreign policy, and even after its moment had passed the combination of the arguments raised by the lawyers for ByteDance and the phrasing of the very unique, very specific bill got it through the Supreme Court, so now everyone's been stuck with trying to figure out how to get rid of it.
And notice how Marlboro didn’t start selling cannabis everywhere? Apple and Google(and their legal teams) have to decide if not following the law on the nonbinding word of a 77yr old man’s promise. The law itself allows companies to be held liable up to 5 years after each infraction.
> The law banning TikTok, which was scheduled to go into effect Sunday, allows the president to grant a 90-day extension before the ban is enforced, provided certain criteria are met.
and
> After the Supreme Court greenlit the law on Friday, the Biden administration issued a statement saying it would not enforce the ban, leaving that responsibility to Trump.
Trump and team may be the biggest public relations masterminds of all time. They realize that the populous is fickle and easily won over with obvious stunts. Define the villains and play the hero. It keeps working for him over and over and over. Truly incredible.
I really hate Trump, but the guy is a media (read: not political) genius. I doubt there will ever be someone like him in the Republican, or any party again.
Also a fan of executive action over congressional consent. And the son of a wealthy father in new york.
And opposed by a Democratic party which was very much controlled (to a fault) by its machine.
That's roughly where the similarities end though. I think they'd have strongly diverged on key points such as a man's duty to his country in war, presidential pardons, and right in the *****.
Calling him a genius isn’t quite accurate. He’s not a genius anything. But he does have orbiters who know what they’re doing. He’s mostly just a puppet.
There's a quote I can't find right now that goes something along the lines of "If you let somebody define the terms of your reality, you've made a sorcerer out of them, unless you catch the bastard real quick".
> There's a quote I can't find right now that goes something along the lines of "If you let somebody define the terms of your reality, you've made a sorcerer out of them, unless you catch the bastard real quick".
Four quotes that capture the essence of not letting others define your reality or exert control over your perception:
1. “He who defines the terms wins the argument.” - various thinkers.
2. “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” - Eleanor Roosevelt
3. “Until lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” - Chinua Achebe
4. “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.” - Jean-Paul Sartre
There is no "algorithm": the policies of a service like Tiktok are spread throughout its entirety. The only meaningful way to "release the algorithm" would be to release the whole source code.
Furthermore, releasing the source code wouldn't help, since regular people aren't able to understand what it means; and there is no way to verify that the released source code corresponds to what is actually being run.
It would be great if there was some way to verify that a service you're using matches some published code, but we don't have that.
> Furthermore, releasing the source code wouldn't help, since regular people aren't able to understand what it means
Releasing the code does help. Joe can't open up his car and fix the engine control code, but the local repair shop can and they can also understand it and raise to a journalist "huh this manufacturer pushed a new version that'll make it stop driving if you service it at the workshop of a competitor" or whatever the car equivalent of this tiktok algorithm concern would be
The second problem you mention, I fully agree with: verifying whatever they publish. Client source code, you barely even need because it'll just be a front end for what the servers decide to show you. Verifying that what they say the server code is, is really what the server runs, that's the hard bit. But claiming to be open could be a start; something we can find discrepancies in and push for further openness
Whether this will solve the national security concerns and help with the youth mental health crisis that's often linked to social media, that's all way beyond my expertise and I have no opinion on the matter. Just that, in general, not everyone needs to understand everything in the world for it to be useful to publish
The code has been available for years. Bytedance published their recommendation engine as an arxiv paper in 2021 and the code is available on Github, https://github.com/bytedance/monolith. The power is in the weights of the live-trained model.
As if that would even have any effect in that situation. No amount of audits and rules would prevent TikTok from collecting data and manipulating the public opinion.
Why not monitor it? Create thousands of read-only accounts that "prefer" content with all kinds of ideological viewpoints and statistically analyze whether the algorithm is being biased to promote certain viewpoints. I'm not smart enough to implement something like that but it sounds like a solvable problem to me.
I thought about this too. In no way do I suggest it's an actual solution, but I wonder if some kind of reporting could be used as leverage to help appease US leaders towards a solution that doesn't require banning the app or handing it over to them.
I don't think I need a citation to say that it's feasible for China to inject malware via the TikTok app on people's phones. Would it be difficult? I imagine so. But, I think the risk is such that the onus is to prove that it's not possible, not the other way around. China is a hostile power and an authoritarian regime. It's a different risk calculus than Facebook, which is not controlled by a dangerous foreign adversary.
The alleged national security implications of Tiktok are not based on spreading propaganda, but on gaining access to information about Americans. A privacy law would address that issue, as well as protected Americans' privacy from other companies, regardless of where they are based.
> The alleged national security implications of Tiktok are not based on spreading propaganda, but on gaining access to information about Americans
What? Doesn't the opinion itself literally say that the threat of "covert manipulation of the content" was one of the government's justification? Never mind the millions of times that Chinese control over the content people view has been brought up as a rationale both inside of Congress and outside? Haven't these been beaten to death already?
My 12 year old daughter was cranky this morning about Tik Tok being banned, then walked in ecstatic it was working again. I’m like “I wonder if Trump fixed Tik Tok,” and sure enough. She gave me a high five. My 6 year old son is already MAGA because the boys in his class love Trump.
Like inflation, this was a problem Trump created and now he’s getting credit for fixing it.
She watches videos about ancient Egypt, her friends lip syncing to songs, and knitting. The content on Tik Tok is way better than the trash on network TV or Hollywood movies.
I consider the Chinese oversight a plus. It’s much more sensitive to Asian values for the most part.
There are no “Asian values” on TikTok. TikTok is banned in China.
If it had values your 12yo wouldn’t be on it as Douyin has an age restriction of 18+, and prenatal consent if 13-17. Under 13 is prohibited. It also has time restriction of 40 minutes per day for 13-14yo and only accessible between 6am till 10pm. Not only that content is highly censored and restricted.
But keep living in a bubble that TikTok is totally fine.
I don't have a 12 year old (yet) but my 8 year old has mood swings when they're too cold, too hot, have a headache, the tv remote doesn't work, their tablet runs out of time, their tablet runs out of battery, when they're hungry, thirsty, and/or tired (the preceding is non-inclusive, sometimes they have a mood swing for no perceptible reason).
Yeah, but the times I've seen parents actually address/redirect bad behavior or of their kids in constructive ways are few and far apart, many sort of gave up or go to the other extreme. Small kids lack a great deal of emotional empathy and can wear a decent adult down very fast if right buttons are pushed at right time, so thats tricky to say at least. But then again its the greatest achievement in most people's lives (to raise their kids well just to be clear) so some proper effort long term should be spent here.
Good parenting consistently is hard, very hard and sometimes basically impossible, but the difference between parents who at least try hard to raise kids well and those who sort of gave up on their kids is striking (tiktok and other digital stuff is a good yardstick of overall state of this, when I see kids of other folks using it and clearly addicted I am losing all respect for those folks as parents, and its always a big bag of various failures and neglect coming along). Its heartbreaking to experience, especially the powerlessness.
Yea if I see a 4 year old with an ipad in a restaurant I lose respect for the parents. Parenting is hard, and everyone fails at some point but there are certain things I have never comprised on and social media/digital crack at a young age is one of them.
4 year olds have always gotten some amount of TV time, right? Is it that horrible for a parent to give them the TV time at the restaurant so they aren't running around / screaming / bothering other patrons instead? (Which of course you can also judge a parent for, but then the only answer may be for one parent to have to leave with the kid).
It doesn't mean the kid is also using the iPad at home for hours on end. Or consuming anything other than Bluey / Paw Patrol / Sing 2...
> so they aren't running around / screaming / bothering other patrons
Going to a restaurant when I was a young kid was considered a treat and special occasion, and if I misbehaved, I was out of there immediately. I quickly learned to sit in my chair, eat my food, and not be disruptive.
I think people in general these days act with a higher sense of entitlement, and that translates to parents believing that it's fine for them to go to restaurants because they want to, ignoring whether or not it's appropriate for their children, somehow also believing that they "deserve a break" and their kids' disruptive behaviors in public aren't their problem. But no, screw that: if your children won't behave at restaurants, don't bring them along. If you can't find a sitter, then you don't get to go either. (If you can't afford a sitter, then you probably can't afford going out to a restaurant either.)
> ...to give them the TV time at the restaurant...
I would have less of a problem with this if the kid was using headphones (I know, risky for their ears at a young age if they also have control of the volume), or if the tablet could be kept quiet enough so I can't hear it at my nearby table. But that's rarely the case.
But hey, sure, if you can give your kid TV time at a restaurant without me having to listen to it, I guess that's fine. I think that's a poor substitute for actually teaching kids how to behave in public, but I'm not that kid's parent, and that's just my opinion.
Well this attitude is why millennials are both failing to have enough kids and miserable as parents.
We had kids in our 20s and my daughter has been glued to her iPad since she was 2. Her grades are better than mine were at her age, she has artistic hobbies (makes jewelry, paints). She’s maybe a tidge slower than I was on reading, but that might be pandemic.
Note that Tik Tok is different than “social media” in that it doesn’t really allow for the gossip and backbiting within enclosed groups that typifies say Facebook. The most emotionally upsetting thing for her seems to be normal girl-girl social conflict, especially through her iMessage group chat.
Whats far more important than academic skills are social skills, how she fares on that aspect? Thats where real threat of this lies, not general population having IQ 80.
Life without good or at least normal social skills is pretty miserable in many aspects, almost can't be fixed once adult, and has much larger impact on what I call 'life success' than career can ever have.
Yeah, as a 12 yr old, I would've reacted completely calmly to Counterstrike being banned, or ICQ being banned, or MySpace being banned, or, worst of all, my access to lingerie models from clothing catalogues being destroyed...
Pretty sure I had a meltdown when my parents took away a copy of Lord of The Rings I was reading for the 4th time that week instead of doing my homework. Kids freak out about all kinds of stuff. Maybe it's more that 12 year olds are kids and not whatever bugbear you're worried about this week.
That's the relatively harmless bit! You left off "[banned for half a day], then being indoctrinated into supporting an anti-democratic despot for the rest of their lives".
She already doesn’t trust politicians, and knew that. We think he changed his mind because he was flattered by the girls lip syncing to his funny quips.
But it remains the first time in her life that a politician listened to a concern she had, and acted on it promptly to fix the problem.
I'm sorry, your SIX year old is MAGA? I mean maybe this is an America thing, but my 6 year old knows literally nothing about any politician. How are 6 year olds even aware of Trump?
Trump isn't just a politician, he's a showman. He had a TV series for years. He has effectively hijacked US media to ensure that there is constant news about him.
Looks like you’re getting downvoted, but this exactly matches my kids’ HS friends who said “now I finally get MAGA - let’s make America like it was before the Tik Tok ban!”
There isn’t too much teens really feel on a day-to-day basis with politics and this is one of them. I’m not a Trump fan at all but his ability to spin things like this and the stimulus checks will need to be studied.
I doubt a study would be helpful for anyone else, except that he had a good read on when his chances of winning were best back before 2016.
Aside from that his popularity -- and ability to lie shamelessly and have enough people ignore it and vote for him -- is wrapped up in the entity "Trump". His play book is age old.
Trump gets away with lying because he also tells truths on important issues where others tell lies to force a false consensus. People are very sensitive to this stuff.
I'm hearing social media limits described like a prisoner's dilemma: it only is good parenting if both defect. If your parents don't give you tiktok because it's healthier but most of the class does, you'll have a much harder time being part of the group. I got to be part of many things in different schools by being on MSN (~2012), Facebook groups (~2014, even met my life partner there due to being in the same interest group), and WhatsApp (2018). I don't use formerly-known-as-Facebook products anymore today and MSN doesn't even exist now, but in a social group you don't have a fully individual choice of platform
I agree that current evidence points towards the best parenting being where nobody lets their 12-year-old on Tiktok, but there's more to it than simply not letting them no matter the circumstances
Government regulation is the best way to solve these sorts of multi-agent coordination dilemmas. Unfortunately we haven't been able to get youth social media use taken seriously.
The TikTok ban may stem from legitimate geopolitical concerns, but I feel like we're focusing on the much smaller iceberg in our path.
I’m not persuaded that this social media stuff rises above moral panic. What were 12 year old girls watching when I was a kid? Dawson’s Creek? The videos my daughter watched on Tick Tock are way better than that. And she’s not into any brainless garbage like those TV shows that were common when I was that age.
Reddit is a lost cause. They totally got the election wrong and the day afterwards they broke their mind trying to justify the loss with whatever conspiracy theory they could come up with. Combine that with overzealous mods and you'll eventually end up in a situation where the majority of people left are just bots. Bots talking to other bots.
What I learned the hard way this cycle was that I and all the people supporting Kamala were duped into repeating 2016 all over again. The lack of a primary, all the games being played culminating in an 'anointing'. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.
Anyone putting any trust into Reddit is fooling themselves. Its not only political subs, other subs are also astroturfed, they are just more subtle about it. There are plenty of examples from places everything like /r/buyitforlife(where you discover the lies after you get burned), to bigger subs like /r/technology(which push certain agendas devoid of facts). You'd have to go sub by sub and piece out the blatant lies, or you could walk away from the platform understanding that the design is fundamentally flawed and was designed for an era of the internet that no longer exists.
I thought it was a brilliant question. Representative Hudson demonstrated understanding of security boundaries between Internet client-server and local peer-to-peer network use. Who is making fun of him for that question?
The follow up clarification specifically was "is it possible then, that it could access other devices on that home wifi network?".
Listen, I'm not American nor on TikTok. I couldn't care less, I just wanted to point out that this is not the best example for weird questions from that whole ordeal.
It is a totally legitimate question if attacks like this are baked into an app (unless these kinds of permissions are now the default, in which case I am behind the curve).
The greatest lie current politicians in the US managed to get the public to believe in, is that this somehow is a "left vs right" or "democrats vs republicans" issue, when in reality the both sides/parties are more similar than they are different.
Y'all need some real alternatives to the status quo. I'd suggest exploring actually leftist ideals, but would have to be outside the current two-party system, because Democrats already proven they won't do it, as they pushed Bernie aside for a person no one seemed to like.
When all you know are those two options, then yeah, they look like two very different options.
But once you explored the other ideologies and political ideas out there in the rest of the world, you'll see they both end up being pretty much "center-but-slightly-right", one is slightly more conservative than the other, but otherwise they're pretty much the same poison.
Also it isn't one axis reality, so projecting all those onto a line leads to skewed comparisons. That said, what parties elsewhere in the world make the modern GOP look center-right? Also, in countries with even larger gaps in ideology between parties, how do they avoid the civil unrest the US is seeing?
> what parties elsewhere in the world make the modern GOP look center-right?
Loads of examples; Vox (Spain), AfD (Germany) and whatever National Front (France) is called nowadays, all take harder stances and are pretty honest about their want for centralization of authority (for example), for better or worse. Golden Dawn (Greece) is probably a even stronger ultra-nationalist example, but they basically have no support after getting banned.
Although I will say that is seems almost futile to compare left/right between countries, we all have somewhat different understandings of it...
> how do they avoid the civil unrest the US is seeing
What civil unrest? I'd say things seem surprisingly calm and the population almost pacified. We're starting to see some smaller embers of something starting, but compared to how things could be considering the circumstances, it seems pretty idle.
I generally agree given where we are right now but i would still argue that with the right Dem candidate and momentum there can be a chance to codify some bold leftist policies that truly improve people’s material conditions like more labor protections, cheaper healthcare/child care etc. These are popular policies across party lines. No one focused on them during this election cycle. In a way people voted for Trump because he kept repeating that Dems made you miserable and i will punish them. And Dems were offering to “save democracy” while leaning further right (see immigration bill). Unfortunately Trump is not helping solve any of those issues. And we are back to square one.
Of course the democrats can win again and they will but that DJT won at all let alone a second time speaks volumes about the American people and their fall. Really sad.
Americans wanted cheaper groceries, gas, … one candidate lied about the ease at which those changes could be made, just like he lies about everything else, and a shocking number of people bought it, again. They were conned by an expert conman with a lifetime’s experience conning.
I just don’t think the US is a serious country anymore. Any country that elects a man like Donald Trump for a few percent off their veggies (OK probably not veggies in America) and cheaper eggs is not a serious place. Shame, I really used to believe all that shit about a city on a hill!
Many issues have bipartisan support, especially foreign policy. I suspect the other main reason they wanted to ban TT is that they wanted to control the narrative on certain issues, on the them being Gaza.
Yes, I agree. While data collection is an issue it feels like a red herring sometimes. I've received a wide variety of populist and anti-capitalist ideas from a wide spectrum of users on TikTok, and that feels like a greater threat to the powers that be than data collection.
If it was solely data collection the CCP (and anyone else for that matter) would simply buy data from random data brokers. It is much easier, cheaper and legal too.
It is impossible to deny that DJT appears to be far younger than he really is, and at the very least, his energy and character are much more striking as youthful than any of the Democrat leadership (Biden, Pelosi, the other geriatrics). There's a reason we have dozens of quotable moments from Trump and like three max from Biden.
Plenty of chatter about this topic on HN reflect the same viewpoint as the octogenarians in Congress. Outlaw something on allegations and not evidence or trial, when said allegations apply to local alternatives as well.
I vote democrat, but then I'm a rich, educated, knowledge worker coastal urban elite so I'm supposed to right?
I think the hard answer is - the Dems need to actually do things that dissatisfy people like me if they want to actually win the masses - working class, blue collar, etc voter back.
Currently they are focussed on everything other than class. Identity politics. Race, gender, sexuality, immigration status, etc. None of this is particularly threatening to people like me and is a moral good, but it should be secondary to actually helping the poor regardless of how they identify.
Left wing parties elsewhere push for more redistributive policies than the Dems ever dream of here. Instead they do hand-outs to constituencies that aren't in dire need, and already vote Dem anyway. Student loan forgiveness, EV tax credits, etc.
Meanwhile in UK & EU, even the vaguely upper end of middle class pay marginal tax rates that would make $1M/year US earners cry. This is where the revenue comes for the depth & breadth of their social programs.
Should the US go that far? Absolutely not. It would stifle innovation, growth, and what makes the US far more successful than our rich peers. But Dems need to break free of the thinking that if we just tax a few billionaires, all our problems will be solved.
Left wing parties elsewhere are losing too, mostly because of immigration. Meanwhile the welfare states are collapsing in the UK, Canada, France and Germany because the birthrates and lack of economic growth can't sustain it.
I think globally a lot of rich world left wing parties made similar rhetorical mistakes. Essentially leaning into identity stuff without acknowledging working class people’s challenges.
Also to be fair they’ve been in power globally for some time and so are seen as the status quo party, and largely ran as such. People are feeling economically squeezed and therefore voting incumbents out.
So it sounds as if the left are attempting to cater to issues further up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs than the majority of the voting populace think are important.
That's interesting, because it feels like "the right" (in my experience and whatever left and right mean these days) wouldn't recognise or consider catering to anything above the two basic levels (and to be honest, the 'brutal truth' part of my own personality tells me that anything above those two basic levels is 'cream').
People who worry about the price of groceries or basic car repairs to keep their older car on the road don’t want to hear how privileged they are due to their race (they might not be a minority but they aren’t rich) / how they are destroying the planet (they aren’t flying 10x year) / that kids who took out loans for expensive private college deserve free money (they didn’t even go to college or went to state school) / how democracy is at stake / etc.
It's more than messaging when the rank & file democrats and elite voters walk, talk and breathe this line of thinking. And there are policy choices made downstream of it as well.
This is an interesting list that 100% reflects what Republicans in my state ran on and Democrats only mentioned them when on defense (except immigration, which they clearly took point on before trump torpedoed the bipartisan effort to work on it)
> EV tax credits
These were absolutely needed to kickstart the EV market, just like oil subsidies were needed to keep the American economy moving so people and goods could get from place to place.
But TikTik is an important forum for the people of the world to solve our thorny issues! In the days before social media, our world was a mess. Today we are awash in sage, well-reasoned discourse: a new Age of Enlightenment! What fools we'd be to tinker with this valuable information ecosystem. /s
That's good, we should also tell them about bad things done by other countries/civilizations. Because until then it's extremely weird how it only focuses on destabilizing and demoralizing countries internally
And there are some news about protests in other countries on the app, I've received some in my feed. I agree it's important to have a global understanding of events in the world.
The focus on US instability in the US feeds make sense to me though, people want to be able to have a say and encourage action in their local areas.
Younger generations being anti-war is a tale as old as time. Unrelated to the current “TikTok-fed generation”. Meaning TikTok isn’t making them enlightened, that’s just how younger people always are.
I think it's still an important tool. Even though the tale isn't new, TikTok is a modern and popular way for those younger generations to share their opinions on debated topics. I think that's why banning the app has been viewed so intensely as suppressing voices. In earlier decades there was no global app with an information spout that could be turned on and off per region.
Actually, foreign companies are banned from owning more than 25% ownership of a tv and radio broadcast licenses in the US. And that law exists for this exact same reason, to avoid a situation where another country has the ability to control media consumed by the US.
Its a tool. Flawed tool by design, the flaw is obvious to some and not to others, yet all experience it. Tool that have many similar tools as competition, albeit none is exactly the same.
TikTok and only TikTok an 'important tool'? Not unless you are somehow invested in it, or if you consciously make it one.
The fact that young generations want to share details of their lives is fine and TBH who cares, but platform to do so basically doesn't matter. If it would be banned 10 others would fill the gap on the market in days. If its really an 'important tool'.
Oh yeah "immigration". Can't wait for the immigration discourse in 10 years time, when people all over the world, rich and poor, christian, muslim and jew, white and black, are being displaced because they're homes are literally uninhabitable because the frequency of out of control weather events has gone up.
Will you allow "climate refugees" into your neighbourhood? Will you be a climate refugee yourself?
Looking this up, is this [1] the bill? Cuz it turns out this bill was sponsored by a Republican and passed during a Republican controlled House in 2023, by a supermajority 352 - 65.
People always blame Democrats for things that Republicans do.
And there is always a Hasbara drone who lies, deflects, and conflates Israel with Jewry so they can insinuate that any criticism of Israel == antisemitism.
AIPAC is funded by Israel, and by it's own description AIPAC is an organisation made up of pro-Israel zionists. Oh, and the "I" in AIPAC stands for "Israel".
Everything they said was true and you did not even attempt to explain why or how they're wrong.
> AIPAC is funded by American Jews.
No shit. Name a single larger demographic with a protracted interest in defending Israel, I'll wait.
> Nice try hiding your hatred.
There are two governments on Earth that deny Israel's violation of international law. They are Israel and the United States. It is not hatred to oppose Zionism, it's global consensus.
> It is not hatred to oppose Zionism, it's global consensus.
I don't care what your global consensus is. Jews are entitled to their homeland, just like any other nationality, like Belguim or Paraguay. To say otherwise is hatred.
> AIPAC is funded by American Jews.
>> No shit. Name a single larger demographic with a protracted interest in defending Israel
Exactly - no shit. Jews do have a protracted interest in defending Israel
- so that there is a place to go where they can be protected from genocidal maniacs who are creating this "global consensus" with intent of wiping them out.
> I don't care what your global consensus is. Jews are entitled to their homeland
Evidently. You seem rather incensed that I even mentioned the hundreds of nations that oppose Israel's existence on non-religious grounds. The nations that observe international law, the eminence of criminal justice, the treatment of minorities, the protection of journalists, the (repeated) violation of Syria's border and the displacement of Israel's remaining native population.
Simply put, I agree that Israel's natives are entitled to their homeland. It's unfortunate for the Jews then that they are not the Arabs.
> so that there is a place to go where they can be protected from genocidal maniacs who are creating this "global consensus" with intent of wiping them out.
For the courtesy of the Jewish people I do not conflate Zionism with Judaism. Anyone examining Israel's history can very easily distinguish for themselves the extremists and the oppressed.
It also passed a Democrat controlled Senate and was signed by a Democrat president, who then elected to not even attempt to enforce the law today, his one day to do so. Either of those could have blocked it. It's at the very least bipartisan and the talk at the time of passage was that the Dems could deliver on Rep promises. Neither side seems to want to be the ones holding the unpopular bag.
You are correct. Our entire government looks like a clown show over this. National security issues that we couldn’t see banned it and now it’s still here. I better see some members of the legislature fight this misappropriation of power that was upheld by the Supreme Court. If a president can come in and hand wave away a law just passed and implemented(by a huge majority mind you), then the rule of law is gone. I hope that Cook and Pichai stand firm and not let these apps back into the store until the government fixes this shit show through the proper channels. Those who flip flop their votes should have their reasons spread across traditional and online media. If our entire government will flip flop on an issue so quickly after the Supreme Court suppressed the 1A a little further, I feel the corpo state has taken us another step towards the cyberpunk dystopia that I prefer to cosplay in my games not reality.
Republicans probably love to see Trump ignoring Congress even if it's a law they passed. Now you've essentially got a large chunk of the population (youth especially) cheering that Trump saved the day by acting like a dictator. Gives him opportunity to do more of the same.
The outgoing Biden administration actually stated that they wouldn’t enforce the ban for just one day, choosing to leave implementation of the law to the incoming Trump administration.
Efforts to save TikTok have been bipartisan (“Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said he spoke with Biden on Thursday to advocate for extending the deadline to ban TikTok.”) and efforts to enforce the ban have also been bipartisan (“Democrats had tried on Wednesday to pass legislation that would have extended the deadline, but Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas blocked it. Cotton, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that TikTok has had ample time to find a buyer.”)
The incentive structures inherent in modern politics encourages all politicians to alternately champion or repudiate unworkable solutions to problems that themselves are likely exaggerated or fabricated from whole cloth.
The parties are just brands competing against each other to appeal to different segments of the same market, offering essentially the same product in different packaging. Getting your competitor to adopt a market position that you've already prepared a response to is a neat trick.
This is par for the course, and I don't understand why anyone would expect anything different.
DEM looks bad now bc they just lost power. DEM did not solve it earlier bc an unpopular party can't do hard/unpopular things. GOP may have a shot, if they will be as popular as they looked in November. End of day it's about popularity and power.
It seems like an oversight to me that all the discussion about political impact leading up to this has focused on consumers. Statements like "Gen Z likes TikTok, so banning it risks alienating them", "Gen Z will forgot about TikTok and move on to the next thing in due time", etc.
I think this overlooks one key detail. The focal points of the new online world -- "influencers" -- rely on TikTok for the lion's share of their income. Taking away a fun toy might not radicalize someone but taking away their livelihood might.
And even if these users are a tiny fraction of a percent, they wield outsized influence (obviously). They are the new media. Risking losing these people, many of whom have been largely apolitical, seems like a huge tactical error in retrospect, and one that Trump would predictably take advantage of if given the chance.
Trump was banging the drum regarding banning TikTok, then changes his tune in the 11th hour, and will now use this to come out as the hero and savior. Not to mention how many republicans supported this.
But also scary how much people are willing to swallow
Edit: wanted to elaborate but wasn't sure how to put it best. Then two comments down there is exactly what I'm looking for: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42759761 So many people (in absolute numbers at least, maybe not in relative numbers) seem to just eat it up like kids eat candy
Anecdotal, but I see a ton of people who were anti-trump and protesting just a couple years ago celebrating and thanking Trump for saving tiktok and making them happy again. It's wild.
If someone banned youtube or HN, I'd be upset, but I wouldn't be depressed and suicidal over it like some of these people were publicly
What's that saying? The best way to get a promotion is to cause a problem and then fix it?
Political things aside, it's crazy to see so much of a flip-flop so quickly. Has there been any other behavior like this in the past where a company "shut themselves down" to make a big political statement and then almost immediately undid the shut down?
There was no deadline, the app stores didn’t need to remove it.
The Biden administration said it would be left to the Trump administration to review, they had no reason to shut it down. It’s purely to force Trumps hand a bit.
Thanks. So that was between friday night and today, that means it would also be true that Bytedance could not rely on the autonomous aspects of the US government to not create liability, unless given an explicit assurance.
I wouldn't say following the law would be purely to force a hand, I would say multiple things can be true at once. They still had liability.
Other government agencies, like the SEC, has been filing court cases all the way till the last minute even though they’ll likely get dropped tomorrow. It is understandable to take a risk averse approach for a company.
> As of January 19, the Protecting Americans from Foreign
Adversary Controlled Applications Act will make it unlaw-
ful for companies in the United States to provide services to
distribute, maintain, or update the social media platform
TikTok
That is simply a topical remark within the judgement denying the injunction. It isn't relevant to what is enforceable or being enforced. The Act in question doesn't contain wording that implies that TikTok would have been required to be taken immediately offline, as the act requires enforcement by the FTC, which hasn't yet moved on the matter.
“It is a stunt, and we see no reason for TikTok or other companies to take actions in the next few days before the Trump Administration takes office on Monday. We have laid out our position clearly and straightforwardly: actions to implement this law will fall to the next administration. So TikTok and other companies should take up any concerns with them.”
Please do some research next time before accusing people of spreading lies.
The Biden administration said it wasn't going to initiate enforcement proceedings in the last 24 hours of their administration.
It did not, nor did it have the authority to, waive the apps stores requirement under the law to do that. To remove the potential for future enforcement actions (up to 5 years in the future) punishing them for failing to comply with the law. Neither will Trump even once he is president unless and until amongst other things ByteDance signs legally binding documents that they will divest from TikTok within 90 days.
No. It's a big political statement to include political messaging and plead to political figures when you shut down. Then to praise those political figures afterwards is additional political messaging.
No, many users are sharing the theory that the downtime was to allow meta or google to take over the backend. Content delivery is different on the app now. For example, ads being served during videos not between videos.
FWIW, it was at least year in the making, but I will admit that the execution did add a proper show vibe.. as would be expected from a reality show star.
> What's that saying? The best way to get a promotion is to cause a problem and then fix it?
There's too much effort and uncertainty involved in actually creating a problem and then actually fixing it.
It's much easier and more reliable to create the perception of a problem by promulgating lots of FUD, then engage in performative theatrics to nullify the FUD and proclaim the problem fixed.
What's the difference between the perception of a problem being present and the existence of a problem?
If you create an issue, and solve an issue, indifferent of the issue being real, you'll be credited with solving the issue. It's ridiculous at this scale
The phrase is not a defense of some hyper relative worldview. It’s commentary that the perception of the many facts, which of those are highlighted, which are ignored, which biases shine through and which narrative wins, etc., at the end of the day, is the reality you must deal with. Reality is downstream of facts.
Sure they are, but they should explain why they changed their minds. In the case of meme coins like $TRUMP, it's hard to defend crypto as an investment or as a currency, which leaves the obvious reason: it's a scam.
In the case of Trump, I'm sure he was all for crypto as soon as he realized that he personally could make money from it. Same goes for his NFT grift.
not sure why people still try to understand Trump after all these years him being a public figure. he does absolutely NOTHING and EVER which does not help his bottom line and benefit him personally. he’ll fucking steal money from a children’s charity which is about as low as humans go - the lowest scum of the earth to make a penny. hence him “changing his mind” (he was a democrat and was sucking clinton’s dicks for decades) has nothing to do with me and you changing our minds based on something we learned - for him there is a single thought - how can I profit from it.
Interesting... are you able to expand on this? My understanding is that the $TRUMP coin runs on Solana, which similar to Bitcoin runs on a public ledger and therefore offers limited anonymization (basically none).
It doesn't matter if it's anonymous. What's important is buying $TRUMP is a tax-free method with plausible deniability to increase Donald Trump's net worth.
Anyone is free to make an "investment," there is no disclosure requirement, and an accusation of bribery (even if one could be made legally against a sitting president, which SCOTUS tells us it cannot) would require a provable quid-pro-quo.
trading crypto isnt tax free if it isnt in tax deferred or tax exempt entity
and when transferred in a way that would otherwise require a disclosure to a politician or campaign, the crypto asset and transaction would also require a disclosure
if there are other benefits that the crypto world is superior at, then thanks for describing a use case and value proposition relevant on a geopolitical scale to the largest nations on the planet. a lot of people here cant imagine any because they arent the target audience
I don't think the idea is to buy crypto locally, and then donate the crypto to Trump. The purchase is the donation. You just wake up one day and decide to purchase some shitcoin. The seller happens to be Trump. He walks away with your USD, and you can keep what you bought or just throw it away.
> I mean, isn't this the same as donating to Trump?
Not in a legal sense. In the US, donations to politicians and campaigns are tightly regulated. Foreign entities aren't allowed to donate. Donations have to be reported, are subject to limitations, etc.
In crypto, none of that applies. Anyone, anywhere in the world, can invest essentially unlimited funds into a memecoin. It's not technically a donation because you're buying something, and it's not technically going to Trump, because you're buying from some pseudonymous entity on the blockchain. Nevertheless, the money goes to Trump. It's an ideal venue for laundering bribes.
Good point, though lobbying groups are often endorsing and donating to candidates and are backed by sentiment in other regimes like AIPAC. I guess $TRUMP is just creating another backdoor around foreign donation regulations.
In the US, lobbyists representing foreign interests must register as such. Failure to register is a crime: that's what Michael Flynn was convicted of, before Trump pardoned him.
In contrast, any foreign party can purchase $TRUMP.
> trading crypto isnt tax free if it isnt in tax deferred or tax exempt entity
Sure, good luck enforcing that. Although crypto isn't anonymous, it is pseudonymous. In any case, you aren't subject to the same taxes as a traditional gift about $20000 and you aren't subject to the same regulation as campaign contributions.
> and when transferred in a way that would otherwise require a disclosure to a politician or campaign, the crypto asset and transaction would also require a disclosure
That's the beauty of the grift. "Investing in $TRUMP" isn't a transfer to a politician or a campaign: it's a purchase of a memecoin on a public blockchain. It's a way to give money to Trump without meeting the legal definition of "giving money to Trump."
> if there are other benefits that the crypto world is superior at, then thanks for describing a use case and value proposition relevant on a geopolitical scale to the largest nations on the planet. a lot of people here cant imagine any because they arent the target audience
I don't know what you're trying to say here. I think I just explained a pretty use case for crypto as a means to buy political favor. Other benefits of crypto include: (a) purchasing illegal goods, (b) defrauding naive consumers.
the hotels were functioning that way through the entire administration last time
and the $DJT stock is already doing this as well
What you’re pointing out is just not a unique aspect of crypto or that interesting in the Trump portfolio of “things vulnerable to being used as kickbacks in a currently legal way”
> the hotels were functioning that way through the entire administration last time
Sure, but it's a matter of scale. It's difficult to rent a billion dollars worth of hotel rooms.
> and the $DJT stock is already doing this as well
Yep, that's another scam.
> What you’re pointing out is just not a unique aspect of crypto
Yes and no. Crypto offers a uniquely unregulated and perhaps unregulatable means for malfeasance. NASDAQ tickers are tame in comparison.
Fwiw, the moral of the story is not "all crypto is evil" but rather "crypto should be regulated like any other instrument in order to prevent fraud" and perhaps as a corollary "sitting presidents shouldn't be issuing their own meme coin."
A foundation? Kamala got a $20 million "book deal". Obama took the Clinton method to ridiculous extremes getting paid $400k for 30 minute chats of minimal content, repeatedly.
I think it's obvious that US lawmakers were somehow convinced ByteDance would absolutely divest from TikTok if threatened with an ultimatum. They were never prepared for an actual ban and the resulting fallout. Now that it's obvious they won't divest (which should have been obvious the entire time), they flipped
"It's clear that more time is needed to find an American buyer and not disrupt the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans of so many influencers who have built up a good network of followers" [1]
The deal was divest or ban, not look for "more time to find a buyer". My point is they were never prepared for an actual ban.
Here we have a group of people that have given up on their duties re: checks and balances because following orders is easier. What a surprise that they're spineless in other ways too.
I think the bigger point is there are a lot of young people making really decent money on TikTok. (I know a few of them.) The result is a lot of push back from a lot of people who are effectively loosing their jobs. This is probably more clear to politicians now than it was a year ago, since the actual “threat” of the situation set in for more people.
As popular as the platform is with the younger demographic and the voting preferences of said younger demographic it's political malpractice for democrats to not try to at least salvage some face in this whole ordeal, whether you think the blame is misplaced or not.
> US lawmakers were somehow convinced ByteDance would absolutely divest from TikTok if threatened with an ultimatum
I worked on the bill. Everyone assumed it would hit the ban, get an extension, and then either remain banned or get sold to Elon, Ellison or a Brexiteer.
> Has there been any other behavior like this in the past where a company "shut themselves down" to make a big political statement and then almost immediately undid the shut down?
Fiduciary responsibilities make it unlikely that many companies would risk it.
There’s always a chance you don’t come back, and there’s likely to be a loss of marketshare for simply being unavailable for a period and forcing users to trial alternatives.
But, TikTok is not purely commercially focused. A majority of the voting stock of ByteDance is held by the Chinese government, who clearly see non-financial strategic value in controlling it.
Otherwise, they likely could have negotiated a spin out the US operation, whereby they retain most of the equity upside but give majority voting control to a US buyer.
Can you imagine any other country making this demand and it being taken seriously? It is negotiation by means of extortion. Why are American tech companies entitled to the profits of an internationally used app?
Seems like the policies used by the Chinese government for decade are becoming more internationally popular (for better or for worse..).
I can’t really feel bad about when it’s the same deal they offer Western companies. Well.. to be fair Google or FB couldn’t even get anywhere close to where TikTok is.
Well, that's pretty much how China behaves with respect to foreign companies operating in China. They all need to be joint partnerships with owners in China.
The world is more than just China and the United States. That was the point of my original comment. The United States here feels entitled to own and run an app used on every continent of the world. No other country could get away with demanding this.
> The world is more than just China and the United States.
But this particular situation is not. A Chinese controlled company that operates in the US. If you want access to $CC market you are subject to $CC's rules. Other countries do exactly the same thing (aside from China, GDPR comes to mind) so it's unclear what the basis for your complaint is here.
> The United States here feels entitled to own and run an app used on every continent of the world.
This isn’t correct. The US law only applies to the services provided within the US.
ByteDance could spin out the US userbase while retaining the rest of the userbase. Many US companies already have to do exactly this for their Chinese userbase. Spin it off to a JV with a Chinese partner.
I’m not aware of anyone doing this, but you could even have a content syndication model whereby the global TikTok and the US TikTok share a common pool of content and username reservations so that both services appear global to their users, but with separate companies controlling distribution of their own apps and the recommendation model used to serve content.
India banned TikTok a few years ago. Brazil banned X until it agreed to take down posts in violation of Brazilian law. The European Union fines US-based tech companies frequently.
"Entitlement" in the context of nations is irrelevant. Nations exercise power in accordance with their interests.
That's false. The US law requires TikTok to be sold to a non-adversary. A US company could buy it, or some German or Spanish company, and either would fulfill the requirements to avoid a ban in the US.
> No other country could get away with demanding this.
TikTok is already banned in India. Brasil banned Twitter for a while until they caved to Brasil's demands.
You can’t claim this is unfair to China, when China requires foreign companies enter into joint ventures which give the Chinese partner majority voting share.
I don't think it's unfair to China, I think it's unfair to European countries, Canada, Australia, and the rest of the world that uses TikTok who are watching the U.S. demand it is entitled to run and control TikTok.
This would be like the U.S. forcing Spotify's Swedish headquarters to accept U.S. ownership.
Then Europe should grows some balls and ban TikTok. China is literally a foreign invader not just a foreign adversary, aiding in Russia’s conquest of Europe. And trying to destroy Europe’s car industry via state subsidized EVs
India literally banned TikTok overnight when China killed Indian soldiers in 2020
I think most Westerners would prefer the US remaining dominant than ceding that position of power to China, regardless of the US's foreign policy monstrosities over time.
And for those Westerners who do not, I think it would be useful to ask them why they think a country like China (or Russia, or North Korea) would be better for their interests than the US, even with someone like Trump in power.
If anything, WW1 happened because there were too many empires rather than a lack of any dominant powers.
Unless you’re suggesting that what the world needs is a single dominant empire? Which would be an odd position to take because history has proven that monopolies are much much worse for abusing power.
Maybe if/when we colonise other planets we can think of the Earth as a single government with countries acting like states (kind of like the EU but with less sovereignty for each state). However that’s only going to happen if we work together and generally cooperation is viewed as counterproductive to empire building. So we come full circle back to my original point.
> I think most Westerners would prefer the US remaining dominant than ceding that position of power to China, regardless of the US's foreign policy monstrosities over time.
I can't speak for most Westerners, but I fully believe the United States to be an empire in decline already. Who will take up that mantle once we're fully gone is an interesting question, I think China and India both could make a solid case for themselves.
> And for those Westerners who do not, I think it would be useful to ask them why they think a country like China (or Russia, or North Korea) would be better for their interests than the US
I don't really think about it in terms of "my interests." My ideal incoming superpower would be any superpower that's ready to deal with existential threats to our species like climate change, along with our global social ills like over-reliance on social media and the year over year alienation of everyone from everyone else. If that country comes with me needing to learn Mandarin then that's what has to happen.
I'm highly disillusioned with both the "West" as an idea (which can include any number of countries depending how racist the speaker is feeling at the moment). I still believe in Democracy, representative or otherwise, but I don't see any of those in your "West" anymore. I see a collection of ailing, aged empires full of greedy old men stealing as much money as they can so they and their families can coast out the collapse they have engineered. I contrast this with China, which certainly has problems too, and the CCP gets up to some nonsense, but their ability to exude top-down control also makes them more able to actually solve problems instead of endlessly bickering about them. And with respect to the notions of individual liberty and freedom that I do want to see in the world, it's clear that the West is too focused on maintaining the rights of the individual to do what they so please, and not enough on maintaining the planet upon which they would do it. How free is anyone if we can't leave our homes due to smog or unlivable temperatures/weathers?
Not saying it's an overall improvement. I am saying that the U.S. is on it's way out, and China is the likely incoming global superpower. We can do precious little to change this if we even want to, and I'm not rushing for a fire extinguisher here.
> Who will take up that mantle once we're fully gone is an interesting question, I think China and India both could make a solid case for themselves
With the exception of the USSR, every superpower’s decline in history has involved a burst of violence. China or India won’t take over if America collapses because America collapsing (versus slow fading over lifetimes) almost guarantees nuclear war resetting the table.
It's not very clear, but the US version is more freedom plus killing more people, and the Chinese version is more servitude plus killing fewer people.
I think people who have seen one up close claim to prefer the other (but thets meaningless) while people who have seen both start to lean toward servitude, unless they are highly religious.
Since we all live in democratic regimes, maybe, just maybe, the will of the people should matter here at least a little bit? Banning TikTok is a deeply unpopular idea, across all party lines. It's only popular among the anti-democratic elites, from Trump (who first got this ball rolling), to Biden, to European leaders playing their "high-level" games.
You're lumping "not sure" in with "oppose the ban". You could just as easily lump "not sure" with "support the ban" and conclude that not banning it is deeply unpopular.
If you're trying to argue that a majority favors banning it, then, obviously, all opinions other than "favor banning it" have to be lumped together as "don't favor banning it"
Because if there are two subjects HN cannot resist pontificating on at length, it's social media/the modern web and Sinopolitics. Add a dash of red team/blue team sniping and it's the perfect storm.
Every state to a different degree subsidizes its automobile industry.
Living in Australia now with access to Chinese EV's is eyeopening. It's great for the consumer. To the extent you accept EV's as a solution for reducing GHG's, the cheaper prices are making it easier to end our reliance on oil. Americans don't realize what they are missing out on.
Better than Tesla-quality vehicles for half the price.
Why exactly are they half the price? What are the externalities of Chinese EV manufacturing. They may be half the price, but I doubt they are half the cost.
Those are just examples. Whatever the reason for each, sovereign jurisdictions don't allow free access to their resources/markets just out of spite. That includes Europe.
That’s only partially true though. I don’t think Uber itself is not allowed to operate anywhere. Rather it’s business model is illegal in some cities/areas. Usually you can still use Uber to hire actual taxis there.
However exact same rules apply to its European competitors like Bolt. Make it entirely unrelated to this situation.
That has nothing to with them being US companies. Or are there any jurisdictions where Bolt/(other local company) is allowed to freely operate but Uber is banned?
It does not say they have to sell to the US. Only divest as to no longer be considered controlled by a `foreign adversary` of the United States.[0] The bill also gives this power to future administrations.
It was literally called Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.
More fair would have been a restriction based on some framework like...
+ Public forum or utility
+ Userbase greater than 1% of the adult population
= Majority Ownership of corporate division and management, plus regulatory oversight, must be held within country OR a security partnered country (the easiest criteria for that might be they have an obligation to fight along side 'our' troops in some way).
That way it isn't specific about any given platform or company, and it allows anyone trusted as an ally to comprise the ownership or legal jurisdiction.
EU countries are asleep at the wheel on matters of national security and sovereignty. Spotify is not a matter of national security. TikTok, and social networking in general, has been one for some time now. Misinformation, conspiracy theories, actual conspiracies to overthrow govt, etc have all found renewed vigor thanks to social networks.
US on the other hand now has its social media controlled by oligarchs, not much better maybe.
If that’s your position, then you would be fine if EU countries were to pull out all US telco infrastructure because of their previous abuses towards European citizens?
I'd be mindful that having a NATO partner be able to spy is maybe better than having Huawei spy if you have to choose, but yes, I think it's a risk that EU countries should be aware of and probably are more aware of than with social networks.
They’re not. Why are you making that assumption? The US is saying that in order to access the US market they have to divest. They’re free to sell at a fair market price - including to European buyers. They can also choose not to and leave the US market and keep operating elsewhere. They can also just sell the US business and keep everything else the way it is.
Because it deals with an actual enemy pumping propaganda into your country's citizen's ears. It's a legitimate threat to national security. And no, not just the US does this. (I assume you mean free countries, not dictatorship like China, Russia or North Korea that ban everything they don't like).
Europe banned Russian propaganda outlet RT a couple of years ago, on security grounds. It's just that US prefers the soft-soft approach. Don't ban them, let them "divest". No. It doesn't work. It should be banned end of story. I guarantee a genuine competitor from the US or an allied country would make an alternative quite soon. Would be so addictive and equally brain rotting? Probably not, so people who enjoyed it before would complain. Fine, let them go join Douyin or other Chinese platform and see for themselves how "freedom of speech"looks like in China.
As for anyone who might come and say "they're not doing anything wrong". They are and you're naive for not seeing it. Every company in China is an arm of the state. As an example see how Bytedance released an ebook reader in the US with an AI assistant that tells you things like "nothing happened in 1989 on Tiananmen square", there is no genocide in Xinjiang, it is inappropriate to question and critique the Chinese communist party, China never attacked anyone,ever but it's perfectly fine to criticise every other single country on earth and it is ready to give you a litany of misdeeds any other country on earth ever did. Except China. Do you think a company like that owning what's essentially a monopoly on news for the young people is good? No it is not, and any sane politician would ban it long time ago. The fact Trump did this move worries me for his other decisions in future .
All media has propaganda. But if you objectively look at what Russia is doing in Ukraine, and then look at RT's coverage of the war, you must be pretty brainwashed to trust RT any more than American media.
There are plenty of corruption and issues in EU, some of which RT may have covered legitimately, but at least we're not intentionally massacring civilians and sending our poor and minorities to die as cannon fodder in an useless invasion. There's a reason why all European neighbours of Russia have or want to join NATO, and that is its imperialistic and aggressive policies.
You should come visit us in Finland or maybe our neighbour Estonia and really see what ordinary people have to say about Russia. Real people, who actually live next to them.
> You have to give away 50% of your local subsidiary just to operate there.
I'm not sure how generally you meant to speak, but this is no longer true as a general claim.
"As of November 1, 2024, China has removed all restrictions on foreign investment in the manufacturing sector, allowing foreign investors, including Americans, to own up to 100% equity in Chinese manufacturing enterprises."
True. I missed that. Operating an online social network has nothing to do with manufacturing though.
And investments into various telecommunications related areas are still restricted or outright banned. So foreign founded/owned TV stations like Fox News could never exist in China (for better or for worse).
What's your source on that? Apple, Microsoft, Tesla and Amazon all operate in China and I don't believe they had to give up 50% of their local subsidiary. Google withdrew from China because it didn't want to comply with local laws (e.g. censorship).
They changed it last year. Prior to that you generally could only have a 50% stake manufacturing companies (obviously doesn’t apply to Apple cause they never did any).
> .. (ii) news agencies, (iii) editing, publishing and production of books, newspapers, periodicals, audio-visual products and electronic publications, (iv) all levels of broadcasting stations, television stations, radio and television channel and frequency, radio and television transmission networks and the engagement in the video on demand business of radio and TV, (v) radio and television program production and operation as well as (vi) film production companies, distribution companies, cinema companies and the introduction of films are still prohibited.
So good-luck to any Australians and Brits who want to operate Fox news style networks in China.
There are other telecommunications related areas which are restricted and not prohibited.
Not sure where would TikTok fall into exactly but it’s probably bot manufacturing.
The Chinese government carefully controls foreign access to its market already (unlike the US), and already bans quite a few foreign companies from operating on the Chinese Internet (again, unlike the US).
I imagine Apple already complies with whatever they need to comply with in order to make the Chinese government happy.
> 'cos we're all equal, no?
No, we absolutely aren't. The Chinese government has ensured for decades now that foreign businesses have only tightly controlled access to the Chinese people while Chinese-owned (i.e., easily controllable by the Chinese government) businesses have advantages not given to outsiders. (And those outsiders need to open up a Chinese subsidiary that is majority-owned by Chinese investors/companies.)
On the other hand, most Western countries have given Chinese companies near-unfettered access to their markets.
If anything, this TikTok ban is actually making things more equal, if only by a tiny bit.
Actually what’s scary for Apple, and really for all companies with assets or factories still in China is that recently China prevented Apple from shipping its own equipments out of China to India. China is so fearful of even more unemployments that it is now willing to upset one of its largest employer.
Foxconn stops sending Chinese workers to India iPhone factories
In addition, equipment shipments are delayed, potentially disrupting next-generation iPhone production in India.
> If anything, this TikTok ban is actually making things more equal, if only by a tiny bit.
I do t use tiktok and have no skin in the game as an EU resident, but setting a precedent for this kind of behaviour to permit clthe government to simply block anything it wants is basically following in CCPs footsteps, that's certainly not a good thing in my eyes.
This is not a new precedent. The US government has placed foreign-ownership restrictions on media companies since before the public internet was a thing. The only difference here is that it's targeted at a specific company, but I'm not really up in arms about that, even though I think they definitely could have written the law without naming ByteDance or TikTok specifically.
Not just media companies, the government block a Japanese company from buying US Steel. Not out of antitrust concerns but due to the foreign ownership aspect.
Numerous examples of China-says-jump-everyone-says-how-high.
NBA, any company that makes anything within China using slavery, the guy/actor/wrestler (the name escapes me right now) who had to learn Chinese to apologize. Take your pick of "precedent".
1bn customers = a lot of money. A company that will kiss the ring will do the right thing by its shareholders and a nasty thing against humanity. I am 200% sure that Apple has given the keys for all users/phones/servers in China to the gov/CCP and nobody complained.
If North Korea had 1bn potential customers, we would be seeing Kim very differently.
We are cattle. It's all a 1984-ish sham.
Historically China has been so large and 'diverse' (not to be confused with DEI) (like India and Russia). It's not "one chinese person is just like anyone else". There are multiple Republics/States/etc. It takes an emperor to keep together an empire. And that usually requires (plenty of) violence.
Communism is built to make people suffer, remove individuality and requires total obedience and personal reformation to be the 'good citizen'. You and me both are EU citizens. We are all different and we respect/accept each other. In China if you disagree, you disappear. They would very much like to do the same to the rest of the world. And one day they will, just not yet. I hope they implode before they do (like all empires).
> NBA, any company that makes anything within China using slavery, the guy/actor/wrestler (the name escapes me right now) who had to learn Chinese to apologize. Take your pick of "precedent".
John Cena was probably the wrestler HenryBemis was referring to. Although he started learning Chinese a long time ago, not for the purpose of apologizing. A couple years ago he called Taiwan a country, then issued an apology.
IAPP isn't a bad source IMO but hard to evaluate their methods, but lets see.
> Level of understanding about data collection and use
Netherlands : Weak - 14%
USA : Weak - 24%
Not great, I could spend time finding more, but the summary is that the EU has regulations that require companies to limit the useage of consumers information and privacy. The EU is consumer privacy focused, wheras the US seems to be Enterprise & Organisation focused, also it's state level enforcements fracture enforcement even further.
Lets look at the US CCPA vs GDPR :
A crucial difference is that GDPR requires individuals to opt-in before businesses can collect data while there is no opt-in condition in CCPA.
That should say it all.
Edit : I forgot to add, outside of Sanctions the EU has no control to simply decide to ban a company when it feels like it.
You start off sounding like you're arguing against the idea that the EU exerts more control over media than the US, but then most of what you said seems to support the fact that they do so.
Protecting people is always the justification. “We aren’t restricting your freedom, we are protecting you.” That governments seek to “protect” people from words on a page is wild to me.
> regulations are for the companies. But they’re not banned.
So if they don’t follow the regulations they simply keep paying fines indefinitely? Until they run out of money? Until the company goes out of business? We aren’t banning those companies, instead we’ll attempt to bankrupt them if they stay in our markets; unless they do what we say. In other words, extortion?
After the invasion of Ukraine, the EU blocked a number of outlets for spreading pro-Russian disinformation (RT, Sputnik for example) so this would be nothing new.
I feel like takes like these are coming from a place of extreme naivete, or worse, nihilism. Either people don't understand why it's problematic that our most influential social media platform among basically everyone age 0-30 is fully controlled by the CCP, or people really think the CCP wouldn't use its ability to control any Chinese company to aggressively mold US public opinion in concert with their inevitable invasion of the democratic country Taiwan,
or... the nihilistic option:
People know China would engage in information warfare using TikTok in a situation like that, but they foolishly think the CCP is on even moral ground with free democracies so none of this matters, and we've gotta keep the funny musical memes flowing.
For all one's misgivings about the US -- and there are many valid ones! -- before deciding these governments are equal, talk to a Chinese political dissident, if you can find one, since they sometimes disappear.
The US is not a master piece of freedom. Want to market or own foreign shares? Want to travel to Cuba? Have you gone through the crazy US border control process as a foreigner?
Yes, China is absolutely worse. But the US is not a good example.
I never claimed the US was perfect, just better. I think using it as an example is fine. No country is perfect by any metric; everything is a matter of comparison over who is better or worse on a particular thing.
> Want to market or own foreign shares?
ADRs work for that, no?
> Want to travel to Cuba? Have you gone through the crazy US border control process as a foreigner?
I agree those things are bad, but they have nothing to do with market access, which is the topic at hand.
I have a London stock exchange trading account with Schwab. I think I opened it online. The only catch is that I can only deposit or withdraw funds via my US Schwab account.
> The Chinese government carefully controls foreign access to its market already (unlike the US)
Is there any reason you’re skipping the past 40+ years of turmoil in the Middle East purely from the US trying to control oil fields? Because Iran would like a word with, and there’s a hell lot of other countries behind them waiting their turn
Perhaps I misunderstand your point, but the US obviously doesn't have any issue meddling in other country's economies or political systems. The US also obviously allows foreigners to business in the US without many restrictions. Is this the "free market" I keep hearing about? I don't know.
The OP was contrasting this with China, that does not allow foreigners access to their markets. As a regular American, quite honestly, I would like a bit of protectionism from the US, as I recently bought a house and had to compete with cash offers from Chinese banks. It's insane to me that we allow foreigners to buy property here, while our own citizens are being increasingly priced out of our own country.
Isn’t that how laissez faire capitalism works - the person with the higher bid gets the sale, not based on central planned rules of which country the current administration is beefing with that day?
Well if we aren't going to get the actual fruits of capitalism I'm for damn sure going to fight it tooth and nail at home. Shit sucks and I can't think of anyone I trust less than an American capitalist.
I'm pretty sure Meta apps, at least Facebook, are banned in China still. Apple complies with the Chinese government and removes banned apps otherwise it can not operate there. I think even Tiktok itself is banned in China, there is a special version just for the Chinese market so their consumers can not see global content.
Im pretty sure there is no ban per se. They just say: "either put your servers in our jurisdiction or gtfo of here", to which Meta and co. voluntarily decide to not enter the market. CCP still advertises as open to foreign companies though
There is no such ban. Microsoft operates tons of services in China. Internet companies just need to host all Chinese in China using an approved provider. This is the exact same requirement extended to Tiktok, for ages US tiktok data is stored in Oracle cloud with full audit access by appointed American firms.
Parent talks about Meta, you mention Microsoft. They are not in the same business. Meta is in the social networking domain, which the communist party in China has treated for years as a matter of national security. The "color revolutions" and the "Arab Spring" gave them good reason to believe that online social networks were a driver of societal change too powerful not to control. And they control it very very tightly.
> Parent talks about Meta, you mention Microsoft. Meta is in the social networking domain
Microsoft operated its own popular social network in China, called MSN Messenger. Tens of millions Chinese users were on that platform for like a decade until the release of mobile based WeChat.
> which the communist party in China has treated for years as a matter of national security
It is a matter of national security, we all saw what happened on twitter shortly before the 6th Jan 2021 attack.
That is the exact reason why everyone agreed that TikTok must host all US data and its deployed recommendation algorithm code in the US with 3rd party audit access by an appointed US entity.
The only question here is why should Meta and Google be exempted from the exact same rules if they want to operate their services in China.
MSN Messenger in China was run by MSN China, a separate company run by Chinese residents (as required by Chinese law). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_China
They were defeated by the QQ app and shut down in 2014.
> MSN Messenger in China was run by MSN China, a separate company run by Chinese residents (as required by Chinese law)
Microsoft retained a 50% ownership of MSN China, just check the link you cited. Microsoft also retained the full ownership of the MSN messenger software while MSN China was just in charge of its day to day operation in China.
Also interesting to see that millions of Tesla EVs are being sold in China, hundreds of millions other American cars were sold in the past, but when Chinese EVs try to crack the US market it sudden becomes a national security issue.
> Also interesting to see that millions of Tesla EVs are being sold in China, hundreds of millions other American cars were sold in the past, but when Chinese EVs try to crack the US market it sudden becomes a national security issue.
Why are you making it sound like China doesn't restrict Tesla for "national security"?
Tesla was asked to complete a comprehensive review to ensure its data compliance. Tesla did it and has been cleared for such data security issue, that is how Tesla sold 670k units in China in 2024.
Chinese government demands a lot from US companies. Google left for a reason.
Apple is quite a special case since iPhone ecosystem creates many jobs in China. If Apple managed to move jobs to India (or wherever cheap labor is), Chinese government will stop being nice to them.
And even then, right now in China, iCloud service is run by Guizhou cloud, not Apple.
The timing and phrasing make it clear that this was planned and negotiated in advance, and the shutdown was just for show in order to be able to post a memo about how "President Trump" saved it. If actual negotiation had to occur, it would not have happened in the twelve hours between midnight and noon on Sunday morning.
The point of the stunt was to persuade large numbers of younger folks that the Ds are the bad guys and Trump in particular is the hero. And it'll work as designed.
My partner uses TikTok and was greeted with a message today saying that DJT saved the app. That isn't possible because he isn't president yet. It's all very embarrassing.
Also the CEO of TikTok is going to sit directly behind Trump at the inauguration. It's not even subtle and half the point is that it isn't subtle - bend the knee to Trump and you'll be taken care of, is the message. We operate just like Russia at this point.
Also, expect to see that Facebook is partnering with TikTok on Monday morning. The head of the bill banning TikTok just invested 100 million in Meta... so I imagine there will be a followup announcement how Trump brokered some deal to Americanize TikTok or something.
We’ve also started seeing TT ads on Reels, and a brand new blue-checked Facebook account appeared on TT yesterday and rapidly gained 100Ks of followers.
> Also, expect to see that Facebook is partnering with TikTok on Monday morning. The head of the bill banning TikTok just invested 100 million in Meta... so I imagine there will be a followup announcement how Trump brokered some deal to Americanize TikTok or something.
Wait, if this is truly what this outcome was about, this seems.. huge? Can you share more information about that?
> Also, expect to see that Facebook is partnering with TikTok on Monday morning. The head of the bill banning TikTok just invested 100 million in Meta... so I imagine there will be a followup announcement how Trump brokered some deal to Americanize TikTok or something.
Well, that makes this interesting. The bill also allowed a 90-day extension if they found a buyer and were in the process of finalizing it.
This may put this cringe ByteDance stunt and Meta/Zuck's pandering to Trump into more perspective. The Hero coming to save the day with a magical 90-day extension. As long as everyone plays their scripted part. On the other hand, it's probably just a funny timed coincidence that will pass in 3 months
[added] The president would have to approve any sale of apps caught in this law
There isn’t enough time for the current President to enforce this. A convincing pledge from the incoming guy that he’ll allow them to continue operating is all it would take. How you get a convincing pledge out of this guy, I have no idea, but apparently they believe it.
He's also telling them to buy a shitcoin. It's all very well believing he magically saved TikTok, but I think there's a lot that will be real hard to swallow. The cycles between FA and FO are getting really, really quick…
TikTok operated in a way that did not need to happen. Biden's administration was explicit in that the enforcement of the ban were to be performed by the Trump administration. Trump signaled that he would sign an EO allowing a 90 day extension to the ban terms on Monday. TikTok are now operating based on this information.
Who is currently in charge of the oval office is an irrelevant quality.
Note that the ban was not really on TikTok, but the ownership. TikTok could be owned by many other parties in the world. It just can't be ByteDance or parent/subsidiary which has ties to China.
> Trump signaled that he would sign an EO allowing a 90 day extension to the ban terms on Monday
How does that work? If congress passed a law banning TikTok how can the president just override it for 3 months? What's to stop him from overriding it for the next 4 years?
I read the bill and didn't see it stated anywhere. I'd genuinely appreciate a link or even a copy/paste with the relevant section that I could look up on google.
But that is essentially what is happening. There is long-standing convention for the president elect to not step on the sitting president's toes prior to inauguration, but Trump has been bucking that convention this time around. This is just an impossible to ignore example.
Doesn't the law explicitly require TikTok to have a convincing deal in place, and to be able to show proof of that to Congress, before such an extension can be granted?
At 17:05 in this video (and I believe discussed once elsewhere but I can't find it/don't want to rewatch it): https://youtu.be/pZkoV5UnPvw
Yeah... there's no such provision. The only mentions of the president in that bill are:
1. In the definition of a "covered company". The bill itself already saus that TikTok is covered; this is only a provision to add other companies to the list.
2. In determining what qualifies as "divestiture" to have the ban lifted. That's described as happening when -
> the President determines, through an interagency process...
"TikTok wrote me a big check and said nice things about me" isn't an interagency process.
Moreover, just in case we've forgotten, *Donald Trump is not currently the president.* He has literally zero power until tomorrow afternoon. He can't grant pardons, he can't lift law enforcement decisions, and he can't write executive orders. The promise of an executive order, even if such an order would be lawful tomorrow (which I can't understand how it would be), is not a legal document that can make something legal today.
Since you ignored the passage I linked, let me qute it for you and the surrounding context if it helps you learn to read:
(a) Right of action.—A petition for review challenging this Act or any action, finding, or determination under this Act may be filed only in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
(b) Exclusive jurisdiction.—The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit shall have exclusive jurisdiction over any challenge to this Act or any action, finding, or determination under this Act.
(c) Statute of limitations.—A challenge may only be brought—
(1) in the case of a challenge to this Act, not later than 165 days after the date of the enactment of this Act; and
(2) in the case of a challenge to any action, finding, or determination under this Act, not later than 90 days after the date of such action, finding, or determination.
^ That is where the 90 day stipulation came from.
===
> Moreover, just in case we've forgotten, *Donald Trump is not currently the president.
Right okay, what does one do with that information? It's common practice for Presidents to collaborate with their successors during the handoff period. Both the Biden and the incoming Trump administrations collaborated on the Gaza ceasefire, as way to help gradually transition power.
Bro is upset about Trump using a clause in a law, but has no problem with Biden and Kahmahlah declaring that something is part of the constitution based on absolutely nothing. Bro … after what Biden and Kahmahlah did, there is no valid criticism that any Democrat can have of Trump. Anything short of abolishing the constitution, as Biden and Kahmahlah tried, is less bad than what Biden and Kahmahlah did.
> Biden says the Equal Rights Amendment is law. What happens next is unclear
> In response to an NPR question about whether the archivist would take any new actions, the National Archives communications staff pointed to a December statement saying that the ERA "cannot be certified as part of the Constitution due to established legal, judicial, and procedural decisions."
If a president can decree amendments, the Constitution means nothing. If you can break the constitution to change it, as Biden attempted, then how do you have a constitution?
I’m not sure what to say other than that you have a bizarre interpretation of the article. I mean in no way, shape or form is Biden trying to abolish the US Constitution.
paste your article into chatgpt and tell it your thoughts. I've very curious if you can convince it you have a valid point. More so, you may come out more educated and everyone wins
> “In 2020 and again in 2022, the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice affirmed that the ratification deadline established by Congress for the ERA is valid and enforceable. The OLC concluded that extending or removing the deadline requires new action by Congress or the courts. Court decisions at both the District and Circuit levels have affirmed that the ratification deadlines established by Congress for the ERA are valid. Therefore, the Archivist of the United States cannot legally publish the Equal Rights Amendment. As the leaders of the National Archives, we will abide by these legal precedents and support the constitutional framework in which we operate.
Pointing out that Biden, in contradiction the the US constitution, tried to alter the US constitutions. I don't make the facts, they are what they are.
If the ERA was dully ratified, then it would not need Biden to decree it law. If Biden can decree an amendment to the constitution as law, then the constitution has no meaning.
> “In 2020 and again in 2022, the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice affirmed that the ratification deadline established by Congress for the ERA is valid and enforceable. The OLC concluded that extending or removing the deadline requires new action by Congress or the courts. Court decisions at both the District and Circuit levels have affirmed that the ratification deadlines established by Congress for the ERA are valid. Therefore, the Archivist of the United States cannot legally publish the Equal Rights Amendment. As the leaders of the National Archives, we will abide by these legal precedents and support the constitutional framework in which we operate.
He's bragged several times that he saved TikTok. Trump also said the Israeli peace deal wouldn't have happened with him, which is an admission of breaking the law that states you cannot act as president without being president.
But Trump already knows he is above the law, so none of this matters.
I'd pay good money for a newspaper that would go out of its way to avoid mentioning Trump, Musk, and all these other highly exasperating people, unless it's completely unavoidable (e.g. "Trump declares war on California").
If you mean because they used the term "President Trump", that honorific is for life. See, for instance, the recent passing of President Carter for a million examples. If you mean because he couldn't have executed legal actions yet - he could have offered private and legally binding statements to all the major players - Oracle, Apple, and Google.
I don't know why you think he couldn't. A legally binding statement of intent to offer TikTok the 90-day window and work out a "deal" once in office would be more than sufficient justification for the heads of the various companies involved to ease enforcement until things become more resolved.
Calling it a political favor is quite silly. He stated he was likely overturn it for months now, but the public indirect phrasing was probably not sufficient for the involved actors to feel was sufficient to act on, a private statement of definitive intent would be.
Oh maybe the very clear messaging in the app and by the inbound administration, who is heavily supported by tech elites.
The same people who have been very open about their feelings towards opposition and who and what they support. No one will come out and claim this was the case, but its not like they are trying to hide it either.
Isn't it enough to see, smell, you have to touch and eat it repeatedly so you can conclude: yes, this is shit. You are now expert in shit eating and the professional opinion is that this is really shit, no mistake is made here!?
If that’s the case this was totally bungled, the app was down for less than 12 hours, overnight during a weekend. If they wanted maximum effect Trump wouldn’t have tweeted until 5pm eastern to give people a chance to come to terms with the shutdown actually happening.
Already do and users are noticing. Ads have been introduce in a really obnixious facebook/instagram style and contebt moderation is more facebook/instagrem esq as well. It would surprise no one on the platform if meta has already aquired it, and it just needs to be announced.
The law requires Oracle who hosts their data companies that provide cdn services to stop working with them. The law did require them to suspend service, but not quite as soon as they did and nothing had changed legally
The law required them to choose from among several options, one of which was suspending the service. The law did not permit maintaining the status quo as an option.
No, it does not at all require ByteDance to suspend service.
It requires Apple and Google to stop distributing the app on their app stores, and it requires any US-based hosting providers that host TikTok services to stop providing those services.
ByteDance could shut down any US-hosted services and serve from outside the US, and be entirely compliant with the law. The TikTok mobile app might become out of date and stop working (for people who already had it installed on their phones), but www.tiktok.com would continue to work just fine.
>and it requires any US-based hosting providers that host TikTok services to stop providing those services.
And they were forced to use those hosting providers (oracle) by the US.
It's not like investing loads to bring all the data over to singapore or so would serve them well either. They'd still lose the US business relatively quickly and with lower chances of turning things around like they might've. Why bother?
They shut down before the law required them to (by a few hours), and now they’re back despite no changes in law or action by the president. Biden had already issued an executive order, nothing changed
That would be my question also. You can't explain the shutdown as following the law if the law didn't change between the time of the shutdown and coming back on. It seems to me like the more accurate assessment here is an anticipation of policy changes, which however fruitful do not reflect any change in law, but perhaps some change in the degree of reassurance that the law won't be enforced.
If it's not that, it may well be as the original commenter in this thread suggested a stunt to make a point.
They reopened with formal understanding that there will be an executive order tomorrow to suspend the enforcement of the ban. That is a big deal and it's something that they can point to to defend themselves in court should that happen. When President Biden signed the bill, it gave him the ability to extend the deadline by an amount which he declined to do (beyond saying "I'll let Trump admin deal with it"); and soon-to-be President Trump is saying he will do it tomorrow.
I'm pretty certain an executive order cannot overrule a law. So they're just hoping to either get an actual reversal of the law while Trump is in term or just hoping nobody after him will care.
It's like betting on jury nullification but without the benefit of double jeopardy protection. It's unclear if any of the US companies the law is aimed at will risk it.
Which would be an EO counter the constitution and obviously not durable itself. In 4 years the next DOJ can just enforce the law on the books with 4 years of evidence of companies openly breaking it. It'd be a slam dunk case
Are you privy to the private discussions between Trump and the heads of TikTok, Apple, Google, and Oracle? Or are you simply assuming there have been no such private discussions?
Not actions, but legally binding statements of intent. If Trump offered a binding statement to the heads of all major players that he intends to offer TikTok the 90-day window and work out a "deal" once in office would be more than sufficient justification for these companies to ease enforcement until things become more resolved.
There is no mechanism by which Trump can offer a statement of intent that legally binds him to following that specific course of action after he becomes president.
That's not how the law works, though. Let's say Trump goes back on his word and doesn't sign this executive order, and then ByteDance (etc.) get into legal trouble. If they can convince a judge/jury that they had a strong reason to believe that they'd be acting within the law as they believe it would have been executed by the incoming Trump administration, that could be a persuasive defense.
That doesn't mean TikTok would be able to continue operating, but it could mean the parties involved wouldn't have to suffer penalties for their operation up to that point (past the ban date). But maybe it wouldn't work, and a judge/jury would throw the book at them. We just don't know until and unless it goes to court.
I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to argue? Obviously you understand that that if you create a contract stating that you agree to do [x] in the future, then you are indeed legally bound to that agreement.
If you're arguing that qualified immunity would enable Trump to break the contract if he so chose without consequence, then that is probably true, but I see no reason that would imperil the companies having a rock solid defense against enforcement penalties in the interim period.
In what universe does this apply to the president? If the president promises a company to do X, it’s not a contract. I’m not even sure the president is allowed to make a contract with a private entity to give them a political favor.
There is no law or precedent to prohibit someone from engaging in contracts because of holding public office. In fact there is even an ongoing movement to try to get more politicians to do exactly this so that campaign promises would be more likely to be executed. Again qualified immunity would probably make these contracts impossible to enforce against a politician, but in this case the agreement would work as a defense if for some reason Oracle et al faced legal threats or fines for continuing to work with TikTok.
Trump => Agrees to avoid interim enforcement against companies facilitating the operation of TikTok + legally clarify matters when he gets into office.
Companies => Agree to temporarily facilitate the operation of TikTok until matters are further clarified.
I don't see anything particularly controversial here.
Such a contract - where someone promises to use their (future) presidential powers in exchange for some consideration from the other party - would be illegal and unenforceable, because someone paying the president to exercise executive powers to their benefit is literally just bribery.
This feels like a stretch, I don’t think it’s a pardon they are after. Pardons don’t really work like that.
TikTok I think was going for more of a shock factor. Maybe even without talking to Trump they have credited him as restoring it, might seem weird for him to “go back on it”.
Trump issued a statement saying that he would issue an executive order after he became president that retroactively would dismiss any fines which satisfied both TikTok and the app hosting providers (Apple, Google).
The President can offer pardons for criminal matters. However, he is required to uphold laws passed by Congress, particularly bipartisan ones affirmed by the Supreme Court.
For example, why would the President have a veto power if he can simply post-facto ignore laws they pass?
He's only accountable to Congress (SCOTUS also affirmed that) and good fucking luck ever getting the required votes to remove him from office. He can do whatever he wants with impunity.
SCOTUS pointed out that they weren't crimes committed by Trump. We then saw the political prosecutions of Trump backfire spectacularly in a way that strongly suggests that the balance of the US population agreed with the SCOTUS call that the prosecutors didn't have a case that Trump had to answer for.
It obviously irrelevant whether the law was bipartisan or not, and the Supreme Court never "affirmed" the law--it denied a preliminary injunction.
As to upholding laws passed by Congress--just two days ago, Biden did his last round of student debt forgiveness, bringing the total up to $188 billion.
I’m not trying to “both sides” this. I’m just saying that the standard you’ve articulated for how promptly the president needs to act on a law like this isn't the standard we apply in practice. The government tries to reach deals like this in lieu of enforcement actions all the time.
You're not wrong but the only real recourse for an executive that fails to uphold the laws created by Congress is an impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate.
Theoretically that's true but in practice there is ample precedent for Presidents refusing to enforce specific laws. In one instance (DACA) the Supreme Court ordered a President to continue a previous President's official policy of not enforcing certain laws against certain people!
Don’t confuse the oath of office for a binding agreement. The president is supposed to uphold the law, but they are only held accountable by impeachment.
“Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024), is a landmark decision[1][2] of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court determined that presidential immunity from criminal prosecution presumptively extends to all of a president's "official acts" – with absolute immunity for official acts within an exclusive presidential authority that Congress cannot regulate[1][2] such as the pardon, command of the military, execution of laws, or control of the executive branch.”
The entire system is built on checks and balances. For instance even a simple district attorney can choose to effectively nullify laws within his jurisdiction by not prosecuting violations - something that has regularly happened in contemporary times. Even the final check - the lone juror - can also nullify laws by similarly choosing to acquit alleged violations regardless of the evidence.
You could obviously create a far more functional system but it would probably be far less stable. The reason you have all these checks and balances, from top to bottom, is that the Founding Fathers were obsessed about the risks imposed by both a tyranny of the majority and a tyranny of the minority. And non-enforcement of something effectively comes down just a continuation of the status quo, making it difficult for any group to [openly at least] impose their will on others.
That's actually one of the reasons the president has a veto. If the president doesn't want the law to pass, then there isn't much point in passing it unless Congress makes a show of force with the 2/3rds majority, which is also the majority needed to remove him from office.
Similarly, one of the reasons the president has a pardon power is because he doesn't have to enforce those federal offenses. E.g. imagine that a president without pardon power instead offers "plea deals"/settlements for a $1 fine or concocts vacuously lenient house arrest enforcement.
The original constitution basically accepts that there is very little you can make a president do, and it instead formalizes what would otherwise be a gray area (it does have plenty about what he can't do). Some of this has changed over time especially as the judicial branch has granted itself more power.
There’s a bit of a “live by the sword, die by the sword” situation going on here.
Presidents can’t just ignore a law categorically (although they regularly do, e.g. DACA, DOMA, etc.) On the other hand, presidents can certainly decide not to prosecute a particular entity under a particular law. That’s the heart of the executive power versus the legislative power.
Here, Congress wrote an extremely specific law that applies basically to one company. Which isn’t impermissible. But it’s also not clear to me that Congress can insist on immediate enforcement of that law without crossing effectively usurping the executive power and directing the President to prosecute a specific company at a specific time.
Technically, the President + Executive can do whatever they want, including prosecute parts the Executive!), until the President is either impeached or replaced by election or incapacitation.
Technically yes. But what I mean is that, even in terms of the spirit of the law, the situation is a bit murky, because Congress effectively wrote a law that requires the executive to prosecute a specific company on a specific deadline.
Most famously Richard Nixon received a pardon by Ford immediately after his resignation but before any prosecution. Also, it’s any federal law, the exception is impeachment and nothing else.
So, pardons can very much apply before conviction or even prosecution. They may not pardon someone for something that hasn’t happened, but as long as there in office when the crime is committed that’s more a technical issue.
After President Gerald Ford left the White House in 1977, close friends said that the President privately justified his pardon of Richard Nixon by carrying in his wallet a portion of the text of the Burdick decision, which stated that a pardon carries an imputation of guilt and that acceptance carries a confession of guilt.[6] Ford made reference to the Burdick decision in his post-pardon written statement furnished to the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives on October 17, 1974.[7] However, the reference related only to the portion of Burdick that supported the proposition that the Constitution does not limit the pardon power to cases of convicted offenders or even indicted offenders.[7][8]
> pardons can very much apply before conviction or even prosecution
Is this really the case? Has this specific situation ever been ruled on by the Supreme Court? Burdick v. U.S. doesn't address "pre-pardons" or blanket pardons. Nixon was never prosecuted or tried.
The court ruled they could reject a pardon given before prosecution thus avoiding the need to testify about someone else. It would be a moot point if the pardon was invalid.
Presidents can pardon classes of people. Carter pardoned all people guilty of evading the draft during the Vietnam War. So Trump could pardon everyone involved in certain companies or involved in a specific act.
The law didn't require them to shut the service off for those who already had the app installed. It just prevented new updates or downloads. Shutting off the app immediately was just theater and reinstating the app with no changes to the law is just the second act.
The law says that US cloud providers are fined if they continued to provide services to Bytedance.
As far as we know, Tiktok is operated on US servers by Oracle. While it might have been possible to find another cloud provider and move all US data there, I can see them not wanting to do that given that there was no point if the app isn't distributed in the US anymore.
There's currently no evidence pointing towards Oracle shutting down cloud service to them though. TikTok appears to have just preemptively shut down the app before they were obligated to, complete with dramatic messages telling users what to blame and who to thank.
Even without following the letter of the law it's entirely rational behaviour for a popular market leader to foment outrage by fully blacking out services. 150 million users (in the US alone) is a very powerful political influence. Politicians frequently fold for a few thousand vocal people complaining on the internet.
Of course it's rational behavior. Nico was the one claiming that they were just "following the law", that's what this subthread was about. If you agree that TikTok was making a political point by shutting down, then you agree with the person you're replying to.
Such compromises happen between companies as well when a particular app is popular. Facebook and Uber accessing private java apis which meant Google couldn't change the internals as these apps are popular.
I’m not sure this is correct. I see where you’re coming from, but there was a clear date that the law was going to be enacted by, and tiktok simply followed that date. Pretty much everybody expected tiktok to be required to shut down. The law is clear that there are penalties for tiktok continuing to operate past that date, so it’s not really surprising.
They were telling users who to blame and who to thank because in this specific case, the blame and the thank are pretty clear. The Biden administration approved the ban, and the Trump administration reversed it. Blaming one and thanking the other is also hardly surprising.
If your cloud provider tells you they are shutting you down on date X, you want to fight as hard as you can until X and then shutdown gracefully to have a chance to explain to your users why your system is going down. If you wait until you get shutdown, you have no way of pushing a graceful shutdown anymore.
Oracle has no interest in running afoul of the US government at all. Their internal culture in many ways views them like that of a quasi-government institute. So in thus case they probably are feeling responsible to actually be the ones enforcing the law.
I imagine shutting down ByteDance is not like flipping a switch. They have a mountain of infrastructure and “shutting down” could mean nuking the data or otherwise getting it out of their cloud entirely. If it has to be done by a certain date you’d need to start nuking things well in advance to be absolutely certain you’re in compliance by the deadline. I’m surprised the shutdown happened as late as it did if this wasn’t a completely staged crisis.
That’s a trivial problem to solve though. Just push an update to the app that shows the „we were banned“ message if a specific API endpoint isn’t reachable anymore (and general internet connectivity is still there of course). Then you can operate as normal until your servers are forcefully shut down.
Well, "the law" is a shorthand for "how the police behave" and there is a certain amount of realpolitik here. The basic argument here would be that the US Congress made a scary growling sound and TikTok folded immediately because the Congress is terrifying. But then Trump made more of a friendly sound and so they think they can operate a bit longer with some level of safety.
There is no question that TikTok is a politically sensitive app and the US/China are very nearly in the funnel to a major war so a lot of the usual niceties are questionable. Previously the US has attempted something that looked a lot like a black-bag kidnapping of a Chinese industrialist [0]. I'd imagine that the TikTok people are acutely sensitive towards how the law is actually going to be interpreted and enforced in practice.
This is basically the same tactic to the SOPA/PIPA protests [1]. I don't know why people are bending over backwards to pretend it was something other than a political stunt. Also, Trump's rhetoric has remained unchanged since well before this - a 90 day extension. They wanted to flex their muscle to show the US political establishment how many US users there were and how much sway they had to give them more leverage in their negotiations. That's about it.
Jan 17: Biden administration says it will leave TikTok ban enforcement for Trump [1]
Early Jan 18: Trump says he will 'most likely' give TikTok a 90-day extension to avoid a ban [2]
Late Jan 18: TikTok makes app unavailable for U.S. users ahead of ban [3]
Midday Jan 19: TikTok begins restoring service for U.S. users after Trump comments [4]
They already knew what was going to happen. They also changed the message shortly after disabling it from "We're working to restore service in the U.S. as soon as possible, and we appreciate your support. Please stay tuned." to "We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Stay tuned!" [5]
I believe Tiktok shut down the app in India in the same way without being "obligated to" either before the order came into effect, albeit without the dramatic messaging.
(The latter part is probably because Tiktok's banning was not particulaly divisive within the population as it is in the US.)
The dramatic messaging was entirely the point. India probably did not have an easily exploitable target for such a message, so there was no point in trying that there.
I don't know exact figures, but when Tiktok was banned, Instagram was really popular - due to being pushed by Facebook, which was really really popular in India by then. None of my friends were on Tiktok, but all where there on Instagram. The reels thing was not popular but Facebook linked the account automatically and you just keep adding Facebook friends there as well.
Tiktok had a better algorithm (to get hooked) but Instagram eventually caught up (with algo)..
Oracle did shut them down last night, if Google and Apple have to drop their apps on the apps store, Oracle and other providers have to drop them too. Btw, the app won't function even if parts of the infra is down. Btw, business is risk averse, they don't want to give any excuses for government to fine them. Bytedance should definitely shutdown everything and blocked all US users unless they have explicit, written and legally bidding instructions from the Justice Department. Only an executive order is enough. They asked Biden to give that, but Biden just smirked
That's not true, distributors of the app are fined. Meaning, very specifically, app stores.
From (2)(a)(1):
> (A) Providing services to distribute, maintain, or update such foreign adversary controlled application (including any source code of such application) by means of a marketplace (including an online mobile application store) through which users within the land or maritime borders of the United States may access, maintain, or update such application.
>
> (B) Providing internet hosting services to enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of such foreign adversary controlled application for users within the land or maritime borders of the United States.
Possession of and providing non-distribution ( / maintenance / update) services to a "Foreign Adversary Controlled Application" are not in any way a part of the "Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act". Operative services are specifically and intentionally excluded from the list, to ease the burden of enforcement.
I don’t use TikTok but the “down” page mentioned you can still login to download data. What’s the cost and scope of providing that feature without US cloud providers?
Did they shut down at the last moment necessary or did they shut down during what is likely a peak browsing time in the U.S.? Did they need to include messaging about political figures to notify the user of the reason of the ban?
I understand that there was this law. It's a political statement because of the political message being sent out to the user base. The act of shutting down on its own is not a political statement.
A) Behavior and statements are different things.
B) Biden also said he wouldn't enforce the ban (and also, it was the last day of his administration, so enforcement by Biden wasn't even possible)
This was a political gift to Trump, as the messaging in TikTok's app makes perfectly clear.
It seems like striking fear into the hearts of users to make them realize a ban is really on the table is in their best interest. They want to not be banned, and giving everyone a 48 hour show of users on the platform counting down to the end, then being really upset when they think it's gone is a great demonstration that people want their Tiktok.
* Trump gets a free layup to look like the hero for unbanning it
* Trump will think hard and heavy in the future about banning it again, knowing there's a lot of passionate young people that will reconsider voting for him next election if he does
Plus has there ever been a US president that came back after a term away? Usually when a "new" president comes in you figure they'll be running again next time.
Grover Cleveland also had two non-consecutive terms, and the twenty second amendment is pretty clear in it's language that you can only be elected to the office of President twice.
People need to understand that politicians (dare I say everywhere?..) are just business man with dressing. They simply put up a show for people to win the votes and once they get elected, do whatever they can to make an extra buck. Trump, a convicted felon is certainly no different..
Was it? Apart from Elon’s dependence on China market for Tesla sales, I didn’t think so. Trump has been talking a lot about going hard against adversaries.
The TikTok ban is something he supported. And it’s more popular on the right than left.
> Has there been any other behavior like this in the past where a company "shut themselves down" to make a big political statement and then almost immediately undid the shut down?
That wasn’t a political statement. Per your link, it was a belief that that could not continue the credit card payments while staying in compliance with the law.
Agree, and the velocity is amazing, it's really hard to keep up with the shenanigans. In my opinion, it will have a negative impact on the economy, education, birth rates etc.
Government should stay out of the way, and I don't want to hear about it every ten seconds, on the other hand, I don't want to have to read the news every five minutes to audit what they're doing.
> Has there been any other behavior like this in the past where a company "shut themselves down" to make a big political statement and then almost immediately undid the shut down?
A number of internet services (e.g. Wikipedia) shut down temporarily on Jan 18, 2012 as a political statement against SOPA.
Uber has used this tactic many times in their early days. It mostly worked because citizens got used to cheap rides and got mad at their government for taking it away.
According to the people I work with, all they care about is kids in cages. They value “tough talk” on immigration above anything else. Being influenced by Russia or China don’t even register.
> it's crazy to see so much of a flip-flop so quickly
I wish people would understand that Trump has no ideology. Over a span of decades, Trump has been critical of liberals and conservatives, often at the same time. He's praised conservatives and liberals, often at the same time. His political positions are aligned with whatever benefits him the most.
He doesn't care about making life better for the middle class. He doesn't care if immigration restrictions are relaxed or tightened. He doesn't care about whether or not transgender people have access to health care or can or can't serve in the military. He only cares what positions on those issues will benefit him and his friends at any given time. And if tomorrow holding the opposite position will benefit him more, he'll switch, just like that, and somehow convince his base that's what they believe too.
Trump is the one who was championing the idea of a TikTok divestiture or ban, back when he was president the first time. He's only changed his mind on that because opposing the ban is better for him now.
> ByteDance surprised almost everyone in choosing the stick.
shortly after Trump tried to force bytedance to sell its shares during his first term, the Chinese government passed laws to include the recommendation systems used in social media into the export control list. bytedance thus won't be able to sell tiktok without approval from the chinese government.
Does anyone have a citation for this? Probably higher quality if it's in Chinese even if I have to machine translate it. Because that would be a clear pointer of suspicion.
> The goal was always to get TikTok divested of Chinese ownership, not to ban it.
Seems like the goal pivoted recently - the goal is to keep TikTok Chinese and have them supporting the corrupt regime taking over the US, similar to other foreign adversaries have in the past
The Tik Tok in-app notes for "shutting down" and "we're back" both referenced Trump by name. I doubt they would do that without his explicit consent.
Trump beamed his name and heroics directly into the eyeballs of 50m people before he even took office. That wouldn't have happened without the brief blip going dark.
Odds are good he said he'd pardon them (which is a whole different story) but ensured they'd go dark for a few hours, either by withholding his guarantee or by directly coordinating it with them.
This is Trump. It's always about him. If we haven't learned that we haven't learned anything.
In 2012 a coordinated action by 100,000 sites (including major platforms like Reddit, Wikipedia and Google) all went dark for 24 hours to protest SOPA, which was successful in killing the bill. Some only changed the color scheme and added a message but others shut down.
Sorry what?! I was in Australia and even from here it was obvious it was happening. Maybe go back refresh your mind on old HN posts. Sorry not meaning to be rude but the digital protests of the day were very significant. Lots of media coverage and site blackouts and banners and average punters waking up to the interruption. Stacks was going on. You can even watch Internets Own Boy doco where it’s covered.
As for your claim they had no effect, that's not what the sources from the time say—on the day of the protests 13 senators announced their opposition, including 5 former co-sponsors:
When you lose five co-sponsors in one day and that day happens to coincide with the internet shutting down, I don't find it very credible to try to claim that there was internal dissent all along.
Heh; I thought you were talking about trump the first few times I read this.
He appointed a bunch of corrupt Supreme Court judges, and they upheld an obviously unconstitutional law (bill of attainment). Now, on his first day in office, he gets to be a hero by unilaterally deciding not to enforce the law.
So, moving forward, (1) we should expect increasingly unjust and draconian laws, and (2) as long as you do what Trump asks, you can break whatever federal laws you want.
(Zukerberg, Bezos and Trump have already gotten in line for this.)
100% it's what happened. And the craziest part is that it worked because Biden went along with it. It's easy enough to argue Trump played hardball to negotiate for any divestiture that may occur; because that was his goal all along. The narrative/pundits can spin this easily in his favour.
Either because they gave in to the ploy, or because they were unable to close a TikTok deal, the Democrats look incompetent here. And Trump gains favour in the younger demo (that he's already pretty strong in) AND with SMB because he gave TikTok more time.
oh - and his true audience all along: an American oligarch is about to get at least half of TikTok for a steal.
Anyone doing graft, corruption or just questionable wealth accumulation in the millions or single billions is going to look like small ball for at least the next four years.
Yeah it's just decent strategy on their part (I hate to say). Even if they don't profit directly off of the TikTok deal they look like absolute bosses for being able to "give" Americans what they wanted all along.
Masterful PR move by Trump. Two ways to win, no way to lose: he gets control of the narrative there (if not TikTok itself, via one of his cronies), and he shows how totalitarian the "democrats" are.
Yes, they too would like to show how totalitarian the "democrats" are. Jokes aside, the buck stops with the guy who signs the bill into law. Too bad the guy signing the bill didn't even understand what he was signing this time due to his profound dementia.
The TikTok debate has always been about the balance between national security and free speech.
We found a compromise. TikTok will remain, all of its national security risks will remain. Also, the law that tramples free speech is upheld by the court, but will be blantently ignored and unenforced.
Everybody loses. This outcome is worse than anyone could have conceived.
Soldiers were already sharing videos of aircraft carriers on Rednote which hasn't gone through the whole shenanigans of paying Larry Ellison to host it on Oracle Cloud and so on. The national security risk is the US military apparently not being able to convince its own soldiers to be thoughtful about cybersecurity.
How does it matter where those videos were shared? Material is either classified or unclassified, it doesn't matter if the WarThunder forums (for example) are moderated by US nationals or not.
It's not about where the videos are posted, it's about having apps that collect exact GPS position of smartphones that soldiers carry while the position of the ships they are on is classified. The fact that there's videos is just the "proof" that they have installed such apps that exfiltrate things like their location, for example.
If you want to secure sailors' phones you are going to have to do a lot more, and at the same time much less, than ban or transfer the ownership of one single app that happens to be used by over a hundred million civilians.
GasBuddy (and Life360) just sold that same location data to brokers, which Allstate bought and used to adjust premiums. Practically every app that is given access to location info is selling it, and it's widely available to anyone with the money to buy.
Maybe we should have some sort of General Data Protection Regulation law instead of hand-wringing about social media.
That’s the world we live in today. Under many countries’ privacy laws, it’s not legal to sell PII to a third party that you collected for a specific other purpose (e.g., fulfilling the primary purpose of the app). The problem is that they do it anyways.
If I agree to let FantasyCorp sell my location data, and then they follow through with our agreement and actually sell it, then there's no problem here that I can see.
The Onion Router was invented by the Navy to make ship location tracking hard with visibility of some of the network, so it's classified at times. More importantly, just because you have satellites doesn't mean that it's easy to pick all of that out all the time or to be entirely certain of which ship/which mission, etc. Making it harder is better even if it can't be made impossible outside of subs.
The crew would be relatively constant, but ships also carry attachments that are based on the types of missions they are going to complete. So the actual number of passengers would vary.
It’s not top secret deployments, it’s any deployments. All deployments need to maintain a level of operational security. Also if you expect a bunch of people in the 18-29 age range to go without internet for 9 months to 2 years, you’re kidding yourself. The tradeoff is between operational security and morale and if you’re in military leadership, you really don’t want unhappy troops on your hands.
I mean, I do completely expect deployed military personnel to adhere to rules and limitations that are much more rigorous than those they'd experience in civilian life.
I'd be astonished if I learned that soldiers on duty were totally free to do as they please the expense of operational security simply because that's what people in their broad demographic category are accustomed to.
I'd be equally astonished if I found that military recruitment was based on enlisting cross-sectional samples of demographic categories, without regard for the capacities and attitudes of the specific individuals seeking to join. I know for a fact that people are rejected for enlistment for all sorts of reasons.
And I'm sure that the military can find ways of enabling deployed personnel to use the internet without sacrificing security or oversight -- for example by requiring them to use secured military-issue computers and smartphones, or by having an inspection or vetting process for hardware and software when soldiers want to use their own devices.
I hope you also acknowledge the absurdity of suggesting that the government should apply essentially the same restrictions to the whole of society that the military couldn't apply within its own sphere of control.
> You're constructing a straw man without being curious about the things you yourself are missing.
Could you point out the straw man in question? I feel like everything I posted above is a direct response to arguments I gleaned from your previous comment, and certainly didn't intentionally attribute any argument to you that I didn't think you were actually making.
> I suggest you read parent comment about balance and tradeoffs inherent in forward deployment again.
I've reread it a couple of times, and I'm afraid I'm not seeing any hidden propositions in it that I missed the first time around. Could you be more explicit about what you're getting at?
My comment about finding ways to enable internet access in a more controlled way was specifically targeting your argument about the security vs. morale tradeoff, and my point about the absurdity of trying to make that tradeoff for society as a whole in a scenario where you imply the military can't make it for its own operations still seems to apply here.
>> I'd be astonished if I learned that soldiers on duty were totally free to do as they please the expense of operational security
The post you were replying to didn't suggest anything about total freedom. You're exaggerating their words to make your argument easier.
>> I'd be equally astonished if I found that military recruitment was based on enlisting cross-sectional samples of demographic categories
Given initial enlistment age ranges between 17 and 30/40 [0], you get cohorts from specific generations.
Kids who are 17 now were born ~2008, which is just starting to be kids with smartphones and mobile devices their entire lives.
No cross-sectioning required: just upper and lower age limits.
>> And I'm sure that the military can find ways of enabling deployed personnel to use the internet without sacrificing security or oversight
I'm going to assume you're honestly ignorant of military networks and field device management at scale.
The military runs segregated networks. Secure networks require approved devices; those devices are extremely locked down. There are often also public internet networks for MWR reasons. Unmanaged devices can be used on those networks. Furthermore, in most non-naval deployments, terrestrial cellular data networks are also accessible.
>> for example by requiring them to use secured military-issue computers and smartphones, or by having an inspection or vetting process for hardware and software when soldiers want to use their own devices.
Military IT is already overloaded managing the vast number of secure devices and networks, so having them manage consumer devices in any way is a non-starter.
For scale context, the DoD PKI includes ~4 million active CAC cards. [1]
Unmanaged consumer devices + CAC are also often used for less-privileged interaction with the military (e.g. HR functions).
> My comment about finding ways to enable internet access in a more controlled way was specifically targeting your argument about the security vs. morale tradeoff
And the responses that you're getting are that these are non-trivial problems for real-world reasons.
Furthermore, you seem to have a lack of understanding about how much it sucks to be stuck in a forward base, and how important maintaining morale is to command authority and force effectiveness.
PS: Also, look at user names. I'm not the author of the original comment you replied to.
> And I'm sure that the military can find ways of enabling deployed personnel to use the internet without sacrificing security or oversight -- for example by requiring them to use secured military-issue computers and smartphones, or by having an inspection or vetting process for hardware and software when soldiers want to use their own devices.
Of this we are in 100% agreement. It’s totally doable, but I am observing that today it is not a solved problem in the US military.
> I hope you also acknowledge the absurdity of suggesting that the government should apply essentially the same restrictions to the whole of society that the military couldn't apply within its own sphere of control.
I’m a little confused about the wording of this but I am reading this as saying that the military should be able to apply its own standards that are stricter than what civilians are accustomed to. I agree, and it does. But I’m suggesting that it doesn’t happen in a vacuum and that enforcement is never perfect. A blanket ban on personal devices (I’m positive this has been tried before) would both be unpopular and difficult to enforce. It would be a mistake to discount the cost of poor morale. And it would be a mistake to ignore the outsized effect that poor morale has on middle management — the ones who are responsible for enforcing said rules.
I hope it’s clear that my commentary is entirely descriptive and not prescriptive. Full disclosure: I’m former US military enlisted and also currently working in a space adjacent to improving operational security.
I'm sure there are many other cheap and easy ways to improve morale on deployments, but that many of those options are eschewed and/or only offered with oversight because they would otherwise risk operational security.
I'm not sure what to make of the argument that the military is unable to find any alternative to consumer smartphones without even RMM implemented as a means of providing for troop morale, therefore the government should regulate social media for the entirety of society as a means to ensure the security of military maneuvers. This just sounds nuts to me.
This entire conversation is about the TikTok ban. My question about why deployed troops are allowed to use social media apps on consumer devices was in response to preceding comments insinuating that banning TikTok is justifiable in light of its potential to damage operational security if military personnel are using it in the field, and was targeted at understanding the implied premise that the problem couldn't be solved by much more proximate, narrowly tailored approaches.
Plus these apps track you everywhere so the Chinese have your GPS and you're on the aircraft carrier. No need for fancy satellites they can just have that data and track the military and other government employees 24/7. I guarantee you no American company can track Chinese military or Chinese employees 24/7 wherever they're at this is a one-way deal it's not good for the US.
It's hopeless to expect every member of the military to be thoughtful about cybersecurity. If they'll openly share nuclear secrets & base protocols publicly, anything is fair game.
This is why Blackberry used to sell phones without cameras and microphone switches, and enterprise-centric OS images. Crazy that regular iOS/Android phones leaking data 24/7 to a million 'partners' are freely allowed at military locations. Pictures and video uploaded to social media include EXIF data with geolocation!
When I was deployed in 2011 we didn't carry cell phones because:
1. Jammers will render your antenna unusable or potentially damage your device.
2. The country that controls the infrastructure now has the inside scoop on who you are, what you're doing, and where you are. Even if they country is an ally, it only takes a few individuals to start mass exfiltration.
TikTok was turning into infrastructure for social dialogue except that it had a new capability compared to the cell phones of 2011: it could be manipulated at scale, and quickly with the combination of algorithms and outrage culture.
Everybody loses? The fact that TikTok remains available to millions of users is a significant benefit, especially for those who rely on it for creative expression, community building, and small-business promotion.
It's interesting how most commenters seem to forget about TikTok users. Every interest is taken into account, China, USA, intelligence services, TikTok "competition". Users somehow never enter the picture for most people in any other way than as gullible idiots getting exploited by the aforementioned parties.
He means net loss to the status quo in reference to the entire fiasco. I had TikTok before… I still have TikTok… what rights were trampled in the process of bringing about zero change to me using tiktok?
I might not share your views but it is important to defend this side of the debate to get the full picture.
It’s easy to reduce TikTok to its negatives and forget that ton of people do get value from it. Obviously for content makers but even for watchers, entertainment and sense of community do have values.
I strongly dislike vertical video and find channel-flipping physically uncomfortable, and my life would probably be a little bit better if I didn't hear that around me all the time, but I will staunchly defend what I believe to be a violation of the first amendment.
I'm not sure why people seem to have more narrowly defined their idea of freedom of speech to be "the freedom to shout futilely into the void," when it's a two-way street. The government telling booksellers they can't sell a book to people isn't just a violation of the author's rights, but the right of other people to seek and acquire that book. (Hence the clauses in the amendment about anssociation and abridgment of press.)
The whole situation is very Fahrenheit 451. Which is kind of ironic, since Bradbury would have probably hated TikTok and assumed it would be the television-flavored precipice leading to books being destroyed.
Captain Beatty would be proud of all of the would-be firemen itching to torch everything they don't like, oblivious to the simple corollary that someone else doesn't like what they like.
I would say yes, everybody. TikTok is very bad for our society. It has had profound negative effects on people's ability to pay attention to things. I don't know that I'd say the solution is legalistic in nature, but the continued existence of that platform is a cancer on humanity.
No-where in their comment did they mention that alternatives were fine. The fact that reasonable suspicions against TT are met with a gish gallop of unrelated arguments EVERY TIME just strengthens my opinion that it just creates zombies.
- "Everybody loses. This outcome is worse than anyone could have conceived."
The outcome is *exactly* as anyone with a modicum of sense expected.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"—often paraphrased (sensibly!) as "deserve neither and *will lose both*." As you say: we've lost both—who could have predicted that? Yeah; well.
You can no more riase taxes to properly fund government than you can fill a bucket with no bottom.
One only need to look at the Harris campaign to see that the political class in the us is fundamentally innumerate as well as incapable of making a cost benefit analysis.
The only presidential administration that produced a non-deficit budget was Bill Clinton's second term (~97-00).
Probably because Ross Perot mostly self-funded a third party campaign centered around the national debt and had received 8% of the vote (and 19% in the previous election).
Why stop at two? X seems to just be crazy person x says crazy thing y, so no problem adding that to my dns blacklist, fb and insta are as you say, just as obvious as tiktok. SEO results are dominated by AI vomit blogs, nothing to see there so searech engines are useless. LLMs seem to be mostly ok for finding things right now, I'm sure they will figure out how to mess that up soon enough though. YouTube is really useful for figuring out how to fix my <insert thing broken in my house>. But other than that is just the prototype the other stuff was based on. For news I look at news sources that cost money, wsj, economist etc. because then there is at least a chance that I myself am not the product. For finding music I ask local musicians who they like and follow those referrals a few deep. For seeing funny pet antics I look at my pets. To learn more about tech I come here and follow links.
Unlike TikTok, X is an American social media platform. By default, It is protected under free speech rights. TikTok is Chinese and doesn't get to play that card. End of story.
That doesn't keep them off my dns blacklist though. Seems like whatever card tiktok played was good enough to get tomorrow's administration to change course.
If the Democrats field a candidate that is willing to debase themselves with a stupid dance that goes viral, I feel there may be a change of heart. Assuming Trump doesn't manage to run for a third term.
1. Banning media based on alleged (or real) foreign interference is a very thin line
2. Banning and "unbanning" media based on vague accusations can be exploited for self-serving economical or political interests, which long-term hurts any kind of credibility of media as a whole. And, like it or not: we depend on media. We're not living in self-sufficient communes, at least most of us don't.
3. What made TikTok an issue in the first place: foreign interference (see 1) and problematic content, the policy causes for this probably include insufficient moderation and lack of court accountability. Then there's the question of algorithmic bias: I think this is not a simple question, e.g. is Instagram Reels technically the same or if not, what are the most important differences between their recommendation algorithms?
The EU has the advantage that their politicians don't all own gigantic shares in any social media companies (because the EU doesn't have any), so they are afforded the rare luxury of actually voting for the good of the people. That's why the EU has decent data privacy laws.
The TikTok ban would've been far less problematic if they had created legislation for all companies that curtailed data trading and increased user privacy. But that was never the goal.
He's making tens of millions of Americans (especially including those who may not have otherwise been political) quite fond of him, bringing back a platform that has definitely been a net positive for him overall, undoing one of his predecessors 'achievements', and so on.
He came out against a ban on TikTok long ago (after initially being in support) and made it clear he'd work to reverse it the second the ban bill started gaining momentum.
So he can make a call and cancel a border security bill, but can't make the same call to cancel the TikTok portion of the spending bill before it passed?
Not free speech. Amplification of speech and to an extent freedom of association. Speech is not being criminalized -- you can say the exact same things on a different forum. And the entity being constrained is a foreign actor [edit] with likely state security apparatus ties.
By its wording, no, because it applies to "Congress". 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.
A later amendment is held to have "incorporated" this prohibition against the state governments as well, though that amendment doesn't actually specify anything in particular. ("No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.")
It is frequently argued that some act of the government violates the free speech rights of foreigners living abroad, which is to say that whatever it was the government did fell into the class of behaviors prohibited by the first amendment. People tend to find that argument weird; I don't know what its batting average is.
Summing up, nothing extends rights to foreigners, but since the first amendment is a prohibition on the government rather than a grant of rights to certain protected people, foreigners arguably enjoy equal protection.
The 1st Amendment applies to US citizens' freedom to read/receive communications from non-US citizens (or i.e. read books by non-American authors). That's not under dispute: the current SCOTUS ruling both acknowledges, and sidesteps, that.
It's not just US citizens, but per the supreme court "foreign organizations operating abroad possess no rights under the U. S. Constitution". In USAID v. Alliance for Open Society International specifically with regards to the first amendment.
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However TikTok US here is a domestic organization operating domestically merely controlled by a foreign organization operating abroad, which complicates matters. It has rights.
Courts and laws don't need to stop their analysis at "is it a corporation registered in the US." It is a foreign-controlled organization, therefore it is treated as a foreign organization. If you have ever dealt with the defense contracting apparatus, you will know this is how it works.
The US constitution does not apply to citizens - it applies to the government.
Citizens in the US are implicitly allowed to do whatever they like, subject to laws that the government enacts. The constitution describes those areas where the government is allowed to pass laws. All other areas are off limits to the government, and left for the people to do as they like. To emphasize the point, the amendments specify certain areas that the government is extra-especially-not-allowed to create any laws about, like speech.
The extent to which this is observed today is quite dubious. There are lots of laws that the US government passes which have little to do with anything the constitution allows them to do - but they kinda hand-wave around that and gesture toward something, like the "commerce clause" or whatnot as justification.
But in theory - for any law passed - it is unconstitutional unless you can say exactly where in the constitution it is explicitly allowed.
* Having written all that, I will add that "government" above means the US Federal government, not all the other ones. State, local, have a lot of latitude to make whatever laws they want, unless a federal law specifically prohibits it.
> * Having written all that, I will add that "government" above means the US Federal government, not all the other ones. State, local, have a lot of latitude to make whatever laws they want, unless a federal law specifically prohibits it.
This is not entirely correct. In general many elements of the Constitution are incorporated and apply at all levels of government. It even outranks state constitutions where the two conflict.
No, in other words, states and local governments are also bound by the Constitution in many of the the same ways that the federal government is.
The major difference is the Tenth Amendment, which sets the states apart by specifying that any powers not "delegated to" the federal government are reserved exclusively for the states. (In practice courts have found many "implied powers" that are not explicitly enumerated).
So, usually in a representative democracy (republic or not), the judiciary power is supposed to check and limit the other two (to avoid a tyranny of the majority). You can have that done in two way: with "case law", the only way in some countries (like the UK): basically if a law is enforced against a minority, it will be enforced against the majority. Other countries added a consitution. Its use is to limit the executive and legislative power of the government: the legislative power is supposed to prevent the law/executive order from existing or being executed, and base that decision on the constitution.
TL:DR: no, it doesn't even apply to US citizen, only to US government.
PS: "tyranny of the majority" for some is a definition fascism, i disagree, to me it isn't even proto-fascism, it lack a weird mythos about internal enemies and a few other mythos. It's closer bonapartism, or cesarism at worst. To be clear i think it is a precondition to have fascism (I.E as long as your case law/consitution is enforced for everybody the same way, you aren't a fascist state).
To respond to a comment which has now been deleted:
I don't care about the First Amendment specifically. The US constitution is not magical divinely inspired scripture. I care about the underlying principles of freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and freedom of association, regardless of how well or poorly those are reflected by a specific written law.
I'm a 50+ average Joe who only watches Australian state media (ABC) and I've seen plenty of content that I find shocking from both Israel and Hamas and I came away with sympathy for the Palestinians caught in the middle.
> No, you can't. TikTok was the only mainstream platform where pro-Palestinian content was allowed to go viral.
Reddit shows pro-palestinian/anti-israel propaganda in the front page on a daily basis.
Also, the fact that Israel's invasion of Palestinian territories was an anti-Biden propaganda point that was boosted pretty hard doesn't exactly prove that the likes of China aren't pushing propaganda to destabilize the US. There was clearly a coordinated effort to force-fed the idea that Biden was pro-genocide and a warmonger, and Trump was the only possible candidate to push peace in Ukraine and Palestine.
Lol where do you even get something so easily disproven like this? I care for neither Israel nor Palestine, but I see more or less equal coverage of both sides (not so much my side, funnily enough) on every platform.
Reddit is both anti-Israel and anti-Palestine depending on the sub. News channels will be one or the other depending on the slant and there's plenty on both sides. Most of instagram is people from both sides shouting at each other about how the other gets more representation/are more evil. Same with facebook. I don't use Twitter or any Twitter clones, but I assume Mastodon has a Palestinian slant while Twitter probably has a slight Israeli slant (shitposting aside). Even on HackerNews you'll see both stances often. I guess 4chan would have my stance, since they hate Israel because antisemitism but also hate Arabs.
Do people just make shit up like this for a laugh? I really don't get it, yet see it so often espoused.
"Code is speech" is absurdly reductionist in most cases.
Yes, the government censoring Tiktok's source code on Github would be a freedom of speech violation, but that's not what this is about, is it? See also: Tornado Cash. Publishing code facilitating money laundering is fine (you'll find the code still on Github!); running said code to facilitate money laundering isn't.
Or to go with an even more extreme example: Writing code for a self-aiming and firing gun is speech [1], running said code on a gun in your driveway isn't.
The fact that we are still debating such basics of the First Amendment here is baffling. This is almost as trivial as the other well-known limitations in my view (shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater etc.)
[1] At least at the moment, and as far as I know; I think we might see this type of speech being restricted in the same way that some facts about the construction of nuclear weapons are "innate state secrets".
American companies (Google and Apple primarily) have been told by the government that they cannot distribute binaries running certain code to Americans. That seems like the real 1st amendment issue to me and I was quite surprised to learn that ByteDance only claimed that their own 1st amendment rights were being infringed on (which personally I find to be flimsier).
EDIT: Tornado cash was taken down from GitHub though, so you don't have a point here
Huh? It's up as a public archive on tornadocash/tornado-core as we speak.
> American companies (Google and Apple primarily) have been told by the government that they cannot distribute binaries running certain code to Americans.
Yes, in the same way that American companies and individuals are routinely prohibited by the government from distributing other binaries to Americans, most notably anything that circumvents DRMs as regulated by the DMCA.
I really don't think the people that drafted the First Amendment had apps in mind when they thought of "speech", and would probably consider them something more like machinery (a printing press, a radio (not a radio station!) etc.) Interpreting Tiktok as a type of newspaper (which are widely protected even in democracies without an equivalent to the First Amendment) is much less of a leap of faith compared to considering an iOS executable speech.
Interesting, I didn't follow the tornado cash case super closely, but I do recall it being taken off GitHub for a short time.
So I would also argue that restricting DRM bypassing software is a violation of the 1st amendment and, more importantly, that it's a bad thing to restrict.
We'll never know what they would have thought, but I'll add that actual plans for machinery are definitely speech. We certainly do restrict these plans, with ITAR most notably, and I think it's reasonable to draw that line somewhere.
Note that I never said banning TikTok was as bad idea, just that it restricted speech by way of limiting distribution (which oddly looks unconsidered in the supreme court case), which it absolutely does. I'm uncomfortable with this level of power being granted to the government, but given that TikTok is obviously a spying/malware delivery tool by a foreign borderline hostile government I think it's probably warranted.
I think not being somewhat disturbed by the United States government restricting distribution of an application is a bit weird TBH. That's a huge power to have and can definitely be abused, especially if it's made easier to do so in the future.
The code isn’t the main issue here, it’s the online platform. The apps were only banned as a means to access the platform, not fir the code they contain. The code would be largely useless without the platform infrastructure and data storage behind it.
I've never understood that quote. Is it ok to give up essential liberty to gain a large, permanent safety? If so, how large and how permanent does it have to be to qualify?
I'm also a little unclear on which liberties are essential, versus those that are merely nice to have. We all give up the liberty of driving on the wrong side of the road, and nobody seems to mind.
I also find it comical that banning TikTok is the red line for folks when the NSA and other government agencies have been acting with impunity when it comes to harvesting data for decades now.
People don't care about most things because there are a practically infinite number of things one could care about.
But when you ban something 9 figures of people happily use, with some small chunk of that even being people making a living off of it, people will care about that because it directly and visibly affects them.
If I were an US citizen this would be the most worrying aspect to me.
Are the congressmen so incompetent that they didn't see this coming? This backfired horribly for them in multiple ways... unless this was somehow part of a master plan my simple mind can't comprehend?
Did it somehow not backfire and I'm just being led to believe so?
It’s literally pay to play with the new administration which is why it doesn’t feel coherent. He’s being courted by Meta to ban and TikTok to not ban.
The elite have always known the value of media and propaganda. TikTok could easily sway electorate decision making in the same way as Meta, X, and YouTube. The US oligarchs have no control over a sizable social media platform. The data security and privacy concerns are theater. The very same logic we use for TikTok applies to our own apps and social media. The only distinction is the false premise they have our interests in mind.
Are congressmen this incompetent? Yes. Are they bought by adversaries? Yes. Are they just humans who are as equally manipulated as you? Yes.
The assumption (whether right or wrong) is that the NSA and other government agencies are at least doing it to keep Americans safe. And I think there's an assumption (again, whether right or wrong) in the general public that the NSA doesn't harvest the data of Americans themselves – or if they are harvesting the data of Americans, then they're Americans who are up to no good.
The issue isn’t data harvesting, and it’s unclear to me why people getting this wrong.
The issue is a foreign government having access to that data, to installed software on millions of phones, and foreign control of the primary information source for tens of millions of Americans.
The point of the analogy wasn't to say those two things are the same. It was reductio ad absurdum, a totally valid proof technique in math and logic.
If person A says "X implies Y", then person B points out that X would also imply obvious nonsense Z, it doesn't mean that B is saying Y and Z are the same, or even that Y isn't true. They're just pointing out that X is too general to possibly be true.
The context here was Indian raids. Some rich land owner wanted to pay a one time fee. Benjamin Franklin was saying a 1 time fee wasn't enough - and it would only offer temporary safety rather than ongoing safety higher taxes would offer.
This essential liberty was freedom from being killed. Pretty fucking essential.
That's quite interesting. I'd expect a lot of people to say "the freedom to keep my money" is absolutely essential.
We give up that right in exchange for the permanent safety that a government is supposed to grant. Life is presumably more fundamental than money, but if it's the only truly essential liberty, there is a lot of room to give up others.
On the broadest strokes it makes sense. We gave up the liberty of truly owning the land so the government can build houses on them. From there we more or less are rented the land and almost everyone pays a tax for it.
Homeowners have some power. But if the government really needs to (modern example includes building a new railway), They can elect to forcibly pay you and seize it (eminent domain).
>We all give up the liberty of driving on the wrong side of the road, and nobody seems to mind.
Auto transportation was never a right to begin with. As inconvenient as it is, you are free to walk wherever you want without trespassing. Even across a road. But there's a line when you start to simply endanger others by say, walking on a road at 5 mph.
Obviously the transfer of ownership was always about the content, and implicitly the fact that if a Chinese company owns it, the US has no control over it. Opinion making in the US is always implicitly enforced, not explicitly.
There's a great bit of an old interview with Noam Chomsky talking to an American reporter in which the reporter asks Chomsky: "You think I'm lying to you, pushing a US agenda?" and he responds: "No I think you're perfectly honest, but if you held any other beliefs than you do you wouldn't be sitting in that chair talking to me"
You didn't even engage with what I said. You dismiss statements of a US senator because of the paper that reports them?
Please address the actual argument, namely that in the US, when you hand platforms to people like Zuckerberg, you don't need to do any actual censoring because American business leaders change their political opinions in line with the sitting administration the way other people change T-Shirts. That is the point of the sale, anybody who is not utterly gullible can see it from a mile away.
On a Chinese owned TikTok Americans get information presented to them, whether intentionally or authentically, that the US powers that be do not like. There is no other security argument, data was already managed by Oracle in the US, the app was technically separated from its Chinese equivalent Douyin.
>Obviously the transfer of ownership was always about the content
I’m struggling to see why you say I didn’t.
> you don't need to do any actual censoring because American business leaders change their political opinions in line with the sitting administration
I think this is blatantly not true. Instagram, reddit, and others host a TON of anti-current-administration content.
Now, I’d like to discuss your assertion that there is no other security argument with a series of questions. I do not believe even a casual observer can uniformly answer “no” to the following;
Do you think it is likely that CCP has access to the data obtained by Tik Tok on US phones?
Do you think the US government warnings and security audit results were based on real concerns and findings?
Do you think it is a national security risk for millions of Americans to run CCP controlled code on their phones?
Do you think CCP is able to control the Tik Tok recommendation algorithms to promote their interests, possibly at the expense of American interests?
> I do not believe even a casual observer can uniformly answer “no” to the following;
The only one I wouldn't uniformly answer "no" to is the last one as there's no real evidence for the first two and that one is at least in principle possible but what's important is that private American citizens running entertainment apps on their personal phones isn't a "national security issue".
Running TikTok on government phones in Langley probably is so banning an app like this from government devices is fair enough, but the interest of any individual American is that they have free access to services, domestic or foreign, even if it's literal propaganda because they're the ones who are supposed to make that judgement. Hell even if it's Red Star OS from North Korea and they want to run it on their personal computer, they should be able to.
American interest isn't a synonym for interest of the state department, because if that's the case you're living in a security state (ironically like China) and not a free country.
I personally picked 40% because I couldn't image a change of this sort being consistent with today's political reality.
That said, the fine print of that prediction can be interpreted that the ban is "in effect" even if it not enforced and has no legal liability. I doubt all the predictors were hanging their hat on that fine print when they predicted, though.
Except that no one voted to give up this liberty nor purchase this "safety". The oligarchs determined that they wanted to purchase power and "elected" to take our liberty.
"The law banning TikTok, which was scheduled to go into effect Sunday, allows the president to grant a 90-day extension before the ban is enforced, provided certain criteria are met"
"The Act permits the President to grant a one-time extension of no more than 90 days with respect to the prohibitions’ 270-day effective date if the President makes certain certifications to Congress regarding progress toward a qualified divestiture."
Sounds like he needs to work with Congress on at least a basic level for this to be within the law, not just make his own decision and declare all is good. And there is the small detail that he is not President, at least not today.
TikTok has already received multiple "interest to acquire" letters, including the one from Perplexity that would keep all existing investors fully intact.
Having that along with a republican majority in both the congress and the senate this isn't going to be difficult for Trump to fulfill the requirements of the law.
Do you get the impression that the incoming administration cares about the law?
As long as there is a fig leaf/smokescreen, and TikTok makes the right noises and contributions, they’ll be fine.
If anything, Keeping them technically in violation of the law is the leverage the administration will want to keep so they can squeeze TikTok whenever they want.
The law never required that they shut down, so in a tautological sense they are.
However, with regards to the absurd justification. The president (still Biden) hasn't granted any extensions, nor is the president even able to grant an extension without
> certif[ing] to Congress that-
> "(A) a path to executing a qualified divestiture has been identified with respect to such application;
> "(B) evidence of significant progress toward executing such qualified divestiture has been produced with respect to such application; and
> "(C) there are in place the relevant binding legal agreements to enable execution of such qualified divestiture during the period of such extension.
There is no evidence that Trump will be able to lawfully do any of those, and he has to do all, after he becomes president again.
ByteDance has been rather vocal that they aren't interested in divesting like that. He could be, there is no evidence he will be, and it's not something he can cause to happen.
Isn't selective enforcement in general within any law in the United States? There are plenty of laws that get broken all the time and it's up to police & prosecutors/AGs to decide which cases they actually want to enforce.
If you think money is what is on the table here you lack imagination. It's the "Trump knob" in TikTok's ranking algorithm that is the real thing of value here.
No actual deal is necessary here. It's obvious to everyone involved what the deal is: TikTok ensures that its content is friendly to Trump, TikTok stays unbanned.
Technically, and unfortunately, yes. They are a single-issue organization, and that single issue takes precedence over any other consideration. I doubt many of them who are involved are happy about him being able to use this to consolidate, but there are always external effects when you have a single major priority (especially if it's a good one).
Despite both ending up with TikTok staying up in the US, having the ban be unconstitutional or not exist at all is different from having the ban in place and a deal to avoid it. What the ACLU was fighting for would have removed leverage from the government/president.
He’s now publicly a huge hero for saving TikTok and everyone forgot he was the one that wanted it banned in the first place. Fabricating new problems so he can solve them “heroically” is the basic MO of any narcissist or authoritarian despot- and is worth a lot more to him than any under the table cash.
Expect a lot more “big wins” in the coming weeks- where he solves problems to massive fanfare that never existed or that he created- with empty “solutions” that also didn’t really happen or take no effort.
Narcissists are so consumed with projecting an image or facade, they can’t and don’t want or care about anything else. Real money is certainly a good way of looking rich and powerful- but not always the only way. Faking wealth comes with a lot more stress with the terrifying risk of being found out- but it is clear Trump has still used that strategy a lot, and gone to great lengths to hide the fact that his real wealth (although significant) is less than it appears.
Appearing wealthy is especially attractive with narcissism since it is the most banal, obvious, and universally understood signal of success and greatness- but the money itself isn't the goal, and having wealth in secret - as may be necessary if it is under the table - without adding to the appearance of being wealthy would be uninteresting.
He did and replaced the original executive order from Trump with his own and signed the PAFACA into law last year which effectively supports the TikTok ban.
Biden didn't stop it because he also supported the ban as well, which is even worse.
So TikTok would have been totally banned if either Biden or Harris won the election.
Biden and Harris's arguments against Trump fell flat when they had no explanation for why they continued almost everything awful he started, while also still claiming it was awful. "I was going to send her a Maga hat."
Changing positions on bills because they're unpopular seems like a good thing no? Nor does it seem like a particularly ideological position to have, Republican or Democrat. I'm actually very surprised that Biden/Harris seemed so positive for the bill. Biden and the Democrats could have easily used this themselves, Biden himself was a lame duck President and could have vetoed the bill with minimal consequences. The fact that people are getting mad at Trump for taking a gamble to placate angry public sentiment makes me think that folks have lost the political plot: democratic politicians need to support initiatives and ideas that are popular among people.
I don't disagree- and think reversing this position is a good thing.
I do however, also believe that good leaders are people with their own principles and ideas- and are willing to do what is right even if it isn't popular, when necessary. However, a huge percentage of our political leaders on both the left and right seem to have a 'dark triad' personality with narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy- and no ideals besides getting more power and admiration, that switch everything they claim to stand for on a dime like a kid trying on play outfits. I'd like to see people notice and not accept that type of 'leadership.'
I participate in some local and state level politics. You're not going to get those kind of people in politics. Every even remotely contentious legislation will get you tarred and feathered by your opponents. Opposition will use any tactic to bring you down, focusing on something silly you said 20 years ago, taking words out of context, etc, etc. The only kinds of people who can deal with that kind of political environment are the kinds of folks you see in politics.
It's the same reason you see certain introverted personality types overselected for in backend engineering teams: only a certain type of person enjoys working on something that is inscrutable to most people even users of the service they help support.
===
> I do however, also believe that good leaders are people with their own principles and ideas- and are willing to do what is right even if it isn't popular, when necessary.
It's a slippery slope from this to oligopolistic rule. Obviously the US democracy is not direct and there's an understanding that politicians balance their principles against popularity but I also think the US is of a mood that Congress is run by disconnected elites right now. Now is the time to err to populism.
I think you're essentially saying that people that have any reasonable level of integrity, ethics, or ideals - basically anyone you could trust to watch your dog when you're out of town (i.e. not the the US representative that stole money from a disabled Veteran's dying service dog)- would never willingly get involved in modern politics... which is a pretty disappointing view, but might be true.
I would say we've certainly had politicians and leaders without 'dark triad' personalities, but the most sincere ones in my lifetime were often also the least successful.
I don't think standing up for your ideals is incompatible with democracy, if you make it clear from the outset what your ideals are, and that you intend to stand by them.
However, I do think people with real ideals and vision do become inspiring leaders, and we could really use that right now. I'll admit this mostly happens at a cultural level, and probably works best outside of a political office- MLK for example.
Sorry to disappoint you, but that isn't my style- I won't be doing either. I'm particularly interested in having Americans become generally aware of narcissism and emotional manipulation- so they can spot it and have some 'cultural antibodies' against it, and stop being duped by people like this from all political persuasions. We've never had a better opportunity to finally do this, now having a president that is an almost exaggerated cartoonist caricature of a narcissist, that switches stories and philosophies from hour to hour depending on who is listening at the moment.
Oh, I'm upset and traumatized indeed, and even getting professional help for it, but over someone other than this guy. Anytime one of a dozen narcissistic celebrities comes up I mention the same thing, but I can't think of a single politician or celebrity I care enough about to even dislike.
As Nietzsche said, one must have reverence for their enemies, and none of them make the grade.
Maybe I just need to talk about it, but I'd like to think I learned something that might help someone else.
Next time you read all of my comments, read the context also and you won't miss important stuff like that ;-)
Honest question- whatever you like about whatever this politician says, do you believe it's sincere? If not, do you feel like your views and ideals deserve representation from people that sincerely share them and would actually make some person sacrifices to make them happen?
It's absolutely crazy to me that people like you assume if you question anything on 'their side' you must be 'on the other side' - as if all of human perspectives reduced to a single bit of information. I mean, if they really were even on their own side they'd be more critical of it.
I have no grand opinion about Trump. He is as good as any other politician, though he might be marginally better from the prior that he is not a career politician and from the posterior conditioned by the fact that the bi-partisan establishment and the corporate media hate him. These are too strong a signal to ignore.
What irks me is the cheap virtue signalling by the laptop class which has been told to hate him since 2016. They had no opinion of the man - who is a literal Hitler and who was 70 years old in 2016 - before that. I despise such fakery.
I also despise fakery, but there’s a lot more overall fakery going on here from all sides than you seem to be noticing- and understanding the dynamics of narcissism and emotional manipulation makes it more obvious. People aware of this stuff are impressed by Trumps skill in creating and maintaining false narratives.
They didn't dislike him before 2016 because he was one of them, he went to their parties, donated their favorite people lots of money, and did TV interviews repeating all of their talking points.
Trump is absolutely nothing like Hitler- Hitler was a completely sincere true believer in his cause, solidified his views clearly before he had any fame or power and stuck to them consistently, and was himself willing to die for the cause of blaming all problems on people different than him. Trump switches stories and allegiances like an 8 year old girl trying on princess outfits until one 'clicks' and gets attention- and doesn't care if the one he ends up with is left right or center- he tried them all.
Both your "cheap virtue signalling by the laptop class" and Trump have an identical underlying strategy and postmodern world view that things like integrity, principles, and ideals are for suckers, and the only thing that matters is constructing a narrative that gives you the most power and attention right now: e.g. fakery.
Both are even using the same basic absurd narrative that some evil outgroup that deserves to be dehumanized is causing all of your problems, and supporting authoritarianism with them in power will solve it- just different outgroups but both chosen strategically by the same process.
There hasn't been any president during my lifetime that didn't have narcissistic personality traits and strategies, but I am not 100% sure all of them definitely had full blown NPD, I'm not a psychiatrist. It's a disability than harms the person affected more than anyone else- people with it are very alone as they make no real friendships or connections with people, and are not capable of improving their life through self reflection and self criticism. They can be very successful but won't ever enjoy it- they will still just be terrified and anxious about their facade collapsing. It is a disorder where fakery is the very core of every action.
Every government lawyer in the country was investigating Trump since 2015 and the best they could find was he paid off a pornstar. You can’t accuse someone of being on the take for nearly a decade without eventually putting up or shutting up.
That’s my point. He was convicted of labeling a payment to a pornstar the wrong thing in the business records of his family owned company, to hide an affair. It was a nothing-burger compared to everything he’s been accused of.
None of the predicate events of those cases had happened yet during the four years during which Trump was called a criminal daily by the media.
And no, I didn’t follow those cases, because I had closely followed all the accusations of tax evasion, receiving payments from Russia, etc., during the prior four years and those has amounted to nothing. As they say, “fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, well you can’t fool me again.”
I haven't read the Mueller Report, but from media reports I had the distinct impression that Trump would have been indicted had he not been the sitting president. But I suppose it says something that Garland and Jack Smith didn't indict either after Trump left office.
A lot of what Trump did was not really a crime, but is behavior that we don't want in a president.
It is apparently not a crime to meet with a Russian spy in your house, and to have a discussion about exchanging relaxed foreign relations for dirt on your political opponent. It's also not a crime for the campaign to share campaign data with a Russian FSB agent as the FSB carried out a psyops campaign against American citizens for which they are now indicted. Totally legal to lie about those activities to the FBI and Congress as well. Completely legal to use the fruits of the FSB hacking campaign to your political advantage, and it's also legal to publicly call for the FSB to continue hacking your opponent.
There just aren't laws against these activities and no one can actually prosecute them (if you break the law to become president and win, you just replace the people who would prosecute you with loyalists, so you can't get prosecuted for breaking the law while campaigning unless you lose), so everything Trump did with Russia in 2016 is now acceptable political activity.
It's now normalized that a candidate for president should, no, must lean on foreign governments to circumvent domestic campaign laws to gain as much leverage over their opponent as possible. For example, the 2028 Democratic candidate could make a deal with North Korea to hack the Trump campaign (he's already said he's running again) in exchange for relaxed sanctions, and that would be fine according to the norms of our time.
> This outcome is worse than anyone could have conceived.
This is the maximally stupid outcome, so I suppose we should have seen it coming. I guess the conclusion is going to involve Trump taking an ownership stake in TikTok, possibly by swapping it for $TRUMP cryptocurrency or Truth Social shares something.
This despite the brilliant defense argument of “that wasn’t fraud because everyone should have known I was lying”…which was also the Fox News defense…and is presumably how the executive branch officially works as of tomorrow.
Nothing unless you’re running for public office. The rules are understandably different when you’re beholden to the people. Personally I’m ok with this distinction. Politicians should have to give up some rights that private citizens have and be held to a higher bar to guard against the tendency towards corruption that comes with greater influence and power.
And maybe we should have a law that punishes politicians for paying money to cover up affairs. But we don't have that. Trump's prosecution was, instead, a triple bank shot combining three different vaguely written laws in a combination that makes the Double Irish with Dutch Sandwich look straightforward.[1]
As CNN's head legal analyst Elie Honig explained: "The charges against Trump are obscure, and nearly entirely unprecedented. In fact, no state prosecutor — in New York, or Wyoming, or anywhere — has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime, against anyone, for anything. None. Ever."
Yes he was. The payment in question happened after he launched his campaign -- in late October of 2016.
[EDIT to respond a bit to the now-expanded parent, which was only a single sentence when I replied]: I do totally agree that the hush money prosecution was a bit of a stretch, and wouldn't have happened if Trump wasn't famous. You're just wrong about it applying to a time when he wasn't running for office.
My recollection is that the prosecution was a combination of the mis-labeling of the payments, and the mis-labeling being in service of concealing a (federal) crime. Said different crime being the original hush money payment, which happened during the campaign. I.e. if he hadn't done something illegal while running for public office, there'd be nothing to charge him with.
Now, it'd be better if he simply got prosecuted for the initial crime. Absolutely agree there. But I'm not sure that "I can avoid prosecution for campaign misdeeds by committing them and then waiting to pay people back until after the campaign" would be a great precedent.
The judge summarized the case for the jury as follows:
> The allegations reflect in substance, that Donald Trump falsified business records to conceal an agreement with others to unlawfully influence the 2016 presidential election. Specifically, it is alleged that Donald Trump made or caused false business records to hide the true nature of payments made to Michael Cohen, by characterizing them as payment for legal services rendered pursuant to a retainer agreement. The People allege that in fact, the payments were intended to reimburse Michael Cohen for money he paid to Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, in the weeks before the presidential election to prevent her from publicly revealing details about a past sexual encounter with Donald Trump.
That summary implies that paying off Stormy Daniels "to prevent her from publicly revealing details" about the affair was the unlawful act. But under what law? And why wasn't he just charged with that law directly?
The judge actually summarized it in vastly more detail than you say there. Take a look at the jury instructions if you want to see exactly what the theory was: https://www.nycourts.gov/LegacyPDFS/press/PDFs/People%20v.%2... (starting around page 29, or again around page 44)
Basically, the crime alleged was violating a NY election law saying that you can't try to influence an election through "unlawful means". They provided a sampling of said unlawful means: violating federal campaign contribution limits, falsifying other business records, and violating state tax laws about how the reimbursement to Cohen was handled. The jurors didn't have to unanimously agree about which of those things they think he actually did.
The reasons to not charge him for those separately would seem to be respectively: 1. that's the feds job, 2. statute of limitations expired for the non-felony falsifications during his presidency when he couldn't be charged with anything, and 3. Cohen directly committed the tax crime so all Trump's guilty of is conspiracy to commit a really niche bit of tax misrepresentation that didn't actually cost anything.
The unambiguous bit is that he definitely falsified business records, and so the squabble is over whether he's guilty of a misdemeanor or a felony. It was apparently persuasive to the jury that he did the felony version.
> Basically, the crime alleged was violating a NY election law saying that you can't try to influence an election through "unlawful means".
That just gets you back to the temporal problem we started with. As you say, the only "unambiguous bit" from the jury's implicit fact-finding "is that he definitely falsified business records." But he did that after he won the election. How can you influence an election through unlawful conduct that happened after the election was resolved?
Insofar as the case was framed as election manipulation, you need some conduct prior to the election. Which is why, as you observe, the prosecutor had to add a third layer of uncharged alleged crimes:
> Basically, the crime alleged was violating a NY election law saying that you can't try to influence an election through "unlawful means". They provided a sampling of said unlawful means... The jurors didn't have to unanimously agree about which of those things they think he actually did.
Putting aside that each of the predicate crimes is deeply flawed (e.g. federal prosecutors investigated and declined to bring the campaign finance charge), you can't rest your triple-layer cake felony theory on a base of uncharged predicate crimes and tell the jury they don't have to agree as to the predicate crimes: https://www.justsecurity.org/96654/trump-unanimous-verdict. This is exactly the sort of thing judges are supposed to keep from being submitted to the jury.
It's personally embarrassing that lawyers at my former firm helped architect this travesty. If this harebrained legal theory had been used to convict a sex trafficker or murderer, lawyers at that firm would be falling over themselves to represent the defendant on appeal pro bono.
> The klept will probably escalate until a fellow billionaire gets hit.
The klept will not spare the billionaires. There’s a reason Meta’s entire public posture has changed since Nov 6, there’s a reason the WaPo didn’t publish an endorsement. This isn’t a class thing - Trump is not a billionaire defending his fellow billionaires, he’s a mob boss in charge of the state.
No there's going to be some obvious winners.
Trump is going to force a 50% sale to a US based JV.
That JV will be run by / benefit some of his biggest goons.
If I want to run what someone else has determined as "malware" on my computer, as far as I'm concerned, I should have the absolute right to do it. Same for spyware. Why? Because I don't want the government to make the determination for what is right or wrong for me on my own property. If the US government wants to block apps on their property, then they can go ahead and do that. But the moment it extends to my own property, it's quite ridiculous to think people are going to bend over backwards and comply with what's good for you. Especially in the context of some vague national security threat, why am I supposed to be subversive to the CIA?
How can you complain about the CCP banning foreign social media and censoring when you have your own government willing to do the same thing -- in the name of Protecting the Democracy?
It's not about privacy or data or whatever the facade is. The crime that we are committing is none other than allowing ourselves to be fed information that could threaten the United States. So, therefore, even according to the SCOTUS, if Congress plasters the magical words "national security" in their laws, then the Constitution takes a backseat and we too can be like China/Russia/Iran. Will we start banning VPNs next--which circumvent our new found love for censorship? I'd not be surprised.
Can you be more specific about what you mean? The search summary for that page says:
> The Tiananmen Square Tank Man is an iconic image that emerged from the protests and subsequent military crackdown that occurred in Beijing, China, in 1989. The protests, primarily led by students demanding political reforms and greater freedoms, took place in Tiananmen Square, a prominent public space in the heart of the city.
I'm not a TikTok user, it was down earlier but clicking now I see the famous tank man video, an article about Chinese censorship of AI, etc. Do you get something different?
Totally fair point, my results could be different. To me, the salient point of Tiananmen Square is the massacre (and wider spread protests). That aspect has been suppressed. I see video clips talking about how the content is available, but no content. I also see many clips denying that anything happened.
It's an absolute win for the content creators who relied on TikTok for their livelihoods and the small businesses who relied on it for marketing. And for Gen Z, for whom content creation is one of the few viable ways to earn a good income now that tech grad hiring has completely collapsed.
It’s kind-of not. A ban would have given them all the opportunity to go wherever their audience went. The demand for their content wouldn’t simply disappear, it’d just be displaced to some other platform. And said other platform would almost certainly be less capricious and better for creators than TikTok.
“National security” is such a bs term for US govt to avoid transparency. It comes from the post 9/11 era of FISA courts, PATRIOT act to justify wide net domestic surveillance and wiretapping.
To me, the whole banning of TT is political theater aimed to divide the US while existing tech oligarchs consolidate power and money.
Just look at the message TT broadcasted. Blatant pandering of incoming administration.
I agree. This is a forced consolidation that will only strengthen American tech oligarchs and the new administration. It's also coup on the culture of the younger generations similar to what happened to Twitter.
This isn't about free speech. Tiktok's statement actually provides all of the necessary context. China pays influencers. The tiktok ban is not about what you are allowed to say, but who is allowed to pay you to say it. This is a very different question.
It's worse than that. The platform is now beholden to the president for its survival.
If you're wondering how Russia slipped from a flawed democracy into an aurocracy, it was because Yeltsin fixed the 1996 election, by holding an axe over the head of the press. He made it very clear that anybody who wants to keep their broadcast licenses will need to shill for him.
It's how a drunken autocrat with an 8% approval rating, credited for both hyperinflation and mass unemployment, who launched a coup (that killed a few hundred people and caused a constitutional crisis) ended up getting re-elected.
And then at the eleventh hour, after firing his cabinet, again, he declares Putin his successor and resigns over a $10,000 bribery scandal.
This is not an outcome. The legal process is but still well underway. In the United States, we abide by the rule of law.[1] That's really what separates us from China.
I'm not sure how so many people misunderstand the difference between "free speech" and "app controlled by hostile foreign government".
The people speaking on TikTok have not lost their right to free speech, they still are free to use a multitude of other channels that amplify their speech. No speech was blocked, only the app controlled by a hostile foreign government was blocked, and there are no provisions in a any legal framework that says we can't stop a hostile foreign government from controlling what people in this country see.
Can someone please explain how the law tramples free speech? Isn’t it completely legal to shut down a stadium or arena?
Additionally, why have we all forgotten that China does not allow any of our social media companies within their borders?
If we’re in the business of free trade, there’s no reason to let them operate a social media company in the US until they’ve opened their market to us.
> balance between national security and free speech.
This is an absurd framing. Free speech cannot implicate national security. If a social media platform controlled by a foreign government can manipulate the people so easily then you have a much larger and ignored problem.
> all of its national security risks
Which are zero. What you actually experience a risk from is the shabby way Google, Microsoft and Apple have put their platforms together. Designed to earn them money while utterly destroying your privacy.
> This outcome is worse
You're already in trouble. This outcome is a symptom of a much larger problem. The conversation around this is completely detached from reality.
There's something in this argument about national security, that if taken to its logical conclusion, would result in a world most people would consider upside-down:
If social media owned by foreign companies is a national security threat, then wouldn't that essentially make FB, X, YouTube a threat to like every other nation? Why not throw wikipedia in too? So now any nation can legitimately see any other source or collector of information as a national security threat and ban it at will? Taken to the logical conclusion, every nation should be enveloped by its own digital borders.
To me, it's the popular sentiment alone, for example people feeling sad and upset TikTok's gone and feeling happy that it's back, that's preventing this dismal future, otherwise governments would block apps on a whim. And this I'd say is a win.
This seems not to be an opinion that other people hold, but I never saw social media as “free speech” given that some third party can decides which parts of what you say get promoted.
If you sent letters to people via a middleman who decided which of those to forward onwards, you’d see that as censorship. I appreciate that that’s an over-simplified example - it’s meant to be a reductio ad absurdum. But control of the algorithm effectively regulates free speech, IMO.
Also (for clarity) the fact that China happens to be involved is not relevant to my point!
What also bothers me is there's a simple solution to all this. Just pass comprehensive consumer data protection laws and regulations all companies operating in the US are required to follow. But you don't see anyone proposing that for some reason...
I would like to ask Chinese president Xi Jinping when will Google and Facebook be available in China and all the rest of the Western social apps. Can I get any clarity and assurance? Thanks.
Reminds me of the ultimatum I gave my dog last week: I told him that if he didn't stop pooping on the floor, I would punish him by pooping on the floor myself.
I think they're trying to say that you don't respond to bad behavior (China banning apps) with your own bad behavior (US banning apps). If America is opposed to the way China handles social media then we shouldn't seek to emulate them
> I think they're trying to say that you don't respond to bad behavior (China banning apps) with your own bad behavior (US banning apps).
This presumes an assumption. I don't consider the banning as a lever for ensuring US controls Tiktok as bad behavior. America has a vested interest in snooping on and having direct control over popular mediums of communication. Giving Chinese ownership access to the methods used (like the physical devices, et al), is a security issue. It's a cold war game that seems a little sophisticated for this day and age (somehow). The lack of understanding explains a lot of these wandering conversation about tangents.
Interest and action are separate. There was interest, so action was taken. Was the mechanism controversial? The mechanism, a law passed by the legislative body and upheld by the court seems like any other law. That's the qualifier in the US Constitution to know if it is constitutional or not.
My dog is a dog. He doesn't see anything wrong with pooping on the floor, so he won't be fazed if I do it too: threatening to poop on my own floor is not going to get him to stop doing it. If I follow through with my threat, not only will I be doubling up on the problem of poop on the floor, I'll also be behaving in a way that is far more improper and unacceptable for a me than it is for my dog, because we do not hold human beings to the same standards of behavior and hygiene that we expect from dogs.
China is an authoritarian dictatorship. Their government does not see anything wrong with violating the rights of their citizens, so they won't be fazed if we do it too: threatening to restrict access to social media in the US is not going to get them to stop doing it in China. If we follow through with our threat, not only will we be doubling up on the problem of illegitimate political restriction on public discourse, we'll also be behaving in a way that is far more improper and unacceptable for the US than it is for China, because we do not hold constitutional republics to the same standards of rule of law and respect for individual rights that we expect from authoritarian regimes.
And yet you conveniently leave out the part where clearly the Chinese government desires that TikTok continue to operate in the US (under their control). Denying someone something they want is nearly the definition of punishment.
The analogy only works if the US response to banning US social media was to do something similar like banning Russian social media that had no impact on China.
As for whether the ban is legitimate or not, The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that it is. We’ve banned foreign governments from owning television stations for decades.
So, by your way of thinking, if there was a chance that pooping on the floor myself might discourage my dog's bad behavior, I should go right ahead?
It's not quite correct to say that the Supreme Court ruled that the ban is legitimate. It narrowly ruled that the immediate first amendment challenge wasn't sufficient to invalidate the law under intermediate scrutiny. The only thing they were evaluating was whether the impact of the ban was biased toward any particular content, which it isn't.
They didn't rule on the overall constitutionality of the act, whether its first section amounts to a bill of attainder, whether the forced divestiture would amount to a fifth amendment taking, whether it violated the broader freedom of the press under the first amendment, or anything else. Those questions might well be evaluated later.
>whether its first section amounts to a bill of attainder, whether the forced divestiture would amount to a fifth amendment taking, whether it violated the broader freedom of the press under the first amendment
The petitioners made those challenges as well. 3 lower courts denied them, and SCOTUS chose not to overturns the law based on those challenges, thus upholding the constitutionality of the law.
Based on your the argument, because SCOTUS didn't rule on the constitutionality of the ban with respect to the 2nd amendment, they didn't actually declare that it was legitimate.
So yes technically you are correct, but SCOTUS certainly choose not to declare the law illegitimate, which is the most legitimating thing they are ever going to do.
>So, by your way of thinking, if there was a chance that pooping on the floor myself might discourage my dog's bad behavior, I should go right ahead?
It's just a bad analogy. Come up with a better one.
> So, by your way of thinking, if there was a chance that pooping on the floor myself might discourage my dog's bad behavior, I should go right ahead?
No, I think the way of thinking is that it's irrelevant whether or not China (the dog) does it. If you want to deny the Chinese government the ability to use a Chinese-owned social media platform in a certain way, then you ban it. This isn't a tit-for-tat situation at all; the US is doing something it believes is beneficial for itself; it's not simply pooping on the floor which would serve no benefit.
The overall point is that your analogy doesn't fit the current circumstances, so stop using it to argue against the TikTok ban.
The role of the US government isn't do things it believes are beneficial for itself. It's to administer the law consistently with the constitution. When it behaves in arbitrary way and implicates the rights of its own people in order to pursue geopolitical ambitions on the global stage, it is metaphorically pooping on the floor.
The constitution explicitly gives the government the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations. Nothing about this is arbitrary, it is merely the government catching up with new technology and bringing regulation of that technology closer in line with regulation of existing technology. Foreign governments or companies controlled by foreign governments have been prohibited from holding radio licenses since 1934.
I think you're perpetuating a false equivalence, though.
The Chinese government kicks out foreign social media because they want to censor a laundry list of topics and have near-direct control over discourse.
If we assume poor intent, the US wants to kick out TikTok in order to prop up the market share of US/Western-owned social media companies.
But if we assume better intent, the US wants to kick out TikTok in order to deny the Chinese government the ability to run unfettered political/social influence campaigns on US citizens. (Instead they'll have to play cat-and-mouse games on Western-owned platforms.)
Even if both intentions are there, I think this is much better justification than what the Chinese government does.
You're talking about intent, but I'm not sure I understand the relevance of intentions here. We're evaluating behavior, which remains the same irrespective of what intentions motivated it. I think it goes without saying that the Chinese government and the US government will invoke quite different rationalizations to explain their behavior, but I'm not sure that any rationalizations are sufficient to justify behavior that is bad in itself.
Or, more simply: no, intent does not matter -- you are responsible for the damage that proceeds from your purposeful actions regardless of what ideas were in your head at the time. Ends are not sufficient to justify means.
China isn't your dog. What if you invited your neighbour over, and they pooped on your floor, repeatedly. And then they said you're not allowed into their house.
No, "pooping on the floor" is the US government is doing to the US, regardless of whether its ultimate aim is to punish China.
I am not willing to give the US government discretionary authority over what software I have access to in order to advance its geopolitical ambitions in relation to China.
Did you know that foreign companies are banned from owning more than 25% ownership of a tv and radio broadcast licenses in the US? I'm sure you've spent much effort looking into and trying to repeal those laws too.
Zuckerberg already tried in 2015, went on a tour, gave obsequious speeches, spoke in Mandarin and asked Xi to give his unborn child an honorary Chinese name. Refused on both occasions.
The propaganda works well indeed. People taking sides is perhaps the saddest part of this story since the politics can be well understood with just a little review of history. You put it well in saying that none of the two are on your side. Wake up, sheeple; stand for principles, not one or the other government.
Well fifteen years ago Google was available in China. And at that time, while the masses simply used Baidu, among the educated it was well known that Google delivered better results. And that was because Google capitulated to the censors. The government had a direct hotline into the Chinese offices of Google and could demand the search engine immediately ban certain keywords or results. At that time Baidu's censorship was quite a bit more heavy-handed than Google's. It was Google that grew tired of this arrangement and decided to quit. They first moved the operations to Hong Kong, and then later the Chinese government decided to block the Hong Kong version of Google.
As a former Google employee, during my employment I found plenty of internal blog posts from the China team at that time about this arrangement. It was amazing to me that a lot of these internal blogs simply weren't deleted because people forgot about it and storage was so cheap.
Could you potentially see an issue with both countries disconnecting their economies and communication networks? As we do this, I worry a war gets easier to start.
The people pretending that the TikTok law is a speech issue are ignoring that no one was requiring TikTok to change their content at all. The law was written to allow for 0 impact on users if the CCP-connected parent company simply divested.
Their preference to shut down instead of receiving tens of billions of dollars would be a clear violation of a company’s fiduciary duty to shareholders for any normal company. But ByteDance’s allegiance isn’t to their shareholders.
I'm not defending them here, but the laws in China prevent a sale, so technically they have a duty to uphold China's laws first before upholding their fiduciary responsibility. Same with any American company and following American laws.
The conflicting legal obligations remind me of the Microsoft "safe harbour" case, which is becoming a lot more relevant and still isn't really adequately resolved.
I believe the law mentioned here isn't focused on which organization it is. The law itself basically said you can't export recommendation algorithm. Yes, in the very similar wording as in "you can't export certain GPU chips".
I think that's a major part of the concern. Their first duty is to the Chinese Communist Party. Historically all sources of information in communism have to serve the goals of the party above all else, and this is tightly controlled.
It’s not a hidden statement about anything. China is not communist; communist means something. North Korea isn’t a democratic republic; that also means something. We can go into definitions if you want, but I think this is trivial to observe for China.
Edit: I think the distinction is important because the US has a tendency to label things communist before it goes to war with them, whether cold or hot.
I think the same way we can talk about monkeys or squirrels. It's a family tree of related ideas. But there's no official checklist of features it has to have.
To give an example for comparison, a lot of people want to say socialism is about workers controlling the means of production. But that doesn't come close to covering all of the things that were called socialism that existed before someone proposed that definition.
With communism it's similar but at least I'm not aware of any one jingle that people are pushing as the one true definition.
But there are definitely lots of people who want to say they understand Marx better than everyone else and the Soviet Union doesn't count as communist because of x. China doesn't count as communist because of y. Etc etc. it's a way to preserve an identity as a communist without having to admit there are any downsides.
For what it's worth I'd argue that capitalism is even less well defined and I've heard it used to describe every economic system that's ever existed including all communist countries.
>it's a way to preserve an identity as a communist without having to admit there are any downsides.
That’s not what I did, and I’m not a communist. I’m specifically talking about China because people use the label, deeply incorrectly, to portray them as a threatening other, as though they work in a super different way to us and threaten our way of life.
> But there are definitely lots of people who want to say they understand Marx better than everyone else and the Soviet Union doesn't count as communist because of x. China doesn't count as communist because of y. Etc etc.
Im no scholar, but I’m pretty damn certain you can’t have a strong free market, alongside the consequent wealthy capitalists, under communism. Words have meanings, and that’s not what anyone or their mother would think of as communism.
China is technically a multi party democracy, however the CPC does control the PLA (imagine if Republicans controlled the military, and that would be like China).
This is well outside my area of expertise, so please correct me if I'm wrong. But my understanding was that the legal parties are all subservient to the CCP and acknowledge their primacy.
So functionally maybe a little like Albertson's is the only legal party, but if you prefer your region can have a subsidiary of Albertson's like Safeway or Shaw's.
Officially no, effectively yes. It is not like they have meaningful elections, so a lot of power brokering is done behind doors. They do, however, provide minority parties with a quota of seats, although they effectively don't have decision making power (like the governor of a province vs. the CPC chairman of the province).
China is authoritarian no doubt, but clearly there are different forms of authoritarianism. Monarchy isn’t communism either. In principle, communism can’t exist under an authoritarian state, since that would create two classes; you’d be looking at some kind of socialism. Either way, I’d just point out that China has a brutal capitalist market. I feel like that kinda precludes communism.
Communism is whatever someone says it to be, so it isn't a very meaningful label. The term socialism is used a lot more than communism these days, although the party hasn't changed their name.
If you read Marx, communism isn't possible to achieve until after capitalism has run its course, so the way things are in China ATM are perfectly at harmony with that.
Communism has a definition. In the same vein, when someone says “democracy,” you can know roughly what they mean without knowing, eg, is it a representative democracy, is it a republic, does everyone vote together on all issues in a town square. Communism has basic characteristics involving the abolition of private property (not the same as property) and class. China has moved away from socialism to a kind of state capitalism over decades, and I don’t remotely understand why we’d call it communist.
Again, if you read Marx he claims that successful communism comes after capitalistic development. The communist party can take communism as an eventual goal instead of as a necessary truth right now, since the latter has always ended in disaster and the former puts off communism until later. The communist party is most definitely focused on communism as a goal, its goal is turn China to communism when its ready, China is not communist ATM.
Yes, that’s why I said at the outset that the CCP doesn’t run a communist country. That’s also a pretty funny idea; the CCP is cultivating a brutal capitalism to encourage a worker revolution into socialism against, uhh, themselves? By this logic the US is communist.
Shares aren’t the sole mechanism for influence though. In Russia there are open sixth floor windows one could fall out of. In China you could disappear to a camp for a few months. Shares are kind of soft in comparison.
This is correct. His power is effectively absolute. Any time his eye focuses on an issue, the issue is resolved to his specification or heads roll and another puppet is appointed to resolve it so.
I spoke a few years back with a tech analyst who specialized in Chinese equities. She herself is a Chinese ex-pat living in the states. She, quite exasperatedly described investing in Chinese equities as "you basically need to guess what Xi is thinking".
One day test prep schools are illegal and immediately shut down. Tech CEOs suddenly became pariahs and started getting carted off to re-education camps. Etc.
You never know what could happen to an executive, company, or sector.
That's a policy decision by the Chinese government. They still have the authority, but the Streisand effect makes blunt censorship counterproductive in an open society. For example, TikTok took down the viral "Uighur makeup tutorial" but quickly reinstated it after the backlash. That backlash couldn't occur in China, but it can in the USA for as long as uncensored outlets exist.
Subtler manipulation still works great, and the opacity of algorithmic content recommendation makes that an ideal instrument. Nobody outside ByteDance knows to what extent the CCP is putting its thumb on that scale already, but they certainly have the power to.
A different account operated by the same user was banned for something relating to an image of bin Laden in a different video. I've been unable to locate that video. I haven't found any reference stating that she praised him. She described her use of that image as satirical, and TikTok itself seems to recognize that (but stands by that ban):
> *While we recognize that this video may have been intended as satire, our policies on this front are currently strict.
In any case, the video in question is the Uighur one. TikTok quickly stated that one was a "human moderation error" and reversed it. My point is irrespective of whether their rules were morally correct or correctly applied, though--whatever those merits, they clearly drew more attention to the topic by censoring here, not less. So it's not surprising they don't apply blunt Chinese-style censorship outside China, since it's counterproductive without Chinese-style control of all major media.
Except now they get to remain the owners and they don’t have to sell at fire sale prices, so it turned out to be the best possible outcome for their shareholders.
In practice, US social networks usually promote content that is aligned with US cultural values and geopolitical interests. Whether this is because the government is actively leaning on them or just because being run by Americans colors them with those values, I don’t know. But the fact is, it’s not a coincidence that TikTok is the main place pro-Palestinian content was allowed to go viral, and it’s likely that changing owners would change the content on TikTok even if the law doesn’t actually require it to do so.
> Whether this is because the government is actively leaning on them or just because being run by Americans colors them with those values, I don’t know
Look up Mitt Romney’s comments where he plainly says they need to ban TikTok because they can’t control the narrative on Israel-Palestine. Narrative being his word.
I’m not arguing it’s a restriction on TikTok’s speech or bytedance’s speech.
It’s a restriction on my speech. Telling me where I can publish a video? Telling me what apps I can download? Telling my software vendor what software they’re allowed to let me get? Telling internet providers what servers they’re allowed to let my device access?
The law doesn’t fine TikTok. The law fines the people who let me download an application I’ve chosen to use. At $5,000 per instance.
It’s not about TikTok’s rights being violated. It’s about mine, and yours.
I think that’s a huge difference, yes. And about what apps my phone is able to download, and what servers it is able to access.
Another huge difference is broadcasting is about usage of a shared resource and has always had regulations on who is allowed to do what. They don’t ban RT from setting up their own venue or printing a newspaper. RT and other outlets are able to operate in the US and people are able to chose to watch them.
> It’s a restriction on my speech. Telling me where I can publish a video? Telling me what apps I can download? Telling my software vendor what software they’re allowed to let me get? Telling internet providers what servers they’re allowed to let my device access?
You are being ridiculous now. None of those are forms of speech.
And restrictions on your ability to perform certain actions is literally what being in a society is about. If you don't like it then find another society. Just like you can find another ISP, place to publish your video or platform to use apps you want to use.
Whether you think it’s ridiculous or not, restrictions on distribution of software being a violation of US free speech rights has been an established part of US case law for around three decades now: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-estab...
I also feel you are being a bit absurdist fwiw. I am know the be a principled devils advocate sometimes, so I'm reading you as that, otherwise your position as an American makes very little sense to me
The justices on the Supreme Court analyzed the constitutionality of this law under a free speech basis. The Per Curiam opinion of the court suggested the correct standard was intermediate scrutiny as an abridgment of free speech. Justice Sotomayor suggested in her concurrence that strict scrutiny (the highest standard) was appropriate.
They concluded that these regulations were okay at those levels of scrutiny, but it is not absurd or ridiculous to analyze these as forms of speech, and indeed, our courts do so.
That said, just because there is a conflict with freedom of speech doesn’t prevent all government regulation, it just means the laws involved must pass an elevated level of scrutiny. That applies here, for multiple reasons, and with multiple parties.
I'm skeptical that Bernstein vs DOJ would apply, to a [foreign-controlled] company that is not publishing their algorithm, on the idea that allowing their [trade-secret] code to control how hundreds of millions of people interact with each other is somehow free speech on ByteDance's part.
The foreign-controlled part in particular implicates Congress's obvious and explicit power to regulate international trade, and it seems obvious to me that there would be something less than strict scrutiny applied to alleged violations of the 1A when that Congressional power is in play.
Yes, most of the court felt intermediate scrutiny was the appropriate standard in part because of the reasons you outlined.
(I also agree that this is a different case, I only point to Bernstein because it is a clear part of case law which states that software distribution is and can be a free speech issue and restraints on it would be expected to be evaluated with some level of scrutiny.)
Source code you can argue is a form of speech versus a packaged product.
Not that the case is relevant because restrictions on the availability of products is well established under the law. I can’t just buy nuclear weapons for example.
>"If you don't like it then find another society. "
Isn't use of any non-violent means to advocate one's belief to change the society is the whole point of the democracy? Your point is rather very totalitarian.
I’m not, for what it’s worth. I’m arguing that I think the free speech case is stronger for the users and software distributors who are enjoined from the platform or distributing certain software applications than it is for the platform whose ownership but not content or speech is being directly regulated. (The law doesn’t fine TikTok it fines the people providing services to TikTok. Their speech rights may be more relevant in this case.)
I also see why people are interpreting my comment to mean that because it’s a restriction on my speech it’s not constitutional because that’s how people usually act on the Internet. But I don’t and didn’t. What I said was it was a restriction on my speech and I believe that’s more of interesting case than the restriction on TikTok’s speech. The ramification of that is that the courts would adjudicate the free speech restriction at an appropriate scrutiny level and determine whether that restriction is allowable. As we all know, some restrictions are allowable and constitutional. Others aren’t.
It’s not unreasonable, wild, or strange to point out that there’s a restriction on speech here, and to point out that conflict needed to be resolved to determine constitutionality.
Most are handled at the district level, if the court felt there was no legal issue at play, they would have denied cert. Their opinion did end up being per curiam which suggests the court feels clearly about the case, but does not suggest they never felt there was an issue worth arguing.
> What I said was it was a restriction on my speech
I don't agree that it is, though. The restriction is on where you cannot put your speech[0], not on the speech itself. If there was nowhere that you could put your speech (or if the available avenues became much much much smaller in reach), then I would say that your speech is being restricted.
But that's not the case here. You can publish that same speech on YouTube, Facebook, Threads, Instagram, Twitter, and a host of others where you can reach more or less the same audience you can reach on TikTok.
You also mention elsewhere about not being permitted to download a particular app onto your phone (and/or that a service provider isn't allowed to provide it to you). That just isn't a free-speech issue at all. And besides, if you have an Android phone, you absolutely still can install the TikTok app on the phone, because Android allows sideloading. If you have an iPhone and can't sideload, then your beef is with Apple, not with the US government. Beyond that, www.tiktok.com still works just fine, and will still work fine even if/when it ends up hosted on infra owned by non-US companies.
[0] Note that I did not say it is a restriction on where you can put your speech; it is a specific restriction on where you cannot, which I think is an important distinction.
It’s a restriction either way. Whether it’s a reasonable one or one that meets elevated scrutiny is a separate second question. Your points are arguing that question and are reasonable context for that debate.
No court in the land will agree with your interpretation. The first amendment protects speech, but it doesn't grant you the right to publish that speech wherever you want. If it did then Facebook couldn't ban people from its platform, for example.
The Supreme Court with its unanimous decision made it very very clear it’s not about freedom of speech, but about foreign adversary having access to data profile of 180 million US citizens. And believe in lawmakers argument of foreign adversary propaganda to those citizens.
Why do people on hacker news keep drudging up freedom of speech ad nauseum??
Did you read the opinion? It did its analysis as requiring some level of scrutiny because of the free speech implications under intermediate (and in Sofomayor’s concurrence strict) scrutiny. It held the national security concern outweighed the free speech concern but it absolutely did not say it was relevant in the analysis.
“ At the same time, a law targeting a foreign adversary’s control over a communications platform is in many ways different in kind from the regulations of non-expressive activity that we have subjected to First Amendment scrutiny”
And the opinion talks about foreign adversary, those exact words, at least 30 times. It mentioned freedom of speech twice
It's really about how the US gov is concerned that an app installed on half of all US cell phones is controlled by a company that is not 100 percent beholden to the US gov and stock market regulation, by a company that doesn't have to instantly respond to pressure from the Executive branch, could possibly refuse to instantly comply from pressure from US intelligence agencies, could refuse to comply with search requests from US law enforcement, and extensive lobbying from Facebook to cripple a competitor that Facebook ignored until it was too late.
It's not a free speech issue.
Given that the infra for serving US tiktok customers is in the United States(inside of Oracle Cloud), I am curious if Tiktok/bytedance responds to US law enforcement requests.
> the US gov is concerned that an app installed on half of all US cell phones is controlled by a company that is not 100 percent beholden to the US gov
You have it backwards. The US gov is concerned that an app installed on half of all US cell phones is controlled by a company that is 100 percent beholden to the Chinese gov.
I wouldn't be surprised if the freedom of speech nonsense is an influence campaign by the PLA.
It is just such a ridiculous argument but if you repeat nonsense enough times, people start repeating it back as if it is real.
We never had to deal with this before because the WW2 generation was obviously not stupid enough to let the KGB publish children's books and Saturday morning cartoons inside the US and have a KGB influence campaign that says to ban the books/cartoons would be a free speech issue.
Obviously a non-starter. What you see with Tiktok is how completely infiltrated and corrupted things are in the US in 2025.
The unrestricted war from China started a long time ago and the IMO the US has already lost.
"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting."
― Sun Tzu
Graffiti laws are also evaluated under heightened scrutiny due to free speech implications. A law having an impact on free speech does not mean it never holds, but it must be analyzed in that context. Here’s an example: https://southerncalifornialawreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2...
> Graffiti laws are also evaluated under heightened scrutiny due to free speech implications
Graffiti bans are unquestionably constitutional. Graffiti laws that regulate the content are not.
Telling people where they can speak is precedented, legal and necessary. Telling people what they can say is against the principles of free speech; the government doing so is illegal.
Show me where it is an infringement of your 1st amendment right to a private platform? You’re free to criticize the government however you see fit, but you’re not guaranteed the right to a microphone and stage that isn’t yours. There are plenty of other communication channels you can use to express yourself. Your 1st amendment rights are not being infringed by being denied access to TikTok, just as the far right isn’t having their 1st amendment rights being infringed by being denied to use BlueSky as their platform.
> You’re free to criticize the government however you see fit, but you’re not guaranteed the right to a microphone and stage that isn’t yours.
So if I wanted to hold a speech how corrupt the government is and then the government passed a law that a PA supplier isn't allowed to sell me a Microphone or speakers, that wouldn't infringe my first amendment right because I don't have a right to a microphone or a stage? (Im not American so I don't have any first amendment rights anyways but for arguments sake.)
It's the PA supplier would be in a better position to argue that their rights are being violated. Especially if a single customer was targeted because of their political views / protected characteristics etc.
The problem with the TikTok scenario is that no specific group is being targeted for restraint. And the government does have the right to regulate trade. E.g. there are embargoed countries, export controls, etc. The fact that you can't sell raw milk across state lines is different from a hypothetical restriction on selling raw milk to, say, people named Todd.
No, it wouldn’t. Congress could pass a law that we’re not going to import microphones and speakers from China. The Constitution explicitly gives them the power to do that. You could then purchase them from any one of a number of other companies and your speech is unaffected.
Look, my point is that the first amendment is in play here and it’s not ridiculous to suggest a free speech analysis is required to hold the law as constitutional or not, which is what the court did and what reasonable people can agree or disagree around to what extent that speech should or shouldn’t be protected. (I personally think, as I stated that the free speech harm is a stronger case from the users who have now been restrained in their ability to use the platform and software distributors who are now restrained from distributing specific software than it is as applied to TikTok where the legislation is content neutral and so the free speech analysis is less relevant.) I’m not even claiming that this law should be found unconstitutional, just that there are free speech issues to adjudicate and the less obvious ones are probably more relevant than the one people are citing where the restraint is content neutral.
Your comment however draws a weird parallel later on though but first let’s take a moment here:
> Your 1st amendment rights are not being infringed by being denied access to TikTok
That is what the court found but it opens some interesting questions that really do have impacts.
I would bet that you would find a law that says op-eds can only be published in an approved list of venues to be clearly wrong, yet it is equally just determining venue and not content.
As would a law which banned foreign ownership of venues while also introducing a regulatory scheme for domestic ownership stakes of sensitive industries and defined news and commentary as a nationally security sensitive industry. (Which this law essentially does for certain types of apps.)
So at some point a law can be “content neutral” and about access to venue not content but I bet almost any reasonable person would agree it’s an unreasonable restraint.
Now for a situation you draw the above as a parallel with but is very different:
> just as the far right isn’t having their 1st amendment rights being infringed by being denied to use BlueSky as their platform.
Bluesky can do whatever they want but if the government were to get involved in defining regulations around which users could use BlueSky… yes absolutely I would expect it to be thrown out on first amendment grounds and expect it’s a significantly stronger case than any of the examples above.
It’s a much weaker and almost irrelevant case when directed at a non-governmental organization in which some folks are using “free speech” as an argument over what entities which are not enjoined from almost any actions may do with their own venues. But yeah, if it was the government telling BlueSky who to ban? You bet that’s got first amendment implications and I’d expect a court to review it under strict scrutiny. (And I wouldn’t expect it to survive.)
> I would bet that you would find a law that says op-eds can only be published in an approved list of venues to be clearly wrong, yet it is equally just determining venue and not content.
That's a poor analogy, because allowlists and blocklists are not the same thing and do not have the same effects. The government only allowing a list of certain approved media outlets would be an obvious 1A infringement. The government blocking certain media outlets is not.
It’s not meant to say they’re the same thing, it’s meant to demonstrate clearly that venue restrictions even when content neutral can impose restrictions on speech and those restrictions must be balanced and scrutinized appropriately under our system.
The US need not restrict any of your speech. You’re not directly communicating with any of TikTok’s users when you post to it, TikTok is. In the Internet age, even apparent one-way communication is handshakes upon handshakes. Consider this: You’re free to send whatever messages you want to ByteDance. They’re just not allowed to reply (or have anyone reply on their behalf). The app is a useless binary blob if it can’t set up a TLS connection.
The government isn’t banning TikTok, the law only requires a change in ownership. The current owners are choosing to performatively shut down in an attempt to bully their way through that requirement
I get that you believe that's what's happening, but I can't imagine any US court agreeing with you.
The law (and the US constitution) does not guarantee any particular platform for your speech. It just guarantees that you can speak, and courts have interpreted that to mean that you need to have some reasonable platform, and that laws can't put an unreasonable burden on your ability to speak on some platform.
As an aside:
> Telling internet providers what servers they’re allowed to let my device access?
The law does not target internet providers at all. They are not required to block traffic to *.tiktok.com or any of their IP addresses.
I keep seeing this type of comment here, like a sell is the obvious thing to do. Why? Selling / divesting TikTok US under these circumstances would surely not fetch the best price. In addition they would immediately create a global competitor that have the same product. Why would ByteDance the company or its investors want that?
Not to mention, why would they trust the US to pay tens of billions of dollars after this rigmarole? The incoming head of state doesn't exactly have a great track record of seeing through on promises to pay and is threatening tariffs against all and sundry.
Anybody with that kind of financing readily available is throwing it at AI and not another social network, no matter how useful it might be for domestic propaganda.
Which makes no sense. Meta wouldn’t sell “meta Uk”, data product, algo and all to a competitor for 20 billion or whatever the number floating around is.
Divesting the US operation would be pointless, the goal of the law is to control the algorithm, and that isn't something that the US office has access to. If they did they could simply be poached like Uber did to Waymo.
It's a distinction without a difference. Musk is effectively an agent of the state, with billions in subsidies he wants to protect, and a Chinese auto market he is desperate to be allowed into.
The CCP would not miss out on taking advantage of the situation and demanding trade concessions for agreeing to sell. US government would absolutely be involved in raising the necessary finance, as banks won't be bending over backwards to lend Musk money for another speculative venture.
* If ByteDance divests their US TikTok operations, they create a new competitor that could potentially out-compete them in other (non-US, non-Chinese) markets.
* Whatever amount of money they get for this divestiture would be much lower than what the business is worth to ByteDance (when your options are sell or shut down, potential buyers will not feel the need to bid high).
* ByteDance's US TikTok operations are certainly of non-financial value to the Chinese government. That value is likely orders of magnitude higher than their financial value to ByteDance. Selling that user base is probably not preferable to shutting down. Influence campaigns are certainly easier to run on a platform you own, but certainly those campaigns are already running on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Why add another platform that they can't control where they have to run influence campaigns?
> Not to mention, why would they trust the US to pay tens of billions of dollars after this rigmarole?
Don’t need trust when you have the second most powerful state entity backing you. Corporate America has a complete jammed full history of its interests getting screwed over by foreign entities only for the US government to step in either with military force or some coercive measure resulting in a corrective action. Im sure China is well aware of this playbook and are probably apt to copy it too.
Why is Tiktok US no longer worth $10 billion or so?
Why wouldn't American investors still want to buy it?
My guess is that American investors would want to buy it, but want the algorithm, but ByteDance is not willing to sell the algorithm out of fear that sharing it would degrade its competitive position outside the US.
> Their preference to shut down instead of receiving tens of billions of dollars would be a clear violation of a company’s fiduciary duty to shareholders for any normal company.
It seems to me that they aren't "pretending" they honestly believe the issue is about free speech. Laws that does not explicitly curtail free speech but effectively still does just that can certainly be created.
Unfortunately so. It didn't use to be that way - the ACLU used to be so principled that they would defend literal Nazis' rights. But they've fallen a long way since then.
The paradox of tolerance specifically states that one must not be tolerant of intolerance. Hence, a paradox.
Tolerance is a social contract of leaving alone others whose ways differ from your own so long as they do the same for you.
One must not tolerate those that call for violence and subjugation of differing groups, which is almost the exact opposite meaning your comment seems to be implying in my reading of it, instead calling for wholly unfiltered speech by whosoever should deem to speak.
Racists and similar hatemongers calling for others to tolerate them while they are screaming for those they disparage to be caste down and out cannot be tolerated in any reasonable forum.
As such, any reasonable forum must ban some facets of free speech.
That we disallow this power for governments is a reasonable limit on the powers of the elected to rule, lest those powers be abused.
The problem with this interpretation is of course that it lets you be as intolerant as you want to anyone you decree intolerant. Which is why it is so popular.
No that would contradict freedom of association. People are free to form closed, self-censoring groups if they choose to. What we want to avoid is the government forcing it on people.
In the sense of an adherent to Nazism, yes, neo-Nazis are Nazis.
In the context of "literal Nazis" the ACLU had argued for the rights of - like the German American Bund, which contained actual members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, not exactly.
Agree, but (and yes, whataboutism ahoy!) one can make observations about a similar lack or principle on the right.
It always seemed to me that the US was fuzzy when the very clear text of the Constitution rubbed up against the realities of a complex State. For example,
- the 1st Amendment doesnt say the speech can be overridden by a compelling national security interest, which is the argument here. But the US has security services, and legitimately there are cases where to allow speech does harm. But if you are going to be honest, shouldnt there be an amendment giving the State an override of 1A?
- 2A is infamous, of course, and for the love of $deity lets not discuss it here, but why does "not abridged" get overriden by bans in, say, machine guns, which have been on the books since the Chicago gangster era? Either you abridge or not. Or at least be honest about it .
- Some speakers in the covid era made a very strong appeal to personal bodily autonomy when it came to vaccine mandates. Ok, let's follow that. Does it not then also follow that a woman cannot be forced to carry a baby to term? That would seem logical, but the connection is not made. Conversely there is no "commonweal" override written into the Constitution and we are left with random SCOTUS decisions over the last 240 years.
Because the people 250 years ago could not have imagined the problems that we'd have invented for ourselves in these days. It was always meant to be a living document with a process of adding and changing amendments. And in between that time the the way people interact has grown more complex. If you took those same intelligent men and dropped them into today, the Amendments would look different.
It’s not a certain company, it’s a whole class of them (partially defined by POTUS’ whims)
Sure, the government can do that, and when doing so infringes on Americans’ speech or access to information, it introduces First Amendment questions that must be addressed.
“The government says CNN can’t post stories from BBC” isn’t immediately resolved by “it’s a foreign company.”
It sounds like you're saying that there's some content on TikTok that Instagram Reels/YouTube Shorts/etc. won't allow on their platforms. Is that correct? If so, can you give an example?
Both of these I suspect are handled sorta explicitly by giving the state the power to do whatever it wants if it is important and essential enough.
The courts have various categories for how important something needs to be to allow certain levels of unconstitutionality, eg suppose I have "legally" built the nuclear device featured in a recent kurgesatz video with enough kiloton to start by itself a nuclear winter kill every person on the planet... I seriously suspect SCOTUS will be ok with the state taking the ignition keys away from me
Especially when individual liberty is in contention with collective liberty. This is the "hard problem" for organizing a free society.
Eliminating traffic laws would make individuals more free in a literal sense, but those rules also make it so people can get from place to place quickly and safely. The liberty interpretation is that what people actually want is to travel, not to drive however they like. So you trade a freedom most people don't miss to enable another.
Vaccine mandates are a great example of this contention where under normal circumstances nobody cares about having to get vaccinated but they do care about not getting polio. Covid was strange in that the number of people opposed was significantly larger than I think anyone expected.
For those unaware of ACLU's change over the last 10 or so years, here is an example:
In September 2021, the ACLU wrote a New York Times op-ed defending vaccine requirements, arguing they actually advance civil liberties by protecting the most vulnerable and allowing more people to safely participate in public life. David Cole and Daniel Mach, the authors, wrote that individual liberty isn't absolute when it puts others at risk.
Surely, one can be pro vaccine mandates. But I would not expect a civil liberties organization to hold this position.
This neglects that some people can't be vaccinated or they would still be vulnerable even after an effective vaccination. You're not just vaccinated to protect yourself, it also reduces risk for the people around you.
You wouldn't expect a civil liberties organization to have an opinion on containing a dangerous pandemic? In addition to working at the ACLU the people doing their work are also humans.
Advocacy organizations shouldn't aspire to extremes. The ACLU should offer reasonable and practical help and commentary on civil liberties. Otherwise, you get the modern NRA that fights every law about firearms.
Should the ACLU defend the rights of someone to blow up nuclear bombs in their backyard?
That’s a clear curtailment of their civil liberties. And assuming they’re in a rural area may not harm anyone else either.
This is an obviously extreme example but the point still stands. Any civil liberties organization cannot focus absolutely narrowly on that question in every situation but has to apply a broader approach.
Surely you see the difference between someone having Strategic weapons in their garage, and the government forcing someone to take a medicine that they don't want to take, right?
All individual rights are balanced with the rights of other individuals/society. You can be given the choice to vaccinate or be forcefully quarantined. This has occurred many times in the US and the right of the state to do this has been upheld.
While corona was weak we will eventually seem some dangerous bullshit spread and the anti-vax dipshits are going figure out exactly what their rights entail as they are being drug from their house at gunpoint with the express will of the majority of the population.
Yes, the government has quarantine powers, which have been broadly established. They did not necessarily have the right to go about it how they did in 2020, which was through OSHA rules and other "soft power" rather than through their power to quarantine people. Almost nobody was actually quarantined in relation to COVID.
A broad, sweeping quarantine in relation to COVID would have been so unpopular that you can see why they went about it in a "softer" way, but sometimes the government can't have its cake and eat it too.
Those vaccine mandates were broadly ruled illegal, even in light of the quarantine power. These sorts of civil liberties are complicated, and the ACLU found themselves on the wrong side of this one.
There's a big difference between quarantining people who you know have a dangerous disease for a few weeks until they're better, and quarantining the entire country for years because you're not sure who has a dangerous disease.
Unlikely, freedom of domestic travel is subject to the strict scrutiny Constitutional standard (international travel is a more open question). Banning freedom of travel for the entire country would be equivalent to banning freedom of speech for the entire country, from a Constitutional perspective.
Interestingly, the myriad freedom of travel cases happened so long ago and were so decisively settled as a strong right that everyone has kind of forgotten about them because there is little interesting left to decide. Not as controversial as questions around the meaning of speech. But I think the last significant questions were addressed around the Second World War.
Quarantine powers are subject to the “strict scrutiny” standard. Freedom of domestic travel is as fundamental as freedom of speech in Constitutional law. This has been thoroughly adjudicated many times and in many contexts by the US Supreme Court, including many attempts by the government to exploit regulatory and taxation loopholes to indirectly effect that outcome.
It is unambiguously unconstitutional to prevent everyone from traveling, even for quarantine purposes. It must be evaluated on an individual basis subject to judicial review to establish that the individual presents a clear and present danger, and only for a very limited duration. No different than restrictions on speech.
This is the reason no State anywhere, regardless of who was in power, instituted hard lockdowns during COVID. This is known to be settled law to such an extent that attempting to prevent the population from traveling without clearing the strict scrutiny standard would be met with an instant Federal court injunction, likely coupled with a withering public statement questioning the competence of the State’s Attorney General. There was no upside in taking that risk.
The idea that you can forcibly quarantine someone solely because you don’t like their choices is wishcasting, not based on credible Constitutional foundations.
> Should the ACLU defend the rights of someone to blow up nuclear bombs in their backyard?
If someone actually went to court over this, I would hope/expect that the NRA would send some lawyers. The ACLU isn't that into the second amendment and has never been. However, nobody has gone to court over this. They did go to court over vaccine mandates.
By the way, the only grounds the government would have to stand on here are radiation-related. It is broadly legal to use explosives on your own property unless you're too close to someone else's property. It is also broadly legal to build your own weapons.
Pretty much every measure taken against COVID had been taken many times before during the numerous epidemics of cholera, typhus, yellow fever, bubonic plague, smallpox, and influenza that plagued (no pun intended!) the US since its founding.
Requiring inoculation/vaccination, shut downs, masks, and quarantines was generally considered a legitimate use of state power to prevent the spread of deadly diseases and not an infringement of civil liberties.
Actually this goes back to even before the US was founded. George Washington imposed mandatory smallpox inoculation on his army during the revolution. This probably contributed significantly to his victory because both the British army and native tribes that had sided with the British were heavily weakened by smallpox but Washington's was not due to that inoculation requirement.
Please share any pre-Covid example of the government shutting down all public gatherings including weddings and funerals and closing the vast majority of businesses for a substantial period of time.
There may have been isolated examples in the past, but the degree was not the same.
As I understand things, they tend to leave gun rights stuff to the enormous and well-funded NRA.
In cases from "Roe vs Wade" to "Masterpiece Cakeshop" and "Hobby Lobby" the ACLU came out against things supported by the religious right. And although the ACLU regularly supports the free speech rights of swastika-tattoed nazis - Republicans don't see that as supporting their side, because no reasonable person wants to think people with swastika tattoos are on their side.
>> Many American civil liberties organizations think that the the ban is a free speech issue:
> Honestly these "civil liberties" orgs have lost the plot a long time ago, or are just at "useful idiot" mode
Exactly. When I read "many American civil liberties organizations think," my first thought was "they think a lot of things, that doesn't mean what they think is true or a good idea."
Additionally: they're all essentially lawyers arguing one side of the case. Just listening to them is not going to lead to the correct outcomes (e.g. if courts only listened to prosecutors only, tons of innocent people would go to jail; if they only listened to defense attorneys, tons of guilty people would go free).
I don't know if it's a free speech issue but legally speaking it's definitely not a first amendment issue because the law targets foreign corporations and the Constitution doesn't apply to foreign entities
But wouldn't you be infringing the rights of the US users if you ban the platform they want to message other US users over? Isn't that indirectly infringing their free speech? Or does the first amendment not protect stuff like this?
But can the government actively interfere with my communication by banning the platform? If the government notices that a lot of critics are organizing over Discord, can they ban Discord, because they're not banning speech specifically, only a platform used to spread the speech?
I think what you raise is something the courts should consider if the government were trying to shut down a platform because of what it's users were doing on it. But it's not a live issue in this case. There is no allegation that the US seeks to suppress TikTok because of what Americans are posting on it. TikTok isn't saying the government is doing that and I don't believe the government is seeking to control the speech of TikTok users. The consern seems to be more about who controls the algorithm and data collection (a foreign state with adversarial interests) and it seems to me that it has nothing to do with anything Americans are posting on TikTok. I mean the content on TikTok isn't all that political or revolutionary
Because the drafters knew they wouldn't/couldn't/aren't allowed to/would only be able to do so to someone more under the thumb of the US government?
The actual purpose of a law or system is the actual outcome of it and not what it's dressed up to say its purpose is. A law that says "we don't allow mosques unless they're owned by people not descended from countries on a terrorism watch list" is still an infringement of the freedom of religion. We don't have to pretend there's good faith here.
> Because the drafters knew they wouldn't/couldn't/aren't allowed to/would only be able to do so to someone more under the thumb of the US government?
This is at best vacuously true. Since China is the most powerful adversary of the US, you'd say that literally anyone else is more under the thumb of the US government than they are.
Given how laws and American rights have been established to work. Yes, absolutely. They just need a legally acceptable reason to do so separate from the speech. Banning a platform because of speech they don't want isn't allowed, but banning a platform for other reasons is, even if that platform also happens to facilitate speech.
Like with tik tok, the ban itself isn't a speech issue because there's nothing bytedance can change about it's communication to not be banned, it's an ownership problem.
By your very broad definition of infringement if a newspaper refuses to pay it's taxes, and then the government shuts down the newspaper down for that, this would be infringement.
Clearly it's not.
Yes, the government can make laws that effect speech platforms just like we can make them pay taxes.
But there are American users making and viewing content on that platform.
The physical equivalent would be if China was hosting a TED-talk-like conference where anyone can come and hold a presentation, and after certain kinds of talks became popular congress would tell them that they are no longer allowed to let Americans in, neither to hold presentations nor to listen to them.
Technically that doesn't violate the constitution, but it's not difficult to argue that it does violate the spirit of the constitution
An issue arises when popularity is manipulated through artificial boosting by an adversarial government.
At some point, it becomes State Propaganda masquerading as grassroots activists.
Control over content can influence and distort public discourse and understanding. This is also against the spirit of free expression envisioned in the constitution and instead injecting an intentionally divisive voice.
The physical equivalent would be if the Chinese intelligence apparatus opened an auditorium where they said "come sit here and let us read your mind and we will feed you what advances our national interest".
Just as a thought experiment, take your reasoning and try to ban as much speech with as much specificity as you can. You can't ban the content of the speech but you can ban venues where speech takes place and and means of transmitting speech so long as at least one venue and means remains.
That's true and that's actually something the courts consider. The standard is unreasonable burden. So it's not necessarily anything that makes speech harder, but if it does make speech unreasonably burdensome then it would run afoul of the first amendment.
So if the alternative places where such speech could be hosted were extremely limited, expensive or very difficult to use then the law banning a platform could create an unreasonable burden.
Suggesting that a shuttering of TikTok represents any impediment to your First Amendment rights — even if no comparable alternative existed — is to misunderstand what was promised by the Constitution.
Of course, plenty of comparable alternatives do exist.
For the sake of the one downvote, please allow me to complete the implied dialogue tree:
>>>> It would be harder for me to learn piano if my teacher was convicted of murder.
>>> Nonsense. You can easily find another piano teacher.
>> Right, just like people who use TikTok can easily find another short form video platform.
> That's a terrible analogy.
Nonsense. If TikTok was convicted and shut down because of rampant financial fraud, your First Amendment rights would be similarly unaffected.
TikTok was told to close because they refused to bring their corporate ownership in line with requirements set out in US Code passed by Congress. The content of any video was never at issue.
Correct, but requiring American content creators and consumers to move to a different platform (when those platforms are already large, have huge reach, and have low switching costs) would likely not meet the bar for an unreasonable burden. I don't think the courts would strike down this law on first amendment grounds.
> after certain kinds of talks became popular congress would tell them that they are no longer allowed to let Americans in,
I think if that were the situation then yes the first amendment would be in issue. But I don't think anyone is saying that this is happening here. As I understand it this has nothing to do with what anyone is saying on TikTok and there are no social or protest movements gaining ground on TikTok that the government is trying to suppress. The only issue here is the foreign ownership and how that ownership is used. I don't think anyone is saying the government is doing this to silence any TikTok users
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.
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.
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.
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].
The constitution applies to American users and to non-Americans on American soil. It's not like the cops can execute you for being here on a tourist visa.
Corporations have First Amendment rights as ruled by Citizens United v. FEC. Even though corporations don’t have a vote (which is its own can of worms because of their economic power, money = vote), they still enjoy some of the same constitutional protections as individuals do.
No, there's no such reasoning in that decision, which confirmed that speech itself is protected by the first amendment, regardless of who originates it.
And this ruling had little to do with any of that -- the first amendment challenge was that the ban imposed content-based burdens on the speech of the users of TikTok, and the court ruled that it did not. So the ban therefore survived the challenge under intermediate scrutiny.
The domestic vs. foreign ownership element of the ruling only pertained to the evaluation of whether there was a compelling government interest in enacting the ban, not whether the government was exempt from first amendment scrutiny at all.
The constitution applies to the government. It establishes the government and defines -- and therefor limits -- what the government is allowed to do.
Corporations are considered "legal persons" for the purpose of applying the law to them in a convenient and organized way, but in real life, corporations are just organizational models employed by human beings for the purpose of coordinating their activities.
The restrictions applicable to what the government is allowed to do to "people" as defined in the constitution apply regardless of what organizational models those people are using to coordinate their activities. Ultimately, everything in society reduces to people, and the government is not entitled to use reified abstractions to escape the constraints on its authority.
The constitution applies to the people of the United States. It's in the first line: "We the people of the United States..."
That Constitution also includes numerous clauses granting Congress the authority to regulate international commerce (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3). TikTok is a foreign commercial enterprise. We have restricted foreign products and services since the Boston Tea Party.
> the Constitution doesn't apply to foreign entities
Sort of true. Sometimes the constitution just says "persons", which has generally been interpreted to anyone.
But it's not material, because the 1st amendment is a restriction on congress. That's why it starts with "Congress shall make no law...". The argument isn't about if TikTok has rights, it's about if congress is authorized to take this action. They're inter-mixed a bit because if TikTok does have the rights they claim, then congress automatically isn't authorized, but they are separate.
you're right, my statement is an extreme oversimplification and there are situations where the constitution does apply to noncitizens (like due process during deportation) or places where things are unclear (if speech of foreign nationals were being regulated). But this case where we are talking about a foreign media platform's right to operate in the US without any reference to the content they are broadcasting... this seems to be one of those rare clear cut cases. I mean no one saw any issue with America effectively banning RT.
There were some people on here saying that national security is just a pretense and the government is actually doing this because they dislike some of the content being posted on TikTok. I don't know if that's the case but if it were then I would concede there is a first amendment issue. But absent that I think it's safe to say that this case doesn't raise the first amendment.
> But absent that I think it's safe to say that this case doesn't raise the first amendment.
I still think it does, but it's Apple and Google's right to propagate the app, not TikTok's right to be on the app store. And since neither Apple nor Google are party to the lawsuit, nobody really has standing to take that particular line of argument.
Yes, of course Congress has the authority to restrict foreign companies purely from the Commerce Clause alone. Their power over restricting foreign entities in the U.S. is nearly total. The U.S. is under no obligation to host speech or operations from any foreign business, entity, or application for any reason whatsoever.
He wouldn't have had to resort to complex modes of influence, that's for sure. It's very scary that we've gotten to the point where people are claiming to "protect democracy" by proposing to allow institutions controlled by incumbent politicians to regulate who is allowed to say what in the lead-up to elections.
Go read the SC unanimous judgment. It’s very clear and lays out exactly why they’re wrong.
In fact they do a lot more than that because they state off the bat that there isn’t even a first amendment question (a Chinese corporation doesn’t have first amendment rights in the U.S.), but they go beyond, assume the first amendment does apply, and still explain why that isn’t valid.
Tiktok definitely isn't press and algorithm-powered social media feeds can hardly be considered free speech. It's not even speech - it's broadcast! We've regulated broadcast since its' inception.
While Tiktok doesn't have literal printing presses, neither do TV networks.
How can the first amendment be interpreted so broadly that large multinational corporations financially supporting politicians is considered free speech, yet so narrowly that social media isn't part of the media?
> large multinational corporations financially supporting politicians
You do realize that Rupert Murdoch was forced to become a US citizen because of the same laws that are in question about US media ownership.
Social media is 100% the media. Social media has freedom of speech. Businesses don't have freedom of ownership, including media business. Kinda fucky, but this is very long standing law.
Oh I agree. Citizen United was wrongly decided, and the only people who agree with it are those who benefit from the corruption it has enabled. It's far from settled law, though obviously it's not changing in the next 4 years.
As for social media - it's an advertising platform. The algorithm is deciding what you see based on what sells ads. Who is exercising free speech there? Tiktok and Meta are exercising corporate speech in the name of profit making. They have no right to host such a platform, and the government certainly has the right to regulate it if they do have one.
The government can't compel Meta, Tiktok or individual users to say X, Y, or Z, they can declare the ads-based algorithmic-content business model illegal or subject it to strict regulation - especially when its in the furtherance of free speech, like preventing Facebook from deplatforming people for having the wrong opinions that advertisers don't like.
SCOTUS, as they've done in many recent cases, is artfully skirting the substance of the issue.
How is this ban actually enforced? By fining American companies for serving specific content. That is the First Amendment issue. SCOTUS simply asserting that it's not in order to make their ruling convenient does not actually make it so.
Copyright (in the US) was literally created by the same people who wrote the 1st Amendment. Copyright is in the Constitution itself. It was very obviously an exception from the start.
"Foreign governments saying things" also existed at the same time the 1st Amendment was written, and there were no carveouts from 1st Amendment in light of that.
In any case: If SCOTUS during its early cases on copyright law (or copyright on the Internet) simply asserted "this has nothing to do with the 1st Amendment," they'd also be wrong. That would be a clear avoidance tactic not to wrangle with the substantive issue. In reality, the big cases on copyright are riddled with 1st Amendment questions, considerations, and constraints.
They ban American companies from distributing or maintaining the application, not specific content. More of a "criminal conspiracy" type of behavior rather than something that would relate to wikileaks or whoever. Can as well argue what is being banned is the data-collection side of the operation since it's the part that depends on using the app. Those companies still have the freedom to publicly state whatever the CCP has to say.
The law indeed needed to be carefully written to "skirt" any first amendment violations, and SCOTUS unanimously agreed it had done so successfully.
"Content" is narrower than "speech". In that case the restriction was described as "content-neutral". Hence it didn't require strict scrutiny, only intermediate scrutiny. Which seems like the blueprint for how they wrote the TikTok law.
I don't think that is clear at all. Refer to their amicus brief where they explain their reasoning in detail: https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/brief-amici-curiae-wr... The gist of it, which you missed, is that they think the ban violates Americans first amendment rights.
That's somewhat of a myth that lets these companies off easy, there's no ruling that says you have to maximize profit at all costs, or at all to an extent. The sole motivator is greed.
The former does not imply the latter. Look at Bezos, he spent years re-investing in Amazon to provide long-term financial benefits to his shareholders. Pressure for short-term gains comes from shareholders on Wall St, it’s not a fundamental property of shareholders.
It's a complete myth used by the greedy to justify corporate greed. The only way someone would ever be succesfully prosecuted for this is if they'd clearly intentionally crash the company. Go do a search, you won't find a single other prosecution.
I really hope this changes your mindset. The number go up mentality is purely a result of avarice from those enacting it, it has 0 to do with any laws, it's all personal greed.
I do not understand this line of argument. On the one hand there is a political decision to ban-or-annex a foreign company, on the other hand the reaction should not be political and in general political implications should not be discussed?
And if anything, if tiktok US is sold it will be way below its actual value, so there are many reasons to resist this apart from the political ones. And I assume they expect they will come to a concession in the first place.
This is like saying that closing all churches of a religion is not a big deal as the people can perfectly pray by themselves. (Also since they can pray in their head why not making that religion's prayers illegal to speak aloud)
If you used to assemble at a public park, and the city closes the park entirely to turn it into something else, does that violate your right to assemble too?
Even if it was the town square, if the property went from public to private ownership property ownership laws trump your free speech laws. You cannot come on to my properly and say whatever you want, more so you can't say it's not trespassing because of freedom of speech.
If the city sold the public property with the specific intent of having a private entity stop protected speech they were powerless to stop then yes, it would be a free speech issue
Interesting position. I wonder if another country could just force Musk to divest himself of Twitter in the same way. Could solve a lot of headaches that way. Maybe the EU could force the issue.
Possibly they could force him to divest from whatever legal entity Twitter operates under in that country, or force Twitter to stop operating in that country, but they would have no authority over the US corporation.
Depends on the political power of the entity and it's existing laws.
In your example, Musk could stop the app in the EU, much like TT is/was doing.
With this said, is the EU law written like the long standing US laws that give the TT law the power it has? If they have to enact new laws that would conflict with its member states wishes/dealings with other nations, expect it go to nowhere.
It won't. It would be fantastic if the EU banned Meta or X. Instead they're suddenly scared of continuing to fine them for their endless illegal data harvesting and gatekeeping to cozy up to Trump.
That would be if they were American, even if they were not Chinese, not every country puts shareholders capitalism above everything else a company is suppose to decide upon.
But those running corporations are fiduciaries - the have a legal and ethical obligation to their shareholders. If those shareholders want to not maximize profits and have other objectives, then that's totally fine and then the managements obligations are to those aims of the shareholders.
> pretending that the TikTok law is a speech issue
A lot of folks here are saying that the TT ban had nothing to do with free speech. A couple of indirect rhetorical questions that might be relevant to help illuminate opinions about TT:
1. If there were a single newspaper (in the pre-internet era) that developed and printed a lot of reporting with a particular political outlook and was the home of many columnists known for being the premier thinkers with that outlook, and a law were passed that had nothing to do with the content but had the effect of shutting down that paper, and only that paper, would this be a speech issue?
2. If a political rally were assembling to petition for redress of their grievances, and a law were passed that told them they could say what they wanted but the rally was only allowed to occur in a specific field 30 miles outside the city and 3 miles from the nearest paved road, would this be a speech issue?
3. Given that deadtree-books-in-physical-libraries are not the primary point of reference for most people anymore, if you wanted to block access to certain kinds of information and/or make a statement about doing so, what action would you take in the 21st century to do the equivalent of a book burning? And would this be a speech issue?
There are obvious and easy things you can point out about how the TT law is different from each of those three scenarios, don't @ me about that. But it seems to me that most people who are serious (or, publicly serious, which is a little different) about supporting the TT ban give reasons for it that would be inconsistent with their answers to one or more of those three questions.
Which of these examples includes the parts about foreign control? This is the primary issue as far I was aware. The chinese state does not have first amendment protections because they are not american citizens.
(1) Doesn't match the situation at all, because the law didn't require the paper to shutdown - it required a foreign company to divest so that it is US-owned, and the paper could continue operations as normal.
That's a pretty substantial difference.
(2) Also doesn't match the situation, there is no requirement that TikTok restrict the reach or audience of their content in any way AFAIK.
(3) The situation is more akin to "foreign government owns the local library, and can decide based on the identity of the person walking in which books the person is allowed to see and check out" - seems obviously problematic at least /if they do that/
As many have pointed out it is not only titok's free that is in question, but rather the free speech of its users.
As an analogy you could imagine that all the people in the cases above are neonazi pedos and you might conclude that they do not deserve free speech, but the point of the parent is that in all of those cases the free speech of the people was being infringed upon (the question is whether that is justified or not)
>"Their preference to shut down instead of receiving tens of billions of dollars would be a clear violation of a company’s fiduciary duty to shareholders"
> Their preference to shut down instead of receiving tens of billions of dollars would be a clear violation of a company’s fiduciary duty to shareholders for any normal company
This is only true if you assume the US is the only market that matters. But TikTok is very much an international phenomenon, and selling would likely harm the company far more than a couple billion. Firstly it would give another company everything they need to run a global competitor to TikTok, including software, infrastructure and userbase. Secondly it might encourage other countries to also force TikTok to sell.
Giving in here would be the beginning of the end of TikTok and could well be argued to be a violation of the company's fiduciary duty to shareholders. It would be the ultimate version of chasing short-term gains by selling the long-term future.
Bytedance is privately held. With a 20% stake by founders and employees.
Divesting according to the bill terms would have them giving away portion of their most precious IP that is the fyp recommendation system. Any reasonable company would refuse to totally divest and create a competitor just because a government said so. Also TikTok makes money for advertizing to the entire world not just the US.
It's not "give away" when they get to charge the market price for it. They presumably also wouldn't inherently even have to split up the company, rather than e.g. do an IPO for the entire global enterprise.
The valuation and acquisition process of the US branch of TikTok would take more than 8 months as outlined by the language of the bill. So it's already forcing them to receive chump change for it. Besides I don't think any company's strategic decisions like this should be solicited by a government. That goes against the free enterprise.
This has been a possibility for a lot longer than 8 months. Trump was talking about it during his first term more than four years ago. You can take the time to line up buyers even if you don't end up having to sell, but if you have the time and then don't use it, whose fault is that?
> Besides I don't think any company's strategic decisions like this should be solicited by a government. That goes against the free enterprise.
Of course it's not free enterprise. It's a government regulation.
If the US passes a law that says US companies aren't allowed to do business with Russia, that's not free enterprise either. Should those laws be unconstitutional? Maybe, but not any less than this one.
"Free enterprise" is a fantasy. We don't have that, pretty much never had. And I think that's a good thing. Free enterprise/free markets tend to monopolize and prey on workers and consumers.
> Their preference to shut down instead of receiving tens of billions of dollars would be a clear violation of a company’s fiduciary duty to shareholders for any normal company.
This is not strictly true - when a company leaves a huge market, it is imprudent to leave behind a well-resourced competitor in place. If I were a ByteDance shareholder, I'd hate if it spun off TikTok America LLC, and then having TikTok America compete against ByteDance in Europe and the Rest of the world on an equal technological footing, but perhaps even deeper pockets from American markets.
everything… the world does not revolve solely around USA. the EU should ban all US social media companies too unless they are sold to one of EU countries, that makes sense, right?
You joke, but with the power these companies have over peoples minds (enough people to sway elections) it is a reality we may be going towards; each power constellation a different social media universe.
TikTok has the power to sway any election how they want. The data available to them about what reels sways what people in what direction is immense. The only question is if they are doing it.
In 20 years I expect either democracy to vanish, or algorithmic social media to be widely banned, or control over algorithmic social media to be viewed more like control over nuclear weapons...
Because seems insane to think that only because U.S says that Bytedance need to be divest or be banned, that any company will prefer to divest... And if the company doesn't do it, it's because of "hidden reasons"
"Shut down in the US" not shut down everywhere, if I'm not mistaken. It also doesn't seem like an obvious violation of their fiduciary duty. The eventual growth in all other jurisdictions could easily be claimed to be worth more than the sale price, and it could also be argued that selling to US holders would harm the platform internationally.
This does not make sense, it is like saying that requiring bezos to sell his newspapers is not a free speech issue (I might or might not support such action as I am not a free speech absolutist)
>Their preference to shut down instead of receiving tens of billions of dollars would be a clear violation of a company’s fiduciary duty to shareholders for any normal company.
Would you argue for Tesla or Apple to sell to China? Do you think Musk would divest his China business? The parallels are almost identical
1. Tesla cars collect a huge amount of data.
2. Tesla is already banned from being driven by government officials.
3. Tesla has the best self driving algorithm
4. Chinese cars are already banned in the US
5. China is Tesla's second largest market
6. Tesla is the 3rd largest EV company in China
Would you be surprised if Elon decided to exist China instead of "receiving tens of billions of dollars" from China?
I'm not buying this drivel - the company stands to make way more than one rushed and limited buyout would garner.
Your argument is a false dichotomy, and it's made in bad faith. You argue that they should have taken a 10B pay day, meanwhile they are alive today and arguable worth over 100B.
My read is that the US government originally wanted to try to force TikTok to restructure its relationship with China so it wouldn't be under control of the party, either by leaving the country or more likely selling to a US-friendly owner. This was the argument when Trump toyed with the idea during his first mandate.
Occam's Razor suggests this was due to both a matter of national security from the perspective of the intelligence community and pressure from US companies who have struggled to outcompete TikTok. Basically an "everybody wins" move for the powers that be.[1]
China understandably didn't want to lose its influence, and ByteDance didn't want to give up this incredibly valuable asset, so they said "We'll call your bluff and fight you on the basis of the freedom of speech".
The US government then moved to get a law signed that carves out a very specific way to force ByteDance's hand. I'm sure there were lots of lawyers involved and maybe some back channel with the SCOTUS to make sure this was done in a constitutional manner so that it would survive a suit from TikTok which was all but guaranteed.[2]
That plan worked, so now ByteDance/TikTok/CCP are again forced to sell, except they come to this round of negotiations in a much worse position than they were originally. This makes it better for the many, many buyers that have come out of the woodwork and made public and private bids for the asset.
But these buyers don't want the actual value of TikTok to drop to zero, so they must also be pressuring president-elect Trump to reinstate the app so that it can continue to be used by Americans and therefore remain valuable, so that when they actually get their money's worth when it inevitably changes hands.
Trump isn't restoring TikTok so that it can continue to operate as in the "status quo ante bellum negotii". He's restoring it so that {insert buyer} can claim the spoils in a few weeks.
---
[1]: We can debate whether "everybody wins" includes the US population, but I think they do, because Chinese influence over US culture is strictly worse than US influence over US culture, seeing as incentives are by definition irreconcilable and therefore always worse if under control of the CCP.
[2]: It stands to reason that all of the US government and the top echelons of business and finance is operating in concert here to drive the outcome they want, which is to remove the influence of the CCP over young American minds and to benefit from forcing the asset to be controlled by a US entity.
<< That plan worked, so now ByteDance/TikTok/CCP are again forced to sell, except they come to this round of negotiations in a much worse position than they were originally.
I appreciate the analysis even if I disagree with it.
<< many buyers that have come out of the woodwork and made public and private bids for the asset.
It is mildly funny given that China is not selling it. It was defacto made a real geopolitical issue with 170m US users as pawns. They may well be buyers, but China is not in a position of weakness here. If anything, the past 48h showed that users can simply say 'fuck it' out of spite.
In short, from game theory perspective, even if they decided to sell, they can now extract heavy concessions. Yeah, US won so hard on this one.
As I may have mentioned in another post, individual players may have gained some ground, but that is it. US lost a lot in this exchange alone.
> Some people signing up for some other services was not what drove Trump to announce this executive action.
To me, there is a strong appearance of quid pro quo between ByteDance and Trump. In that case, there doesn't need to be a sale. Trump likely will require a simulation of restructuring which enables him to declare ByteDance in compliance, and the whole things goes away.
US came out way ahead here. They gain full control of TikTok. They have a precedent now to ban apps from hostile power. They gained even more respect from countries that hate China/russia/iran, such as Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, India, etc. they now project power over countries that were trying to play both sides of US and China, such as Singapore, Malaysia. And of course, Chinese government took this takedown with a whimper, signaling it is really powerless against US
<< They have a precedent now to ban apps from hostile power.
Is that a good thing? If so, why?
<< They gained even more respect from countries
Heh, you honestly may want to reconsider this statement. It is not respect, when China openly effectively says 'nah' to sale and shutters the app instead..
<< Chinese government took this takedown with a whimper
Huh? Dude... where did you see a whimper. Allow me to revisit events.
1. Congress passes a law effectively banning TikTok
2. TikTok sues over free speech and loses appeal with SCOTUS
3. Rather than selling, it shuts down the app
4. Users go everywhere, but ( apparently ) US apps
5. Incoming administration gives assurances it won't actually enforce anything for now
I accept there are ways of looking at things, but this is something else.
What makes you think Trump will require anything meaningful of TikTok? What’s important is what TikTok can do for him, not anything related to national security or ownership concerns.
> What makes you think Trump will require anything meaningful of TikTok?
I'm not sure I follow as I didn't say Trump will require anything and I don't know what "meaningful" means in this sentence.
> What’s important is what TikTok can do for him, not anything related to national security or ownership concerns.
You're neglecting what the _sale_ of TikTok can do for him, which is to curry an immense amount of favor with Big Tech, Wall Street and the intelligence community, and possibly one or several unnamed players in this negotiation.
> I'm not sure I follow as I didn't say Trump will require anything and I don't know what "meaningful" means in this sentence.
I thought you said that Trump would require TikTok to be sold. Did I misread? I was asking why you think Trump will require anything meaningful of TikTok. More specifically, why do you think Trump would require TikTok to sell?
> You're neglecting what the _sale_ of TikTok can do for him, which is to curry an immense amount of favor with Big Tech, Wall Street and the intelligence community, and possibly one or several unnamed players in this negotiation.
Is that any more valuable than the things which TikTok can give him?
I had to scroll past too many "free speech" takes to finally get to this well-thought analysis of the saga.
It has nothing to do with free speech. The US was always going to wind up owning TikTok and influencing speech on the platform. The key issue was price, which is affected by leverage. The strict top-down, centralized control ideals behind CCP/ByteDance/TikTok (they're all the same) were once again outdone by the aforementioned "powers that be".
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 462 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Ed: to be clear, the original title specifically mentioned an executive order.
Russian Prime Minister Medvedev comes to President Putin and nervously tells him to abolish these time zones.
- Why, Putin asks him?
- Ah, I can't find myself with these times:
- I fly to another city, call home and everyone is asleep,
- I last woke you up at 4 in the morning, but I thought it was only evening,
- I call Angela Merkel to congratulate her on her birthday and she tells me she had it yesterday,
- I wish the Chinese President a happy New Year, and he says it will be tomorrow.
- Well, these are just minor awkwardness, Putin answered him
- Do you remember when that Polish plane crashed with the president? I called them to express my condolences, but the plane hadn't taken off yet !!
- A COINTELPRO-inspired diversion undermines the cause: during demonstrations, individuals wishing to speak must wait in line, while women, minorities, and other groups are prioritized.
- This method becomes widespread in media narratives over the next 15 years, fueling focus on these topics and deepening societal divisions while bankers slip under the radar.
- Initially driven by billionaires, the movement is soon co-opted by financial firms, corporations, and government entities.
- Ultimately, Trump is reinstated, while Zuckerberg, Gates, Bezos, and, to some extent, Altman align with Thiel and Musk, reversing their previous stances with a dramatic 180° shift.
The oligarchy endures.
The restrict act was written really strangely, and I assume Oracle required some assurance from someone to not just delete Bytedance's accounts and resources.
The fine to each company (Apple, Google, Oracle, TikTok) was in the order of around $5bn each if they kept the lights on, so I would be hesitant to keep it running too without something in writing.
No EO from Trump will change that.
"Biden Signs a Bill That Could Ban TikTok. Now Comes the Hard Part." https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/technology/bytedance-tikt...
"Biden signed a bill to force a sale of TikTok or ban it. What’s next?" https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/24/biden-signs-tiktok-...
"Biden signs a bill that could ban TikTok — after the 2024 election" https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/congress-biden-bil...
And to prove how much of a stunt this was from TikTok, they turned their services back on less than 24 hours later even though nothing had changed.
Yes, but we're not arguing about whether Biden agreed with the bill, but that turning it off was a stunt on TikTok's part.
Someone said there was an executive order, but there was not. He said he wouldn't enforce it, obviously signaling that it's up to the incoming administration.
The fact that TikTok turned off for only 12 hours makes it pretty obvious they wanted to have a good relationship with Trump by giving him some positive PR. Which is ironic considering banning it was primarily pushed by Trump to begin with, but people have obviously forgotten that.
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1138556168486...
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/tiktok-ban-b...
Some thoughts from Donald Trump: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1138556168486...
Isn't ByteDance already owned 60% by international (mostly American) investors?
https://usds.tiktok.com/who-owns-tiktoks-parent-company-byte...
But again, I don't really care about the nationality of the elites.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/tiktok-ban-b...
> The ByteDance unit that sold golden shares to China's government holds the licenses of Toutiao and Douyin to operate under local law.
So those shares don't mean much as far as TikTok's operations are concerned.
Edit: found one from Pew. "The share of Americans who support the U.S. government banning TikTok now stands at 32%." Sept 05, 2024. In contrast, 87% US lawmakers voted for the law that caused this.
I think there are probably some people who are pushing this for self-interested reasons (American social media apps) but also I think the stated reason for the ban is probably the truthful motivation, and I'm ambivalent about trusting the US government and US corporations not to spy on me, but I tend to trust the US government when they say they are trying to stop China from spying on me. And if zero people spying on me is not an option, well, fewer people would probably be an improvement.
Right. If the Chinese government is not using TikTok to spy on citizens of their adversaries -- or, more likely, influence citizens of their adversaries -- then the Chinese government is full of incompetent fools. And I think it's safe to say that the Chinese government is not full of incompetent fools.
If the only tool we have for measuring Washington's behavior against public opinion is one that doesn't accurately reflect public opinion, then that means that we just don't have a reliable way to measure Washington's behavior against public opinion.
Can you point to the source of your argument? Furthermore -- can you point out how this particular poll is one of the misleading and incorrect ones?
So given all of that, I think the burden of proof is properly the other way around. Why do you think this particular poll is reliable?
Alternate tools include:
* elections, e.g. flipping control of house to party opposite the president.
Numerous examples of badly and broadly worded polls exist to tell you 87% of the country agrees on XYZ. There isn’t a damn thing up for debate in the United States that 87% of the population agrees on, so that’s your first tip-off. A nuanced question garnering 56% may be more believable, but even then, stay highly skeptical of polls: poll MoE, poll audience selection, poll respondents, and poll questions. Together these all make for a house of cards.
The vast majority of security threats does not cause any public outrage. It is dealt with behind the scenes.
But it's a big problem that the framing has often been about the data privacy thing.
But I think older people do care now about the potential for hostile foreign propaganda affecting our politics, and I think the younger folks who (reasonably!) care more now about losing their favorite entertainment app will grow up and understand the propaganda problem when they're older. That is, I don't think it's a generational thing, I think it's an age thing. And politics is driven by people over the age of 30.
People do, and after Snowden revelation, they wonder why they should care.
The population was forced to accept the fact that they are constantly spied on 10 years ago.
Decisions have consequences.
If you're diaspora and other smaller interest groups for sure, but the general citizen probably wouldn't care at an individual level. I'd argue that the NSA revelations and how everything just got worse and worse since then killed any chance of the public caring about this kind of stuff.
I hope our adversaries believe the same one day!
We have proof. There is no guessing here.
Support has declined and opposition has increased. I don't think there's much of a disconnect here though, since it doesn't seem there are many people with strong opinions counter to what Congress chose to do.
The amount of propaganda on TT is rather huge, though I won't say any different than US media, just more of it these days oriented to how 'good' China is.
If tomorrow China becomes a global beacon of high-quality and affordable healthcare, maybe US will actually feel some pressure to fix its issues.
Vote for your congress members.
That group seems like the most interesting question... what sub groups do they fall into.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/super-awkward-clip-republica...
But that's why it isn't a direct democracy. Sometimes government needs to do things that are not popular.
But of course this is always going to be an opportunity for a populist to take advantage of the disconnect. Sometimes, as in this case, that is damaging. But of course it's well within the rights of politicians to play that game.
The relevant poll would be one right after the ban was enacted on bipartisan support. It's far too politicized now meaning that a huge percentage of people will simply support/reject it purely based off of "their candidate" being for/against it.
This holds for both sides of the debate.
Note that a majority/plutority becomes more skewed when aggregating constituencies.
Granted 52% -> 87% is still a big increase, but there you have it.
Whatever it is, this has gone off the rails and the public is going to need a real explanation if they decide to move forward with the ban.
I don't think I've seen anything like it in a long time. I also don't think an American company would ever do that as it seems "unprofessional." Ironically, it probably got them huge bonus points so they know what they're doing.
Not between corporate influence and no corporate influence.
Not equating the two questions.
> I have no issue with American companies trying to change American policies.
For me that's a naive stance that ignores the problem of corporate influence on politics.
Apart from that, how is US corporate influence necessarily better than foreign corporate influence? Neither care about the US general public. Some US companies knowingly harm their own citizens (Philip Morris, Exxon, Purdue, etc.)
One can argue the problem with TikTook is that it's controlled by the government of an adversary nation (from the viewpoint of the US), but it's not just the fact that the company resides in a foreign country.
I clarified someone else’s statement, like a busybody, because their position deserves to be supported or supplanted based on its own merits.
The choice they set up was an ingroup vs outgroup choice. You are discussing fair systems.
There’s a common ground between both these positions, and I would have liked to see that conversation occur.
For what it’s worth, I can sympathize with a desire to support in groups, however fair systems are the practical way to achieve that.
> The choice they set up was an ingroup vs outgroup choice.
What I wanted to point out is that it really is a false choice because it assumes that US companies have the interest of the general public in mind.
Have you been paying attention the last few weeks?
NVIDIA: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/ai-policy/ "As the first Trump Administration demonstrated, America wins through innovation, competition and by sharing our technologies with the world — not by retreating behind a wall of government overreach."
Companies aren't stupid. They know that in order to be successful in today's world, you have to personally fellate Trump. Thanks to the American voters for bringing us this reality.
I think they should have tried to adapt, they decided to focus their efforts on putting the genie back in the bottle.
Technological progress has made us more affluent and better off. My father grew up in Europe and his family couldn’t even afford shoes for him or education past the third grade. I am wholly uninterested in anti-tech politics or a politics of stagnancy as seems popular in Europe. Democrats need to stop looking to Europe for inspiration and become the party of abundance, redistribution, and human capital investment. How can we make everyone better off, rather than focusing our energies on finding the next bogeyman to blame.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
How much time? Because the way free speech absolutists talk about these ideas always seem to imply that we are mere moments from a country like Germany collapsing into authoritarianism. What evidence do we have that the US's level of free speech is truly better than a country like Germany which does specifically restrict the speech of Nazis?
The internet has created a global town square where the loudest voices are the ones that catch people’s attention, regardless of the veracity of their claims. There is no truth any more, only the cult of personality.
Tomorrow the US installs a racist, rapist, treasonous kleptocrat as president because the majority of people are unable to think objectively and swallow his promises at face value, despite every indication that life will be immeasurably worse if you’re not a billionaire oligarch.
A lot of people see the culture shift and start posting less or leave, and then the ratio gets worse and worse. Freedom from government restriction of speech is a good thing, but I disagree that this new era calls for throwing out norms of discussion platforms curating their communities' cultures.
I fully acknowledge there are valid, interesting philosophical reasons to host a site like Twitter or 8chan where "if it's legal it's allowed", but on net I think the benefits do not outweigh the costs.
*(Even many 4chan boards are less obnoxious. In part due to its linear format.)
Populations being persuaded into harbouring extremely bad ideas is a thing.
Wasn't it Republicans that initiated what would eventually lead to the ban of TikTok? Maybe I remember incorrectly.
> How can we make everyone better off
Wasn't it a really long time ago that was the goal in the US? It seems capitalism leads to a very different goal than "redistribute so everyone is better off"
The ban was and remains deeply bipartisan.
(P.S. Given your deep involvement in the bill and the sheer amount of comments you make on this site trying to convince readers that it's both popular and necessary, I think you should absolutely disclose your position on the bill. I'm a transit and modeshare advocate and I do not discuss specific bills I have helped author and sponsor online without disclaimers.)
Trump is doing what the law permits, granting a 1-time extension of not more than 90 days. In the meantime, he’ll find a way to remove the national security threat.
> why did it need to be combined in a foreign aid package to Ukraine rather than stand on its own?
This is how all bills are passed. I also advocated for the Ukraine bill; that was the weaker (and far more partisan, though not entirely so) of the two.
> I do not discuss specific bills I have helped author and sponsor online without disclaimers
Cool. I do not. (I’ll disclose my involvement if I need to add gravitas or if there’s a conflict. But it’s not a conflict to be arguing for a thing I advocated for, or vice versa. I’m not professionally in politics, after all.)
You've got things reversed. The ban is what the Republicans wanted and the Ukraine support was bundled in to take advantage of that. They wanted the Tiktok ban so much they allowed the Ukraine funding (as part of the larger funding bill).
No. Heads up, he wins; tails up, blame Biden.
The gay marriage bill was at Israel’s bidding?
I worked on the TikTok bill. I really don’t care about Israel. While it’s tempting to see everything through the lens of your pet issue, it’s myopic to believe everything is motivated by a single cause, particularly a foreign-policy line.
No. It was national security risks that have been amply disclosed. The Cuban Missile Crisis was still a crisis even if the Soviets didn’t launch.
This has been publicly litigated well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7xTxAilSF0
Tiktok ban bill was due to it being more pro palestinian. It's no coincidence that most congress members get funded by Israeli lobbyist group.
Not sure who "we" are, but they're wrong.
It's not a war I have strong views nor knowledge about. I've never visited either place and while I respect people who have strong views on both sides of the debate, my pet war over the last few years has been Ukraine. (Though even there I'm aware enough not to paint everything through the lens of Russian meddling.)
Nope, just worked on it as a private citizen. (Don't have an account with any Meta service.)
In an ideal world, we'd regulate social media. I've tried and failed advocating for privacy legislation--the people who are passionate about privacy in America, unofortunately, also tend towards political nihilism, which makes the cause a political nonstarter. I'm also concerned about Chinese influence over American society, and care about Taiwan's security, so TikTok sort of aligned between my views on privacy, teen mental health and national security.
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/06/900019185/trump-signs-executi...
Trump proposed the TikTok ban and even tried to enforce it via executive action during his first term. He also said he would put Zuckerberg in prison and attacked big tech companies for almost a decade at this point. The reason Silicon Valley is aligning themselves with Trump’s administration is for strategic reasons. If there are any ideological reasons I doubt these would stand the test of pendulum shifts.
Republican speaker Johnson also still wants to enforce the ban and only considers Trump’s interference as a delay to have TikTok sold to a US entity (which the bill explicitly allows as an alternative): https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/speaker-johnson-2-...
This line in particular sums up the cynical stance of these billionaires:
> We are non-partisan, one issue voters: If a candidate supports an optimistic technology-enabled future, we are for them. If they want to choke off important technologies, we are against them.
They simply don't care about society as a whole, they want their businesses to thrive, no matter what.
Trump is a criminal? The Dems are wrong. Trump brings up trans issues during elections? The Dems are wrong. Trump lies constantly? Somehow, the Dems are still wrong.
Let’s be fair: we can only blame the Dems. Because how do you blame a force of nature like Trump? Bring up any substantiative discussion, and you get identity politics and gotchas.
Facts don't matter, because "everyone has their own facts.", even when they dont.
People arent really discussing reality. They're fighting for their teams. But the least thing we can agree, is that the Dems had to have made some mistakes, since they didnt stop it. They didn't win. So the Dems are wrong.
Trump won. So Trump is right. Even if he isnt.
Because we can agree, the dems are wrong.
The reality distortion field that the world builds around Trump and against democrats is literally insane. I unironically believe the source is an IRL SCP object (they have to exist otherwise no explanation for no cornucopia on the fruit of the loom logo) - and trump lucked out into being in possession of one or being that object!
Biden said it best: The USA has gone through the greatest economic recovery story NEVER TOLD. Democrats do great policy work and NEVER get credit for it.
Obama was a great president, Biden was a great president, Carter was among our very best of presidents, and NONE of them get the damn respect they deserve.
Trump, yet again, on day 1 gets an insanely good economy, an insanely good geopolitical situation, etc. Why? Because of those no good horrible marxist dummicrats!
Trump voters tomorrow will magically gain 100,000$ in their bank account, an extra house, 1$ gas, eggs, and groceries, and 500 more guns. And the day trump walks out in 2028 (if that happens) and a democrat comes in, they will instantiate become papurs again.
Whats the realistic alternative? Standing up to Trump? The president who has explicitly said he will retaliate against firms and individuals who oppose him.
The same president who was re-elected even though everyone knew this was coming?
If this bothers you, and you want to address it, focus on identifying the real root cause and work toward changing that.
And if you genuinely believe firms would act differently, make the case. But let’s be honest—how many rational people would stand up to someone who:
- Faces no accountability, - Has the Supreme Court and legislature backing him, - Is in power for a second term, - Commands an incredibly effective political machine (Fox-GOP), - has die-hard voters behind him?
Chinese nationals know how to deal with Party officials because necessary to get ahead in China, not because it's some racial trait.
> We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office.
Additionally, an extract from TikTok's later statement [1]:
> In agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring service. We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive.
What the fuck? That's some incredible bootlicking by TikTok. They've done a great job making Biden seem like the bad guy for banning TikTok, while Trump saves the day by rescuing them. This is especially ironic considering Trump was the one who wanted to introduce the ban in the first place until he gained 15M followers on the platform.
[1] https://xcancel.com/TikTokPolicy/status/1881030712188346459
July 7, 2020 - Secretary of State Mike Pompeo considers banning TikTok: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53319955
July 31, 2020 - Donald Trump wants to ban TikTok and will not allow ByteDance to sell the platform to an American tech company: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/31/tech/tiktok-trump-bytedan...
August 3, 2020 - Donald Trump backpedals and allows ByteDance to sell the platform to an American tech company: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/aug/03/tiktok-ro...
August 6, 2020 - Donald Trump declares a national emergency based on the information TikTok collects: https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/ex...
I will give you excellent odds we're going to immediately see a definite difference between presidencies here.
Given the past four years have seen things like shutting down labor strikes, support foreign wars, expanding arctic drilling at record pace, increased police budgets, erosion of women's rights, erosion of lgbtq rights, and a steady increase in corporate power... I think the difference we'll see is in degree, not in direction.
> Biden removed anti lgbtq discrimination rules
It also affirmed that they felt they could supersede state law to protect caregivers (doctors, etc) who provide care against the law in their state (gender affirming care). They declined to exercise that authority and explicitly said they would not.
They also said they would consider provider discrimination only on a case by case basis (which they are not funded to do, and leaves poorer people more likely to suffer discrimination).
They added language stating "nothing in this rule imposes a requirement that covered entities provide gender affirming care".
They specifically struck the following language: "a providers belief that gender transition or other gender affirming care can never be beneficial for such individuals is not sufficient basis for a judgement that a health service is not clinically appropriate." Basically giving doctors the explicit right to say "I don't believe in gender affirming care and will not provide it".
I hear exactly what you are saying, clear as day.
For example, consider a male convict who desires to be incarcerated in the female prison estate. Is it really civil rights discrimination to deny him this? If so, how?
Most importantly, what about the civil rights of the female prisoners he would be incarcerated with, if this were permitted?
If I was under constant threat of rape or murder, I would do anything to get to a situation that I thought might be less dangerous.
Yes, you are right Biden did nothing to protect LGBTQ folks, but he did also take action to harm them.
Neither party is offering anything different.
No, the problem is people like you who try to convince others that Democrats and Republicans are the same, when some child-level reasoning is all that's necessary to disprove this tired bit of rhetoric.
And then there’s the fact that the conditions for an extension aren’t met as written in the law. There’s no way he can certify to Congress that the conditions are met, which is why he’s trying to use an executive order. But that’s illegal.
This was literally nothing but a political play intended to give Trump a boost.
If Biden or Harris won the election, TikTok would have been completely banned with zero intervention at all as you have seen with how it went and Biden whilst still being president would have done nothing and it took Trump to stop it.
Seriously the Democrats made themselves look very bad with this situation.
Trump is not a president yet.
The TikTok ban was upheld by the Supreme Court only days ago. If Americans don’t want this law, they should elect a different Congress.
That is my point. The Democrats made themselves look very bad with this situation and Biden did nothing and supported the bill anyway and just signed it.
In fact he replaced Trump's original EO with a worse one which includes still supporting the TikTok ban and Biden signed that last year which made it so that if the Democrats won the election, then TikTok would have been still completely banned with no reversal whatsoever.
In effect, those who voted for Biden or Harris also were voting for a TikTok ban, which that is beyond hilarious as everyone saw that he didn't halt the ban.
He expressed his changed opinion in 2024. Was it because he met with Jeff Yass who holds 7% of ByteDance (which owns TikTok) and is a major Republican donor? Who knows.
But what is clear is that this is again morphing into a talking point against the Democrats even though all of this started with Trump initially.
Never mind that it was him who initially trued to ban it.
Nevertheless a positive development.
I know which of the two I'd pick, but yeah, I guess you can say they might also restructure out of the CCP's control, which I think is unlikely because China then just gets paid $0.
Another alternative would be for lawmakers in this new congress to change the law they just passed but given the Republican majority is very narrow and there is plenty of support for the ban across the isle, I find it hard to believe they will be able to do so. But sure, that's also a possible scenario.
You are assuming a lot in that one sentence seemingly without realizing it.
Aside from the technical features and algorithmic superiority, the community on TikTok is completely different. Have you seen the comment sections on the apps you mention? TikTok has created a beautiful community, and it’s a community that cannot be reached on the other two apps, regardless of their feature set.
And, you forgot to add, do not allow expression of thoughts that are not culturally accepted in US.
So while there is some irony with Trump having previously supported the ban, the practical reality is that he and Susquehanna and the Republicans all are winning big on this one, from a political/financial lens.
Either way it feels like there are games being played, and the country is watching because tik tok is so heavily used by so many people
> The law banning TikTok, which was scheduled to go into effect Sunday, allows the president to grant a 90-day extension before the ban is enforced, provided certain criteria are met.
and
> After the Supreme Court greenlit the law on Friday, the Biden administration issued a statement saying it would not enforce the ban, leaving that responsibility to Trump.
> "The law banning TikTok [...] allows the president to grant a 90-day extension before the ban is enforced, provided certain criteria are met."
And opposed by a Democratic party which was very much controlled (to a fault) by its machine.
That's roughly where the similarities end though. I think they'd have strongly diverged on key points such as a man's duty to his country in war, presidential pardons, and right in the *****.
There's a quote I can't find right now that goes something along the lines of "If you let somebody define the terms of your reality, you've made a sorcerer out of them, unless you catch the bastard real quick".
Trump to a T.
Four quotes that capture the essence of not letting others define your reality or exert control over your perception:
1. “He who defines the terms wins the argument.” - various thinkers.
2. “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” - Eleanor Roosevelt
3. “Until lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” - Chinua Achebe
4. “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.” - Jean-Paul Sartre
Absurd that the Republicans are somehow going to swoop in and "Save the day" on an issue they themselves championed.
What would have been a solution to the problem that people would have appreciated?
There is no "algorithm": the policies of a service like Tiktok are spread throughout its entirety. The only meaningful way to "release the algorithm" would be to release the whole source code.
Furthermore, releasing the source code wouldn't help, since regular people aren't able to understand what it means; and there is no way to verify that the released source code corresponds to what is actually being run.
It would be great if there was some way to verify that a service you're using matches some published code, but we don't have that.
Releasing the code does help. Joe can't open up his car and fix the engine control code, but the local repair shop can and they can also understand it and raise to a journalist "huh this manufacturer pushed a new version that'll make it stop driving if you service it at the workshop of a competitor" or whatever the car equivalent of this tiktok algorithm concern would be
The second problem you mention, I fully agree with: verifying whatever they publish. Client source code, you barely even need because it'll just be a front end for what the servers decide to show you. Verifying that what they say the server code is, is really what the server runs, that's the hard bit. But claiming to be open could be a start; something we can find discrepancies in and push for further openness
Whether this will solve the national security concerns and help with the youth mental health crisis that's often linked to social media, that's all way beyond my expertise and I have no opinion on the matter. Just that, in general, not everyone needs to understand everything in the world for it to be useful to publish
What? Doesn't the opinion itself literally say that the threat of "covert manipulation of the content" was one of the government's justification? Never mind the millions of times that Chinese control over the content people view has been brought up as a rationale both inside of Congress and outside? Haven't these been beaten to death already?
https://reason.com/volokh/2025/01/17/speaking-with-and-in-fa...
Like inflation, this was a problem Trump created and now he’s getting credit for fixing it.
I consider the Chinese oversight a plus. It’s much more sensitive to Asian values for the most part.
If it had values your 12yo wouldn’t be on it as Douyin has an age restriction of 18+, and prenatal consent if 13-17. Under 13 is prohibited. It also has time restriction of 40 minutes per day for 13-14yo and only accessible between 6am till 10pm. Not only that content is highly censored and restricted.
But keep living in a bubble that TikTok is totally fine.
I don't think that means what you think it does.
Kids are people. People have feelings.
Good parenting consistently is hard, very hard and sometimes basically impossible, but the difference between parents who at least try hard to raise kids well and those who sort of gave up on their kids is striking (tiktok and other digital stuff is a good yardstick of overall state of this, when I see kids of other folks using it and clearly addicted I am losing all respect for those folks as parents, and its always a big bag of various failures and neglect coming along). Its heartbreaking to experience, especially the powerlessness.
It doesn't mean the kid is also using the iPad at home for hours on end. Or consuming anything other than Bluey / Paw Patrol / Sing 2...
Going to a restaurant when I was a young kid was considered a treat and special occasion, and if I misbehaved, I was out of there immediately. I quickly learned to sit in my chair, eat my food, and not be disruptive.
I think people in general these days act with a higher sense of entitlement, and that translates to parents believing that it's fine for them to go to restaurants because they want to, ignoring whether or not it's appropriate for their children, somehow also believing that they "deserve a break" and their kids' disruptive behaviors in public aren't their problem. But no, screw that: if your children won't behave at restaurants, don't bring them along. If you can't find a sitter, then you don't get to go either. (If you can't afford a sitter, then you probably can't afford going out to a restaurant either.)
> ...to give them the TV time at the restaurant...
I would have less of a problem with this if the kid was using headphones (I know, risky for their ears at a young age if they also have control of the volume), or if the tablet could be kept quiet enough so I can't hear it at my nearby table. But that's rarely the case.
But hey, sure, if you can give your kid TV time at a restaurant without me having to listen to it, I guess that's fine. I think that's a poor substitute for actually teaching kids how to behave in public, but I'm not that kid's parent, and that's just my opinion.
We had kids in our 20s and my daughter has been glued to her iPad since she was 2. Her grades are better than mine were at her age, she has artistic hobbies (makes jewelry, paints). She’s maybe a tidge slower than I was on reading, but that might be pandemic.
Note that Tik Tok is different than “social media” in that it doesn’t really allow for the gossip and backbiting within enclosed groups that typifies say Facebook. The most emotionally upsetting thing for her seems to be normal girl-girl social conflict, especially through her iMessage group chat.
Life without good or at least normal social skills is pretty miserable in many aspects, almost can't be fixed once adult, and has much larger impact on what I call 'life success' than career can ever have.
But it remains the first time in her life that a politician listened to a concern she had, and acted on it promptly to fix the problem.
Listen to radio or news programs while kids are around?
If your kids asked about these things would you not try to explain?
There isn’t too much teens really feel on a day-to-day basis with politics and this is one of them. I’m not a Trump fan at all but his ability to spin things like this and the stimulus checks will need to be studied.
Aside from that his popularity -- and ability to lie shamelessly and have enough people ignore it and vote for him -- is wrapped up in the entity "Trump". His play book is age old.
I agree that current evidence points towards the best parenting being where nobody lets their 12-year-old on Tiktok, but there's more to it than simply not letting them no matter the circumstances
The TikTok ban may stem from legitimate geopolitical concerns, but I feel like we're focusing on the much smaller iceberg in our path.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Anyone putting any trust into Reddit is fooling themselves. Its not only political subs, other subs are also astroturfed, they are just more subtle about it. There are plenty of examples from places everything like /r/buyitforlife(where you discover the lies after you get burned), to bigger subs like /r/technology(which push certain agendas devoid of facts). You'd have to go sub by sub and piece out the blatant lies, or you could walk away from the platform understanding that the design is fundamentally flawed and was designed for an era of the internet that no longer exists.
The question asked was not about scanning, and a reasonable person would not answer it as if it had.
Listen, I'm not American nor on TikTok. I couldn't care less, I just wanted to point out that this is not the best example for weird questions from that whole ordeal.
https://www.forcepoint.com/sites/default/files/resources/fil...
It is a totally legitimate question if attacks like this are baked into an app (unless these kinds of permissions are now the default, in which case I am behind the curve).
Y'all need some real alternatives to the status quo. I'd suggest exploring actually leftist ideals, but would have to be outside the current two-party system, because Democrats already proven they won't do it, as they pushed Bernie aside for a person no one seemed to like.
When all you know are those two options, then yeah, they look like two very different options.
But once you explored the other ideologies and political ideas out there in the rest of the world, you'll see they both end up being pretty much "center-but-slightly-right", one is slightly more conservative than the other, but otherwise they're pretty much the same poison.
Loads of examples; Vox (Spain), AfD (Germany) and whatever National Front (France) is called nowadays, all take harder stances and are pretty honest about their want for centralization of authority (for example), for better or worse. Golden Dawn (Greece) is probably a even stronger ultra-nationalist example, but they basically have no support after getting banned.
Although I will say that is seems almost futile to compare left/right between countries, we all have somewhat different understandings of it...
> how do they avoid the civil unrest the US is seeing
What civil unrest? I'd say things seem surprisingly calm and the population almost pacified. We're starting to see some smaller embers of something starting, but compared to how things could be considering the circumstances, it seems pretty idle.
https://newrepublic.com/post/181327/mitt-romney-congress-ban...
“Republicans are the party with mostly white male congresspeople” implies that the other party isn’t.
Do you care what a cattle or a sheep thinks? Some may, but the majority don't give it a shit.
I think the hard answer is - the Dems need to actually do things that dissatisfy people like me if they want to actually win the masses - working class, blue collar, etc voter back.
Currently they are focussed on everything other than class. Identity politics. Race, gender, sexuality, immigration status, etc. None of this is particularly threatening to people like me and is a moral good, but it should be secondary to actually helping the poor regardless of how they identify.
Left wing parties elsewhere push for more redistributive policies than the Dems ever dream of here. Instead they do hand-outs to constituencies that aren't in dire need, and already vote Dem anyway. Student loan forgiveness, EV tax credits, etc.
Meanwhile in UK & EU, even the vaguely upper end of middle class pay marginal tax rates that would make $1M/year US earners cry. This is where the revenue comes for the depth & breadth of their social programs.
Should the US go that far? Absolutely not. It would stifle innovation, growth, and what makes the US far more successful than our rich peers. But Dems need to break free of the thinking that if we just tax a few billionaires, all our problems will be solved.
Also to be fair they’ve been in power globally for some time and so are seen as the status quo party, and largely ran as such. People are feeling economically squeezed and therefore voting incumbents out.
That's interesting, because it feels like "the right" (in my experience and whatever left and right mean these days) wouldn't recognise or consider catering to anything above the two basic levels (and to be honest, the 'brutal truth' part of my own personality tells me that anything above those two basic levels is 'cream').
People who worry about the price of groceries or basic car repairs to keep their older car on the road don’t want to hear how privileged they are due to their race (they might not be a minority but they aren’t rich) / how they are destroying the planet (they aren’t flying 10x year) / that kids who took out loans for expensive private college deserve free money (they didn’t even go to college or went to state school) / how democracy is at stake / etc.
This is an interesting list that 100% reflects what Republicans in my state ran on and Democrats only mentioned them when on defense (except immigration, which they clearly took point on before trump torpedoed the bipartisan effort to work on it)
> EV tax credits
These were absolutely needed to kickstart the EV market, just like oil subsidies were needed to keep the American economy moving so people and goods could get from place to place.
The focus on US instability in the US feeds make sense to me though, people want to be able to have a say and encourage action in their local areas.
TikTok and only TikTok an 'important tool'? Not unless you are somehow invested in it, or if you consciously make it one.
The fact that young generations want to share details of their lives is fine and TBH who cares, but platform to do so basically doesn't matter. If it would be banned 10 others would fill the gap on the market in days. If its really an 'important tool'.
Will you allow "climate refugees" into your neighbourhood? Will you be a climate refugee yourself?
People always blame Democrats for things that Republicans do.
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521...
Would we permit a lobby for China to do the same thing?
AIPAC is funded by Israel, and by it's own description AIPAC is an organisation made up of pro-Israel zionists. Oh, and the "I" in AIPAC stands for "Israel".
Nice try hiding your hatred.
Everything they said was true and you did not even attempt to explain why or how they're wrong.
> AIPAC is funded by American Jews.
No shit. Name a single larger demographic with a protracted interest in defending Israel, I'll wait.
> Nice try hiding your hatred.
There are two governments on Earth that deny Israel's violation of international law. They are Israel and the United States. It is not hatred to oppose Zionism, it's global consensus.
I don't care what your global consensus is. Jews are entitled to their homeland, just like any other nationality, like Belguim or Paraguay. To say otherwise is hatred.
> AIPAC is funded by American Jews. >> No shit. Name a single larger demographic with a protracted interest in defending Israel
Exactly - no shit. Jews do have a protracted interest in defending Israel - so that there is a place to go where they can be protected from genocidal maniacs who are creating this "global consensus" with intent of wiping them out.
Evidently. You seem rather incensed that I even mentioned the hundreds of nations that oppose Israel's existence on non-religious grounds. The nations that observe international law, the eminence of criminal justice, the treatment of minorities, the protection of journalists, the (repeated) violation of Syria's border and the displacement of Israel's remaining native population.
Simply put, I agree that Israel's natives are entitled to their homeland. It's unfortunate for the Jews then that they are not the Arabs.
> so that there is a place to go where they can be protected from genocidal maniacs who are creating this "global consensus" with intent of wiping them out.
The Zionists very helpfully showed us that it doesn't take a global (or even religious) consensus to incite genocide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cast_Thy_Bread
For the courtesy of the Jewish people I do not conflate Zionism with Judaism. Anyone examining Israel's history can very easily distinguish for themselves the extremists and the oppressed.
a reply on this comment even accuse the commenter of being Hasbara
HN is the world-upside down. a lot of people here really should just stick to tech
I don't think the US president is exempt from the tendency to avoid hard work on their last day on the job.
Efforts to save TikTok have been bipartisan (“Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said he spoke with Biden on Thursday to advocate for extending the deadline to ban TikTok.”) and efforts to enforce the ban have also been bipartisan (“Democrats had tried on Wednesday to pass legislation that would have extended the deadline, but Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas blocked it. Cotton, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that TikTok has had ample time to find a buyer.”)
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/biden-wont-enforce-tik...
The parties are just brands competing against each other to appeal to different segments of the same market, offering essentially the same product in different packaging. Getting your competitor to adopt a market position that you've already prepared a response to is a neat trick.
This is par for the course, and I don't understand why anyone would expect anything different.
I think this overlooks one key detail. The focal points of the new online world -- "influencers" -- rely on TikTok for the lion's share of their income. Taking away a fun toy might not radicalize someone but taking away their livelihood might.
And even if these users are a tiny fraction of a percent, they wield outsized influence (obviously). They are the new media. Risking losing these people, many of whom have been largely apolitical, seems like a huge tactical error in retrospect, and one that Trump would predictably take advantage of if given the chance.
Edit: wanted to elaborate but wasn't sure how to put it best. Then two comments down there is exactly what I'm looking for: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42759761 So many people (in absolute numbers at least, maybe not in relative numbers) seem to just eat it up like kids eat candy
If someone banned youtube or HN, I'd be upset, but I wouldn't be depressed and suicidal over it like some of these people were publicly
Absurd that when Trump initially proposed this it was considered a stupid and racist idea. Now they’re for it.
TikTok goes dark in the US - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42753396 - Jan 2025 (2187 comments)
Political things aside, it's crazy to see so much of a flip-flop so quickly. Has there been any other behavior like this in the past where a company "shut themselves down" to make a big political statement and then almost immediately undid the shut down?
The app stores removed the app in accordance with that timeline too.
The Biden administration said it would be left to the Trump administration to review, they had no reason to shut it down. It’s purely to force Trumps hand a bit.
I wouldn't say following the law would be purely to force a hand, I would say multiple things can be true at once. They still had liability.
Other government agencies, like the SEC, has been filing court cases all the way till the last minute even though they’ll likely get dropped tomorrow. It is understandable to take a risk averse approach for a company.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/TikTok_v...
Please do some research next time before spreading lies.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7520...
“It is a stunt, and we see no reason for TikTok or other companies to take actions in the next few days before the Trump Administration takes office on Monday. We have laid out our position clearly and straightforwardly: actions to implement this law will fall to the next administration. So TikTok and other companies should take up any concerns with them.”
Please do some research next time before accusing people of spreading lies.
It did not, nor did it have the authority to, waive the apps stores requirement under the law to do that. To remove the potential for future enforcement actions (up to 5 years in the future) punishing them for failing to comply with the law. Neither will Trump even once he is president unless and until amongst other things ByteDance signs legally binding documents that they will divest from TikTok within 90 days.
There's too much effort and uncertainty involved in actually creating a problem and then actually fixing it.
It's much easier and more reliable to create the perception of a problem by promulgating lots of FUD, then engage in performative theatrics to nullify the FUD and proclaim the problem fixed.
If you create an issue, and solve an issue, indifferent of the issue being real, you'll be credited with solving the issue. It's ridiculous at this scale
Well, it would be the same as the distinction between real and imaginary in any other context.
Trump was against Tiktok before he was for it.
He was also against crypto currencies before he released his own.
Sure they are, but they should explain why they changed their minds. In the case of meme coins like $TRUMP, it's hard to defend crypto as an investment or as a currency, which leaves the obvious reason: it's a scam.
In the case of Trump, I'm sure he was all for crypto as soon as he realized that he personally could make money from it. Same goes for his NFT grift.
> Hey, I bought $1,000,000,000 $TRUMP coin, can you ease up on $RegulationImpactingMe?
> Regulations are official actions, so sure I can take a look-see.
Interesting... are you able to expand on this? My understanding is that the $TRUMP coin runs on Solana, which similar to Bitcoin runs on a public ledger and therefore offers limited anonymization (basically none).
Anyone is free to make an "investment," there is no disclosure requirement, and an accusation of bribery (even if one could be made legally against a sitting president, which SCOTUS tells us it cannot) would require a provable quid-pro-quo.
and when transferred in a way that would otherwise require a disclosure to a politician or campaign, the crypto asset and transaction would also require a disclosure
if there are other benefits that the crypto world is superior at, then thanks for describing a use case and value proposition relevant on a geopolitical scale to the largest nations on the planet. a lot of people here cant imagine any because they arent the target audience
Not in a legal sense. In the US, donations to politicians and campaigns are tightly regulated. Foreign entities aren't allowed to donate. Donations have to be reported, are subject to limitations, etc.
In crypto, none of that applies. Anyone, anywhere in the world, can invest essentially unlimited funds into a memecoin. It's not technically a donation because you're buying something, and it's not technically going to Trump, because you're buying from some pseudonymous entity on the blockchain. Nevertheless, the money goes to Trump. It's an ideal venue for laundering bribes.
In contrast, any foreign party can purchase $TRUMP.
Sure, good luck enforcing that. Although crypto isn't anonymous, it is pseudonymous. In any case, you aren't subject to the same taxes as a traditional gift about $20000 and you aren't subject to the same regulation as campaign contributions.
> and when transferred in a way that would otherwise require a disclosure to a politician or campaign, the crypto asset and transaction would also require a disclosure
That's the beauty of the grift. "Investing in $TRUMP" isn't a transfer to a politician or a campaign: it's a purchase of a memecoin on a public blockchain. It's a way to give money to Trump without meeting the legal definition of "giving money to Trump."
> if there are other benefits that the crypto world is superior at, then thanks for describing a use case and value proposition relevant on a geopolitical scale to the largest nations on the planet. a lot of people here cant imagine any because they arent the target audience
I don't know what you're trying to say here. I think I just explained a pretty use case for crypto as a means to buy political favor. Other benefits of crypto include: (a) purchasing illegal goods, (b) defrauding naive consumers.
and the $DJT stock is already doing this as well
What you’re pointing out is just not a unique aspect of crypto or that interesting in the Trump portfolio of “things vulnerable to being used as kickbacks in a currently legal way”
Sure, but it's a matter of scale. It's difficult to rent a billion dollars worth of hotel rooms.
> and the $DJT stock is already doing this as well
Yep, that's another scam.
> What you’re pointing out is just not a unique aspect of crypto
Yes and no. Crypto offers a uniquely unregulated and perhaps unregulatable means for malfeasance. NASDAQ tickers are tame in comparison.
Fwiw, the moral of the story is not "all crypto is evil" but rather "crypto should be regulated like any other instrument in order to prevent fraud" and perhaps as a corollary "sitting presidents shouldn't be issuing their own meme coin."
"It's clear that more time is needed to find an American buyer and not disrupt the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans of so many influencers who have built up a good network of followers" [1]
The deal was divest or ban, not look for "more time to find a buyer". My point is they were never prepared for an actual ban.
[1] https://x.com/kenklippenstein/status/1880007290830688609
This is have your cake and eat it too politics. I can pointedly say that Schumer’s office isn’t surprised Bytedance ran out its 180 days.
I worked on the bill. Everyone assumed it would hit the ban, get an extension, and then either remain banned or get sold to Elon, Ellison or a Brexiteer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdowns_in_the_Un...
There’s always a chance you don’t come back, and there’s likely to be a loss of marketshare for simply being unavailable for a period and forcing users to trial alternatives.
But, TikTok is not purely commercially focused. A majority of the voting stock of ByteDance is held by the Chinese government, who clearly see non-financial strategic value in controlling it.
Otherwise, they likely could have negotiated a spin out the US operation, whereby they retain most of the equity upside but give majority voting control to a US buyer.
They have a choice to leave the country or follow the rules.
I can’t really feel bad about when it’s the same deal they offer Western companies. Well.. to be fair Google or FB couldn’t even get anywhere close to where TikTok is.
It doesn't have to be the United States. It just has to be anyone other than Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia.
But this particular situation is not. A Chinese controlled company that operates in the US. If you want access to $CC market you are subject to $CC's rules. Other countries do exactly the same thing (aside from China, GDPR comes to mind) so it's unclear what the basis for your complaint is here.
This isn’t correct. The US law only applies to the services provided within the US.
ByteDance could spin out the US userbase while retaining the rest of the userbase. Many US companies already have to do exactly this for their Chinese userbase. Spin it off to a JV with a Chinese partner.
I’m not aware of anyone doing this, but you could even have a content syndication model whereby the global TikTok and the US TikTok share a common pool of content and username reservations so that both services appear global to their users, but with separate companies controlling distribution of their own apps and the recommendation model used to serve content.
"Entitlement" in the context of nations is irrelevant. Nations exercise power in accordance with their interests.
> No other country could get away with demanding this.
TikTok is already banned in India. Brasil banned Twitter for a while until they caved to Brasil's demands.
The US is simply reciprocating.
This would be like the U.S. forcing Spotify's Swedish headquarters to accept U.S. ownership.
India literally banned TikTok overnight when China killed Indian soldiers in 2020
And for those Westerners who do not, I think it would be useful to ask them why they think a country like China (or Russia, or North Korea) would be better for their interests than the US, even with someone like Trump in power.
Unless you’re suggesting that what the world needs is a single dominant empire? Which would be an odd position to take because history has proven that monopolies are much much worse for abusing power.
Maybe if/when we colonise other planets we can think of the Earth as a single government with countries acting like states (kind of like the EU but with less sovereignty for each state). However that’s only going to happen if we work together and generally cooperation is viewed as counterproductive to empire building. So we come full circle back to my original point.
I can't speak for most Westerners, but I fully believe the United States to be an empire in decline already. Who will take up that mantle once we're fully gone is an interesting question, I think China and India both could make a solid case for themselves.
> And for those Westerners who do not, I think it would be useful to ask them why they think a country like China (or Russia, or North Korea) would be better for their interests than the US
I don't really think about it in terms of "my interests." My ideal incoming superpower would be any superpower that's ready to deal with existential threats to our species like climate change, along with our global social ills like over-reliance on social media and the year over year alienation of everyone from everyone else. If that country comes with me needing to learn Mandarin then that's what has to happen.
I'm highly disillusioned with both the "West" as an idea (which can include any number of countries depending how racist the speaker is feeling at the moment). I still believe in Democracy, representative or otherwise, but I don't see any of those in your "West" anymore. I see a collection of ailing, aged empires full of greedy old men stealing as much money as they can so they and their families can coast out the collapse they have engineered. I contrast this with China, which certainly has problems too, and the CCP gets up to some nonsense, but their ability to exude top-down control also makes them more able to actually solve problems instead of endlessly bickering about them. And with respect to the notions of individual liberty and freedom that I do want to see in the world, it's clear that the West is too focused on maintaining the rights of the individual to do what they so please, and not enough on maintaining the planet upon which they would do it. How free is anyone if we can't leave our homes due to smog or unlivable temperatures/weathers?
Not saying it's an overall improvement. I am saying that the U.S. is on it's way out, and China is the likely incoming global superpower. We can do precious little to change this if we even want to, and I'm not rushing for a fire extinguisher here.
With the exception of the USSR, every superpower’s decline in history has involved a burst of violence. China or India won’t take over if America collapses because America collapsing (versus slow fading over lifetimes) almost guarantees nuclear war resetting the table.
I think people who have seen one up close claim to prefer the other (but thets meaningless) while people who have seen both start to lean toward servitude, unless they are highly religious.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2025/01/15/tiktok-ba...
I was a bit wrong in calling it deeply unpopular across party lines, but it's certainly quite unpopular overall, and deeply unpopular among Democrats.
Here's the actual poll: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/05/support-f...
TikTok ban is not about vengeance on China, it's about violations of own citizens' freedoms.
> aiding in Russia’s conquest of Europe
Russia right now is weaker and has the least potential to conquer anything than literally ever before.
Living in Australia now with access to Chinese EV's is eyeopening. It's great for the consumer. To the extent you accept EV's as a solution for reducing GHG's, the cheaper prices are making it easier to end our reliance on oil. Americans don't realize what they are missing out on.
Better than Tesla-quality vehicles for half the price.
However exact same rules apply to its European competitors like Bolt. Make it entirely unrelated to this situation.
It was literally called Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.
Not, All your app are belong to us.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecting_Americans_from_Fore...
+ Public forum or utility
+ Userbase greater than 1% of the adult population
= Majority Ownership of corporate division and management, plus regulatory oversight, must be held within country OR a security partnered country (the easiest criteria for that might be they have an obligation to fight along side 'our' troops in some way).
That way it isn't specific about any given platform or company, and it allows anyone trusted as an ally to comprise the ownership or legal jurisdiction.
US on the other hand now has its social media controlled by oligarchs, not much better maybe.
If I were the EU, I would. We hacked Merkel.
Europe banned Russian propaganda outlet RT a couple of years ago, on security grounds. It's just that US prefers the soft-soft approach. Don't ban them, let them "divest". No. It doesn't work. It should be banned end of story. I guarantee a genuine competitor from the US or an allied country would make an alternative quite soon. Would be so addictive and equally brain rotting? Probably not, so people who enjoyed it before would complain. Fine, let them go join Douyin or other Chinese platform and see for themselves how "freedom of speech"looks like in China.
As for anyone who might come and say "they're not doing anything wrong". They are and you're naive for not seeing it. Every company in China is an arm of the state. As an example see how Bytedance released an ebook reader in the US with an AI assistant that tells you things like "nothing happened in 1989 on Tiananmen square", there is no genocide in Xinjiang, it is inappropriate to question and critique the Chinese communist party, China never attacked anyone,ever but it's perfectly fine to criticise every other single country on earth and it is ready to give you a litany of misdeeds any other country on earth ever did. Except China. Do you think a company like that owning what's essentially a monopoly on news for the young people is good? No it is not, and any sane politician would ban it long time ago. The fact Trump did this move worries me for his other decisions in future .
There are plenty of corruption and issues in EU, some of which RT may have covered legitimately, but at least we're not intentionally massacring civilians and sending our poor and minorities to die as cannon fodder in an useless invasion. There's a reason why all European neighbours of Russia have or want to join NATO, and that is its imperialistic and aggressive policies.
You should come visit us in Finland or maybe our neighbour Estonia and really see what ordinary people have to say about Russia. Real people, who actually live next to them.
And every big US platform is just a big siphon for the NSA when it comes to non U.S. persons.
The stupidity and hypocrisy of this ban and unban is hilarious.
It's the tech policy analog of the Iraq War (on the level of stupidity, loss of standing, inevitable consequences etc).
Not saying this ban is equivalent to a decision that killed 1M+ people, lead to ISIS, and created the migrant crisis and more
Your adversary does not care about morals, but will leverage yours in his favour.
Yes absolutely. China.
You have to give away 50% of your local subsidiary just to operate there.
And why do you think Google and Facebook don’t even offer their services there?
I'm not sure how generally you meant to speak, but this is no longer true as a general claim.
"As of November 1, 2024, China has removed all restrictions on foreign investment in the manufacturing sector, allowing foreign investors, including Americans, to own up to 100% equity in Chinese manufacturing enterprises."
And investments into various telecommunications related areas are still restricted or outright banned. So foreign founded/owned TV stations like Fox News could never exist in China (for better or for worse).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_list_of_foreign_inv...
Passenger cars were removed in 2021.
However:
> .. (ii) news agencies, (iii) editing, publishing and production of books, newspapers, periodicals, audio-visual products and electronic publications, (iv) all levels of broadcasting stations, television stations, radio and television channel and frequency, radio and television transmission networks and the engagement in the video on demand business of radio and TV, (v) radio and television program production and operation as well as (vi) film production companies, distribution companies, cinema companies and the introduction of films are still prohibited.
So good-luck to any Australians and Brits who want to operate Fox news style networks in China.
There are other telecommunications related areas which are restricted and not prohibited.
Not sure where would TikTok fall into exactly but it’s probably bot manufacturing.
Keen to see this opinion when the Chinese government demands the same from Apple.
'cos we're all equal, no?
I imagine Apple already complies with whatever they need to comply with in order to make the Chinese government happy.
> 'cos we're all equal, no?
No, we absolutely aren't. The Chinese government has ensured for decades now that foreign businesses have only tightly controlled access to the Chinese people while Chinese-owned (i.e., easily controllable by the Chinese government) businesses have advantages not given to outsiders. (And those outsiders need to open up a Chinese subsidiary that is majority-owned by Chinese investors/companies.)
On the other hand, most Western countries have given Chinese companies near-unfettered access to their markets.
If anything, this TikTok ban is actually making things more equal, if only by a tiny bit.
Foxconn stops sending Chinese workers to India iPhone factories In addition, equipment shipments are delayed, potentially disrupting next-generation iPhone production in India.
https://restofworld.org/2025/china-foxconn-factoriesfoxconn-...
You really have to be braindead as a COO if you do not have contingency plan to move stuff out of China this year.
I do t use tiktok and have no skin in the game as an EU resident, but setting a precedent for this kind of behaviour to permit clthe government to simply block anything it wants is basically following in CCPs footsteps, that's certainly not a good thing in my eyes.
NBA, any company that makes anything within China using slavery, the guy/actor/wrestler (the name escapes me right now) who had to learn Chinese to apologize. Take your pick of "precedent".
1bn customers = a lot of money. A company that will kiss the ring will do the right thing by its shareholders and a nasty thing against humanity. I am 200% sure that Apple has given the keys for all users/phones/servers in China to the gov/CCP and nobody complained.
If North Korea had 1bn potential customers, we would be seeing Kim very differently.
We are cattle. It's all a 1984-ish sham.
Historically China has been so large and 'diverse' (not to be confused with DEI) (like India and Russia). It's not "one chinese person is just like anyone else". There are multiple Republics/States/etc. It takes an emperor to keep together an empire. And that usually requires (plenty of) violence.
Communism is built to make people suffer, remove individuality and requires total obedience and personal reformation to be the 'good citizen'. You and me both are EU citizens. We are all different and we respect/accept each other. In China if you disagree, you disappear. They would very much like to do the same to the rest of the world. And one day they will, just not yet. I hope they implode before they do (like all empires).
(apologies for the grim tone)(I suggest "Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order by Ray Dalio": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8)
Houston Rockets GM and James Harden:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Harden#Politics
* https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/nbas-apo...
* https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/27787634/james-harden-ap...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/26/john-cena-very...
Wild statement, so lets look at some data.
https://fr.statista.com/statistiques/1337388/classement-pays...
These are a list of the freedom of press in the EU with their corresponding indexes.
Lets compare that to the US : https://rsf.org/en/country/united-states
Index 2024 Score : 66.59
Not looking good for your opinion but lets look at some more that are consumer privacy focused, which was my main point.
https://iapp.org/resources/article/countries-at-a-glance-pri...
IAPP isn't a bad source IMO but hard to evaluate their methods, but lets see.
> Level of understanding about data collection and use
Netherlands : Weak - 14% USA : Weak - 24%
Not great, I could spend time finding more, but the summary is that the EU has regulations that require companies to limit the useage of consumers information and privacy. The EU is consumer privacy focused, wheras the US seems to be Enterprise & Organisation focused, also it's state level enforcements fracture enforcement even further.
Lets look at the US CCPA vs GDPR :
A crucial difference is that GDPR requires individuals to opt-in before businesses can collect data while there is no opt-in condition in CCPA.
That should say it all.
Edit : I forgot to add, outside of Sanctions the EU has no control to simply decide to ban a company when it feels like it.
Am I misreading what your intent?
Regulations are for the companies.. But they're not banned. It's a different model to the US.
To clarify. Companies are not banned.. they're fined (often not enough) until they align..
> regulations are for the companies. But they’re not banned.
So if they don’t follow the regulations they simply keep paying fines indefinitely? Until they run out of money? Until the company goes out of business? We aren’t banning those companies, instead we’ll attempt to bankrupt them if they stay in our markets; unless they do what we say. In other words, extortion?
This tiktok issue was brought under 'national security' with what feels like a "Trust me bro".
or... the nihilistic option:
People know China would engage in information warfare using TikTok in a situation like that, but they foolishly think the CCP is on even moral ground with free democracies so none of this matters, and we've gotta keep the funny musical memes flowing.
For all one's misgivings about the US -- and there are many valid ones! -- before deciding these governments are equal, talk to a Chinese political dissident, if you can find one, since they sometimes disappear.
The US is not a master piece of freedom. Want to market or own foreign shares? Want to travel to Cuba? Have you gone through the crazy US border control process as a foreigner?
Yes, China is absolutely worse. But the US is not a good example.
> Want to market or own foreign shares?
ADRs work for that, no?
> Want to travel to Cuba? Have you gone through the crazy US border control process as a foreigner?
I agree those things are bad, but they have nothing to do with market access, which is the topic at hand.
Is there any reason you’re skipping the past 40+ years of turmoil in the Middle East purely from the US trying to control oil fields? Because Iran would like a word with, and there’s a hell lot of other countries behind them waiting their turn
The OP was contrasting this with China, that does not allow foreigners access to their markets. As a regular American, quite honestly, I would like a bit of protectionism from the US, as I recently bought a house and had to compete with cash offers from Chinese banks. It's insane to me that we allow foreigners to buy property here, while our own citizens are being increasingly priced out of our own country.
Microsoft operated its own popular social network in China, called MSN Messenger. Tens of millions Chinese users were on that platform for like a decade until the release of mobile based WeChat.
> which the communist party in China has treated for years as a matter of national security
It is a matter of national security, we all saw what happened on twitter shortly before the 6th Jan 2021 attack.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/tweets-january-5-2...
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/tweets-january-6-2...
That is the exact reason why everyone agreed that TikTok must host all US data and its deployed recommendation algorithm code in the US with 3rd party audit access by an appointed US entity.
The only question here is why should Meta and Google be exempted from the exact same rules if they want to operate their services in China.
They were defeated by the QQ app and shut down in 2014.
https://technode.com/2014/08/29/microsoft-messenger-shut-dow...
Microsoft retained a 50% ownership of MSN China, just check the link you cited. Microsoft also retained the full ownership of the MSN messenger software while MSN China was just in charge of its day to day operation in China.
Also interesting to see that millions of Tesla EVs are being sold in China, hundreds of millions other American cars were sold in the past, but when Chinese EVs try to crack the US market it sudden becomes a national security issue.
Why are you making it sound like China doesn't restrict Tesla for "national security"?
https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/23/business/tesla-barred-china-s... https://fortune.com/2023/07/26/tesla-cars-barred-china-world... https://www.carscoops.com/2024/01/more-venues-across-china-a... https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-cars-are-banned-in-... https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/china-bans-tesla-drivin...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-29/as-musk-v...
DJI drones have been operated & tested by numerous US agencies for ages, yet it is still a national security threat. how convenient!
Apple is quite a special case since iPhone ecosystem creates many jobs in China. If Apple managed to move jobs to India (or wherever cheap labor is), Chinese government will stop being nice to them.
And even then, right now in China, iCloud service is run by Guizhou cloud, not Apple.
Yeah, and that reason was incompetence, it's not for lack of trying.
2) China absolutely did ban most external social media and forces those that remain to hold data locally.
3) China still has the Great Firewall that everybody forgets about.
4) "He does it too" is the argument a two year old uses and should be accorded the same level of respect.
When you are owned/controlled by an authoritative government you have the responsibility to not get disappeared. Just ask Jack Ma.
The timing and phrasing make it clear that this was planned and negotiated in advance, and the shutdown was just for show in order to be able to post a memo about how "President Trump" saved it. If actual negotiation had to occur, it would not have happened in the twelve hours between midnight and noon on Sunday morning.
The point of the stunt was to persuade large numbers of younger folks that the Ds are the bad guys and Trump in particular is the hero. And it'll work as designed.
Also, expect to see that Facebook is partnering with TikTok on Monday morning. The head of the bill banning TikTok just invested 100 million in Meta... so I imagine there will be a followup announcement how Trump brokered some deal to Americanize TikTok or something.
https://imgur.com/a/yCOpifC
Wait, if this is truly what this outcome was about, this seems.. huge? Can you share more information about that?
Selling them out to the Russians? Well, it worked fine last time, a bunch of minor figures went to jail, but the boss remained untouched.
So why not sell out to the Chinese? Remember, it's only illegal when a Democrat does it.
Well, that makes this interesting. The bill also allowed a 90-day extension if they found a buyer and were in the process of finalizing it.
This may put this cringe ByteDance stunt and Meta/Zuck's pandering to Trump into more perspective. The Hero coming to save the day with a magical 90-day extension. As long as everyone plays their scripted part. On the other hand, it's probably just a funny timed coincidence that will pass in 3 months
[added] The president would have to approve any sale of apps caught in this law
Who is currently in charge of the oval office is an irrelevant quality.
Note that the ban was not really on TikTok, but the ownership. TikTok could be owned by many other parties in the world. It just can't be ByteDance or parent/subsidiary which has ties to China.
How does that work? If congress passed a law banning TikTok how can the president just override it for 3 months? What's to stop him from overriding it for the next 4 years?
I've lost interest in this topic unfortunately, but its pretty clear even past all the legalese with the terms defined from what I remember.
What did Trump do to get TikTok back online?
At 17:05 in this video (and I believe discussed once elsewhere but I can't find it/don't want to rewatch it): https://youtu.be/pZkoV5UnPvw
I think this is debated, which is why Apple and Google may not bring back TikTok to the stores... at least that's what I read.
1. In the definition of a "covered company". The bill itself already saus that TikTok is covered; this is only a provision to add other companies to the list.
2. In determining what qualifies as "divestiture" to have the ban lifted. That's described as happening when -
> the President determines, through an interagency process...
"TikTok wrote me a big check and said nice things about me" isn't an interagency process.
Moreover, just in case we've forgotten, *Donald Trump is not currently the president.* He has literally zero power until tomorrow afternoon. He can't grant pardons, he can't lift law enforcement decisions, and he can't write executive orders. The promise of an executive order, even if such an order would be lawful tomorrow (which I can't understand how it would be), is not a legal document that can make something legal today.
(a) Right of action.—A petition for review challenging this Act or any action, finding, or determination under this Act may be filed only in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
(b) Exclusive jurisdiction.—The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit shall have exclusive jurisdiction over any challenge to this Act or any action, finding, or determination under this Act.
(c) Statute of limitations.—A challenge may only be brought—
(1) in the case of a challenge to this Act, not later than 165 days after the date of the enactment of this Act; and
(2) in the case of a challenge to any action, finding, or determination under this Act, not later than 90 days after the date of such action, finding, or determination.
^ That is where the 90 day stipulation came from.
===
> Moreover, just in case we've forgotten, *Donald Trump is not currently the president.
Right okay, what does one do with that information? It's common practice for Presidents to collaborate with their successors during the handoff period. Both the Biden and the incoming Trump administrations collaborated on the Gaza ceasefire, as way to help gradually transition power.
> Biden says the Equal Rights Amendment is law. What happens next is unclear
> In response to an NPR question about whether the archivist would take any new actions, the National Archives communications staff pointed to a December statement saying that the ERA "cannot be certified as part of the Constitution due to established legal, judicial, and procedural decisions."
> “In 2020 and again in 2022, the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice affirmed that the ratification deadline established by Congress for the ERA is valid and enforceable. The OLC concluded that extending or removing the deadline requires new action by Congress or the courts. Court decisions at both the District and Circuit levels have affirmed that the ratification deadlines established by Congress for the ERA are valid. Therefore, the Archivist of the United States cannot legally publish the Equal Rights Amendment. As the leaders of the National Archives, we will abide by these legal precedents and support the constitutional framework in which we operate.
Pointing out that Biden, in contradiction the the US constitution, tried to alter the US constitutions. I don't make the facts, they are what they are.
Biden is just pointing that out, no?
https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2025/nr25-004
> “In 2020 and again in 2022, the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice affirmed that the ratification deadline established by Congress for the ERA is valid and enforceable. The OLC concluded that extending or removing the deadline requires new action by Congress or the courts. Court decisions at both the District and Circuit levels have affirmed that the ratification deadlines established by Congress for the ERA are valid. Therefore, the Archivist of the United States cannot legally publish the Equal Rights Amendment. As the leaders of the National Archives, we will abide by these legal precedents and support the constitutional framework in which we operate.
Don't post fake news.
Now, how exactly did the outgoing administration "try to abolish the constitution"?
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disrespect>
For very weak definitions of power. Zuck didn't wait to bend a knee until the inauguration. Because power.
But Trump already knows he is above the law, so none of this matters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0q_8zGJGxc
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2024-10-13/trump-...
No, he couldn't? It's not even clear he'll be able to do anything with an executive order when he is sworn in, but President elects certainly can't.
Would not be legally binding. The President cannot unilaterally bind the U.S., and he is free to make and break statements of intent.
Isn't it enough to see, smell, you have to touch and eat it repeatedly so you can conclude: yes, this is shit. You are now expert in shit eating and the professional opinion is that this is really shit, no mistake is made here!?
A spur of the moment decision would be more like Trump than a lengthy negotiation.
They were following the law. Anything else is just promises by people who are not exactly known for following through with them
Shutting down because the law says it, and to prevent really big penalties, is not making “a big political statement
It requires Apple and Google to stop distributing the app on their app stores, and it requires any US-based hosting providers that host TikTok services to stop providing those services.
ByteDance could shut down any US-hosted services and serve from outside the US, and be entirely compliant with the law. The TikTok mobile app might become out of date and stop working (for people who already had it installed on their phones), but www.tiktok.com would continue to work just fine.
And they were forced to use those hosting providers (oracle) by the US. It's not like investing loads to bring all the data over to singapore or so would serve them well either. They'd still lose the US business relatively quickly and with lower chances of turning things around like they might've. Why bother?
The option you describe is another among the several options available.
Unless you're saying that the service shutdown would not have brought Bytedance into legal compliance, which would be a novel assertion.
If it's not that, it may well be as the original commenter in this thread suggested a stunt to make a point.
It's like betting on jury nullification but without the benefit of double jeopardy protection. It's unclear if any of the US companies the law is aimed at will risk it.
I think you mean "campaign promise."
No legally significant action has been taken between now and yesterday.
That doesn't mean TikTok would be able to continue operating, but it could mean the parties involved wouldn't have to suffer penalties for their operation up to that point (past the ban date). But maybe it wouldn't work, and a judge/jury would throw the book at them. We just don't know until and unless it goes to court.
If you're arguing that qualified immunity would enable Trump to break the contract if he so chose without consequence, then that is probably true, but I see no reason that would imperil the companies having a rock solid defense against enforcement penalties in the interim period.
Companies => Agree to temporarily facilitate the operation of TikTok until matters are further clarified.
I don't see anything particularly controversial here.
The courts on the other hand can permanently block laws.
This is the internet.
TikTok I think was going for more of a shock factor. Maybe even without talking to Trump they have credited him as restoring it, might seem weird for him to “go back on it”.
Or maybe it’s to put him in good light.
For example, why would the President have a veto power if he can simply post-facto ignore laws they pass?
No, SCOTUS ruled that the President is not subject to criminal prosecution.
---
On many, many occasions, the courts have ruled executive actions invalid.
On no occasion, have courts assigned criminal liability to a President.
SCOTUS explicitly affirmed that as the rule.
My comment was just re "SCOTUS also affirmed that"
As to upholding laws passed by Congress--just two days ago, Biden did his last round of student debt forgiveness, bringing the total up to $188 billion.
I’m not trying to “both sides” this. I’m just saying that the standard you’ve articulated for how promptly the president needs to act on a law like this isn't the standard we apply in practice. The government tries to reach deals like this in lieu of enforcement actions all the time.
They even have broad immunity while conducting official acts up to and including breaking the law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States_(2024)
“Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024), is a landmark decision[1][2] of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court determined that presidential immunity from criminal prosecution presumptively extends to all of a president's "official acts" – with absolute immunity for official acts within an exclusive presidential authority that Congress cannot regulate[1][2] such as the pardon, command of the military, execution of laws, or control of the executive branch.”
You could obviously create a far more functional system but it would probably be far less stable. The reason you have all these checks and balances, from top to bottom, is that the Founding Fathers were obsessed about the risks imposed by both a tyranny of the majority and a tyranny of the minority. And non-enforcement of something effectively comes down just a continuation of the status quo, making it difficult for any group to [openly at least] impose their will on others.
Similarly, one of the reasons the president has a pardon power is because he doesn't have to enforce those federal offenses. E.g. imagine that a president without pardon power instead offers "plea deals"/settlements for a $1 fine or concocts vacuously lenient house arrest enforcement.
The original constitution basically accepts that there is very little you can make a president do, and it instead formalizes what would otherwise be a gray area (it does have plenty about what he can't do). Some of this has changed over time especially as the judicial branch has granted itself more power.
Presidents can’t just ignore a law categorically (although they regularly do, e.g. DACA, DOMA, etc.) On the other hand, presidents can certainly decide not to prosecute a particular entity under a particular law. That’s the heart of the executive power versus the legislative power.
Here, Congress wrote an extremely specific law that applies basically to one company. Which isn’t impermissible. But it’s also not clear to me that Congress can insist on immediate enforcement of that law without crossing effectively usurping the executive power and directing the President to prosecute a specific company at a specific time.
no, the president can pardon individuals convicted of a criminal law, which is not at all what you describe here
So, pardons can very much apply before conviction or even prosecution. They may not pardon someone for something that hasn’t happened, but as long as there in office when the crime is committed that’s more a technical issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burdick_v._United_States
After President Gerald Ford left the White House in 1977, close friends said that the President privately justified his pardon of Richard Nixon by carrying in his wallet a portion of the text of the Burdick decision, which stated that a pardon carries an imputation of guilt and that acceptance carries a confession of guilt.[6] Ford made reference to the Burdick decision in his post-pardon written statement furnished to the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives on October 17, 1974.[7] However, the reference related only to the portion of Burdick that supported the proposition that the Constitution does not limit the pardon power to cases of convicted offenders or even indicted offenders.[7][8]
Is this really the case? Has this specific situation ever been ruled on by the Supreme Court? Burdick v. U.S. doesn't address "pre-pardons" or blanket pardons. Nixon was never prosecuted or tried.
The court ruled they could reject a pardon given before prosecution thus avoiding the need to testify about someone else. It would be a moot point if the pardon was invalid.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burdick_v._United_States
But that's not the relevant part of Burdock for this thread.
The relevant part is that an (accepted!) pardon does apply before indictment.
As far as we know, Tiktok is operated on US servers by Oracle. While it might have been possible to find another cloud provider and move all US data there, I can see them not wanting to do that given that there was no point if the app isn't distributed in the US anymore.
It was a gambit used for net neutrality in 2014 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Slowdown_Day
Nico argued TikTok made the minimum change required by law.
They were telling users who to blame and who to thank because in this specific case, the blame and the thank are pretty clear. The Biden administration approved the ban, and the Trump administration reversed it. Blaming one and thanking the other is also hardly surprising.
There is no question that TikTok is a politically sensitive app and the US/China are very nearly in the funnel to a major war so a lot of the usual niceties are questionable. Previously the US has attempted something that looked a lot like a black-bag kidnapping of a Chinese industrialist [0]. I'd imagine that the TikTok people are acutely sensitive towards how the law is actually going to be interpreted and enforced in practice.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meng_Wanzhou
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA...
Jan 17: Biden administration says it will leave TikTok ban enforcement for Trump [1]
Early Jan 18: Trump says he will 'most likely' give TikTok a 90-day extension to avoid a ban [2]
Late Jan 18: TikTok makes app unavailable for U.S. users ahead of ban [3]
Midday Jan 19: TikTok begins restoring service for U.S. users after Trump comments [4]
They already knew what was going to happen. They also changed the message shortly after disabling it from "We're working to restore service in the U.S. as soon as possible, and we appreciate your support. Please stay tuned." to "We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Stay tuned!" [5]
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/biden-administrat...
[2] https://nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-likely-give-...
[3] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/tiktok-makes-app-unav...
[4] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/tiktok-says-restoring...
[5] https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/tiktok-sends-notice-to-users...
(The latter part is probably because Tiktok's banning was not particulaly divisive within the population as it is in the US.)
Tiktok had a better algorithm (to get hooked) but Instagram eventually caught up (with algo)..
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/technology/oracle-prepares-start-shu...
https://www.reuters.com/technology/oracle-prepares-start-shu...
From (2)(a)(1):
> (A) Providing services to distribute, maintain, or update such foreign adversary controlled application (including any source code of such application) by means of a marketplace (including an online mobile application store) through which users within the land or maritime borders of the United States may access, maintain, or update such application.
>
> (B) Providing internet hosting services to enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of such foreign adversary controlled application for users within the land or maritime borders of the United States.
Possession of and providing non-distribution ( / maintenance / update) services to a "Foreign Adversary Controlled Application" are not in any way a part of the "Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act". Operative services are specifically and intentionally excluded from the list, to ease the burden of enforcement.
If not, what is your basis for your conclusion?
I understand that there was this law. It's a political statement because of the political message being sent out to the user base. The act of shutting down on its own is not a political statement.
This was a political gift to Trump, as the messaging in TikTok's app makes perfectly clear.
* Trump gets a free layup to look like the hero for unbanning it
* Trump will think hard and heavy in the future about banning it again, knowing there's a lot of passionate young people that will reconsider voting for him next election if he does
Seems like a smart move to me.
Plus has there ever been a US president that came back after a term away? Usually when a "new" president comes in you figure they'll be running again next time.
OnlyFans did something similar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnlyFans#Restrictions_on_porno...
Government should stay out of the way, and I don't want to hear about it every ten seconds, on the other hand, I don't want to have to read the news every five minutes to audit what they're doing.
A number of internet services (e.g. Wikipedia) shut down temporarily on Jan 18, 2012 as a political statement against SOPA.
Trump has never had any issue he has not been on both sides of. He has no ideology, he does what benefits him in the moment at any given moment.
To clear, they want kids in cages. Did I read that right?
I wish people would understand that Trump has no ideology. Over a span of decades, Trump has been critical of liberals and conservatives, often at the same time. He's praised conservatives and liberals, often at the same time. His political positions are aligned with whatever benefits him the most.
He doesn't care about making life better for the middle class. He doesn't care if immigration restrictions are relaxed or tightened. He doesn't care about whether or not transgender people have access to health care or can or can't serve in the military. He only cares what positions on those issues will benefit him and his friends at any given time. And if tomorrow holding the opposite position will benefit him more, he'll switch, just like that, and somehow convince his base that's what they believe too.
Trump is the one who was championing the idea of a TikTok divestiture or ban, back when he was president the first time. He's only changed his mind on that because opposing the ban is better for him now.
The ban was the stick and selling it for a lot of money was the carrot. ByteDance surprised almost everyone in choosing the stick.
shortly after Trump tried to force bytedance to sell its shares during his first term, the Chinese government passed laws to include the recommendation systems used in social media into the export control list. bytedance thus won't be able to sell tiktok without approval from the chinese government.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/technology/china-tiktok-e...
the official export control list in Chinese
https://www.most.gov.cn/tztg/202312/W020231221620858841394.p...
it is on the 29th page, with export control number 086501X, item 18.
Seems like the goal pivoted recently - the goal is to keep TikTok Chinese and have them supporting the corrupt regime taking over the US, similar to other foreign adversaries have in the past
The Tik Tok in-app notes for "shutting down" and "we're back" both referenced Trump by name. I doubt they would do that without his explicit consent.
Trump beamed his name and heroics directly into the eyeballs of 50m people before he even took office. That wouldn't have happened without the brief blip going dark.
Odds are good he said he'd pardon them (which is a whole different story) but ensured they'd go dark for a few hours, either by withholding his guarantee or by directly coordinating it with them.
This is Trump. It's always about him. If we haven't learned that we haven't learned anything.
He's not even in power and already everyone's sucking up to him.
In Trump's world, I think you should cause a problem, blame somebody else, and then fix it.
the protests had no bearing on the outcome of the bill. most of us didn’t even know they were taking place.
also if you look at the history of the bill, there is no mention of public opinion at all. They shelved the bill due to lack of agreement.
https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2012-01-18
As for your claim they had no effect, that's not what the sources from the time say—on the day of the protests 13 senators announced their opposition, including 5 former co-sponsors:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/01/pipa-support-col...
When you lose five co-sponsors in one day and that day happens to coincide with the internet shutting down, I don't find it very credible to try to claim that there was internal dissent all along.
Trump as a private citizen, can't issue a statement and automatically over-turn a law.
If someone wants to enforce the law, they still can. It's still on the books, and Supreme Court upheld it.
He appointed a bunch of corrupt Supreme Court judges, and they upheld an obviously unconstitutional law (bill of attainment). Now, on his first day in office, he gets to be a hero by unilaterally deciding not to enforce the law.
So, moving forward, (1) we should expect increasingly unjust and draconian laws, and (2) as long as you do what Trump asks, you can break whatever federal laws you want.
(Zukerberg, Bezos and Trump have already gotten in line for this.)
"Rep. Mike Waltz calls out the Biden campaign's TikTok account: 'They should be ashamed'":
* https://www.foxnews.com/video/6346831867112
Waltz chosen as Trump's national security advisor:
* https://www.npr.org/2024/11/11/nx-s1-5187098/trump-national-...
And currently "Trump security adviser doesn't rule out continued Chinese ownership of TikTok":
* https://www.reuters.com/technology/trump-security-adviser-do...
So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Either because they gave in to the ploy, or because they were unable to close a TikTok deal, the Democrats look incompetent here. And Trump gains favour in the younger demo (that he's already pretty strong in) AND with SMB because he gave TikTok more time.
Anyone doing graft, corruption or just questionable wealth accumulation in the millions or single billions is going to look like small ball for at least the next four years.
and by that you are including the massive majority of republican legislators who also sit on intel committees also voted for it with resounding vigor?
We found a compromise. TikTok will remain, all of its national security risks will remain. Also, the law that tramples free speech is upheld by the court, but will be blantently ignored and unenforced.
Everybody loses. This outcome is worse than anyone could have conceived.
Famously, soldiers wanted to use strava in secret military bases: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracki...
Maybe we should have some sort of General Data Protection Regulation law instead of hand-wringing about social media.
I can't imagine a world where it would be illegal for two parties to agree to sell the location data that one of them generates.
If I agree to let FantasyCorp sell my location data, and then they follow through with our agreement and actually sell it, then there's no problem here that I can see.
https://news.usni.org/category/fleet-tracker
The more valuable signal from app data would likely be op tempo and what phase of a deployment / mission a ship is in.
Aside from inferred reasons for changes in patterns of behavior, one going emcon and suddenly dropping all users off an app means something.
Also, modern satellites are great, but even carrier battle groups are really small in the Pacific.
I'd be astonished if I learned that soldiers on duty were totally free to do as they please the expense of operational security simply because that's what people in their broad demographic category are accustomed to.
I'd be equally astonished if I found that military recruitment was based on enlisting cross-sectional samples of demographic categories, without regard for the capacities and attitudes of the specific individuals seeking to join. I know for a fact that people are rejected for enlistment for all sorts of reasons.
And I'm sure that the military can find ways of enabling deployed personnel to use the internet without sacrificing security or oversight -- for example by requiring them to use secured military-issue computers and smartphones, or by having an inspection or vetting process for hardware and software when soldiers want to use their own devices.
I hope you also acknowledge the absurdity of suggesting that the government should apply essentially the same restrictions to the whole of society that the military couldn't apply within its own sphere of control.
Or in HNism, you're "Why don't they just..." without considering the reasons those solutions might be more challenging than they first appear.
I suggest you read parent comment about balance and tradeoffs inherent in forward deployment again.
Could you point out the straw man in question? I feel like everything I posted above is a direct response to arguments I gleaned from your previous comment, and certainly didn't intentionally attribute any argument to you that I didn't think you were actually making.
> I suggest you read parent comment about balance and tradeoffs inherent in forward deployment again.
I've reread it a couple of times, and I'm afraid I'm not seeing any hidden propositions in it that I missed the first time around. Could you be more explicit about what you're getting at?
My comment about finding ways to enable internet access in a more controlled way was specifically targeting your argument about the security vs. morale tradeoff, and my point about the absurdity of trying to make that tradeoff for society as a whole in a scenario where you imply the military can't make it for its own operations still seems to apply here.
>> I'd be astonished if I learned that soldiers on duty were totally free to do as they please the expense of operational security
The post you were replying to didn't suggest anything about total freedom. You're exaggerating their words to make your argument easier.
>> I'd be equally astonished if I found that military recruitment was based on enlisting cross-sectional samples of demographic categories
Given initial enlistment age ranges between 17 and 30/40 [0], you get cohorts from specific generations.
Kids who are 17 now were born ~2008, which is just starting to be kids with smartphones and mobile devices their entire lives.
No cross-sectioning required: just upper and lower age limits.
>> And I'm sure that the military can find ways of enabling deployed personnel to use the internet without sacrificing security or oversight
I'm going to assume you're honestly ignorant of military networks and field device management at scale.
The military runs segregated networks. Secure networks require approved devices; those devices are extremely locked down. There are often also public internet networks for MWR reasons. Unmanaged devices can be used on those networks. Furthermore, in most non-naval deployments, terrestrial cellular data networks are also accessible.
>> for example by requiring them to use secured military-issue computers and smartphones, or by having an inspection or vetting process for hardware and software when soldiers want to use their own devices.
Military IT is already overloaded managing the vast number of secure devices and networks, so having them manage consumer devices in any way is a non-starter.
For scale context, the DoD PKI includes ~4 million active CAC cards. [1]
Unmanaged consumer devices + CAC are also often used for less-privileged interaction with the military (e.g. HR functions).
> My comment about finding ways to enable internet access in a more controlled way was specifically targeting your argument about the security vs. morale tradeoff
And the responses that you're getting are that these are non-trivial problems for real-world reasons.
Furthermore, you seem to have a lack of understanding about how much it sucks to be stuck in a forward base, and how important maintaining morale is to command authority and force effectiveness.
PS: Also, look at user names. I'm not the author of the original comment you replied to.
[0] https://www.usa.gov/military-requirements
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Access_Card
Of this we are in 100% agreement. It’s totally doable, but I am observing that today it is not a solved problem in the US military.
> I hope you also acknowledge the absurdity of suggesting that the government should apply essentially the same restrictions to the whole of society that the military couldn't apply within its own sphere of control.
I’m a little confused about the wording of this but I am reading this as saying that the military should be able to apply its own standards that are stricter than what civilians are accustomed to. I agree, and it does. But I’m suggesting that it doesn’t happen in a vacuum and that enforcement is never perfect. A blanket ban on personal devices (I’m positive this has been tried before) would both be unpopular and difficult to enforce. It would be a mistake to discount the cost of poor morale. And it would be a mistake to ignore the outsized effect that poor morale has on middle management — the ones who are responsible for enforcing said rules.
I hope it’s clear that my commentary is entirely descriptive and not prescriptive. Full disclosure: I’m former US military enlisted and also currently working in a space adjacent to improving operational security.
It's not easy to put a McDonald's in the middle of the desert.
I'm not sure what to make of the argument that the military is unable to find any alternative to consumer smartphones without even RMM implemented as a means of providing for troop morale, therefore the government should regulate social media for the entirety of society as a means to ensure the security of military maneuvers. This just sounds nuts to me.
>> Why are soldiers allowed to bring GPS-enable consumer smartphones along with them on top-secret deployments in the first place?
That was your original question.
It wasn't 'Should we ban TikTok to enhance military security?'
When people answered your original question with relevant points, you reached back to banning TikTok.
It sounded like you just didn't understand why soldiers are allowed to bring GPS-enable consumer smartphones along with them on deployments.
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2021/05/28/us-soldiers-expos...
That's not really a new problem. The problem is as old as time, even before the internet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loose_lips_sink_ships
When I was deployed in 2011 we didn't carry cell phones because:
1. Jammers will render your antenna unusable or potentially damage your device.
2. The country that controls the infrastructure now has the inside scoop on who you are, what you're doing, and where you are. Even if they country is an ally, it only takes a few individuals to start mass exfiltration.
TikTok was turning into infrastructure for social dialogue except that it had a new capability compared to the cell phones of 2011: it could be manipulated at scale, and quickly with the combination of algorithms and outrage culture.
I mean, yeah, I would be slightly annoyed to lose ${social network}, but in truth, my life would be hardly impacted.
Where the fights isn't over selling opium to the us masses, but about who gets the profits from the sales.
I might not share your views but it is important to defend this side of the debate to get the full picture.
It’s easy to reduce TikTok to its negatives and forget that ton of people do get value from it. Obviously for content makers but even for watchers, entertainment and sense of community do have values.
I'm not sure why people seem to have more narrowly defined their idea of freedom of speech to be "the freedom to shout futilely into the void," when it's a two-way street. The government telling booksellers they can't sell a book to people isn't just a violation of the author's rights, but the right of other people to seek and acquire that book. (Hence the clauses in the amendment about anssociation and abridgment of press.)
The whole situation is very Fahrenheit 451. Which is kind of ironic, since Bradbury would have probably hated TikTok and assumed it would be the television-flavored precipice leading to books being destroyed.
Captain Beatty would be proud of all of the would-be firemen itching to torch everything they don't like, oblivious to the simple corollary that someone else doesn't like what they like.
The outcome is *exactly* as anyone with a modicum of sense expected.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"—often paraphrased (sensibly!) as "deserve neither and *will lose both*." As you say: we've lost both—who could have predicted that? Yeah; well.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
There's nothing really novel about the instant situation. It's a classic, on repeat.
censorship, and similar constraints on free speech, just hide the problems of society so you are unable to act on possible threats as a policymaker.
One only need to look at the Harris campaign to see that the political class in the us is fundamentally innumerate as well as incapable of making a cost benefit analysis.
https://www.thebalancemoney.com/us-deficit-by-year-3306306#t...
The only presidential administration that produced a non-deficit budget was Bill Clinton's second term (~97-00).
Probably because Ross Perot mostly self-funded a third party campaign centered around the national debt and had received 8% of the vote (and 19% in the previous election).
https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...
People quote it in the wrong context.
1. Banning media based on alleged (or real) foreign interference is a very thin line
2. Banning and "unbanning" media based on vague accusations can be exploited for self-serving economical or political interests, which long-term hurts any kind of credibility of media as a whole. And, like it or not: we depend on media. We're not living in self-sufficient communes, at least most of us don't.
3. What made TikTok an issue in the first place: foreign interference (see 1) and problematic content, the policy causes for this probably include insufficient moderation and lack of court accountability. Then there's the question of algorithmic bias: I think this is not a simple question, e.g. is Instagram Reels technically the same or if not, what are the most important differences between their recommendation algorithms?
The TikTok ban would've been far less problematic if they had created legislation for all companies that curtailed data trading and increased user privacy. But that was never the goal.
Is it possible that TikTok solved their problem by purchasing $6 billion worth of Trump’s meme coin?
Yep
He came out against a ban on TikTok long ago (after initially being in support) and made it clear he'd work to reverse it the second the ban bill started gaining momentum.
Genuine question from a non-American: does the 1st amendment only apply to US citizens?
A later amendment is held to have "incorporated" this prohibition against the state governments as well, though that amendment doesn't actually specify anything in particular. ("No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.")
It is frequently argued that some act of the government violates the free speech rights of foreigners living abroad, which is to say that whatever it was the government did fell into the class of behaviors prohibited by the first amendment. People tend to find that argument weird; I don't know what its batting average is.
Summing up, nothing extends rights to foreigners, but since the first amendment is a prohibition on the government rather than a grant of rights to certain protected people, foreigners arguably enjoy equal protection.
---
However TikTok US here is a domestic organization operating domestically merely controlled by a foreign organization operating abroad, which complicates matters. It has rights.
Citizens in the US are implicitly allowed to do whatever they like, subject to laws that the government enacts. The constitution describes those areas where the government is allowed to pass laws. All other areas are off limits to the government, and left for the people to do as they like. To emphasize the point, the amendments specify certain areas that the government is extra-especially-not-allowed to create any laws about, like speech.
The extent to which this is observed today is quite dubious. There are lots of laws that the US government passes which have little to do with anything the constitution allows them to do - but they kinda hand-wave around that and gesture toward something, like the "commerce clause" or whatnot as justification.
But in theory - for any law passed - it is unconstitutional unless you can say exactly where in the constitution it is explicitly allowed.
* Having written all that, I will add that "government" above means the US Federal government, not all the other ones. State, local, have a lot of latitude to make whatever laws they want, unless a federal law specifically prohibits it.
This is not entirely correct. In general many elements of the Constitution are incorporated and apply at all levels of government. It even outranks state constitutions where the two conflict.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_R...
The Constitution, its Amendments, and decisions of the Supreme Court are not 'federal laws'.
The major difference is the Tenth Amendment, which sets the states apart by specifying that any powers not "delegated to" the federal government are reserved exclusively for the states. (In practice courts have found many "implied powers" that are not explicitly enumerated).
Federal laws are distinct from the Constitution.
TL:DR: no, it doesn't even apply to US citizen, only to US government.
PS: "tyranny of the majority" for some is a definition fascism, i disagree, to me it isn't even proto-fascism, it lack a weird mythos about internal enemies and a few other mythos. It's closer bonapartism, or cesarism at worst. To be clear i think it is a precondition to have fascism (I.E as long as your case law/consitution is enforced for everybody the same way, you aren't a fascist state).
Yes, it's being suppressed. Criminalization is just one of the many coercive ways to censor something, but states have many tools in the box...
s/criminalized/supressed/ and message still holds true. You can still say the exact same things on a different forum.
I don't care about the First Amendment specifically. The US constitution is not magical divinely inspired scripture. I care about the underlying principles of freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and freedom of association, regardless of how well or poorly those are reflected by a specific written law.
This is the problem.
We can't be certain that a foreign actor couldn't destabilize our faith in our government by pushing pro-palestinian content.
A small push on a platform can snowball since creators take the stances that don't get them cancelled or want to mimic the popular opinion
Does that count as pro-Palestinian?
Reddit shows pro-palestinian/anti-israel propaganda in the front page on a daily basis.
Also, the fact that Israel's invasion of Palestinian territories was an anti-Biden propaganda point that was boosted pretty hard doesn't exactly prove that the likes of China aren't pushing propaganda to destabilize the US. There was clearly a coordinated effort to force-fed the idea that Biden was pro-genocide and a warmonger, and Trump was the only possible candidate to push peace in Ukraine and Palestine.
Reddit is both anti-Israel and anti-Palestine depending on the sub. News channels will be one or the other depending on the slant and there's plenty on both sides. Most of instagram is people from both sides shouting at each other about how the other gets more representation/are more evil. Same with facebook. I don't use Twitter or any Twitter clones, but I assume Mastodon has a Palestinian slant while Twitter probably has a slight Israeli slant (shitposting aside). Even on HackerNews you'll see both stances often. I guess 4chan would have my stance, since they hate Israel because antisemitism but also hate Arabs.
Do people just make shit up like this for a laugh? I really don't get it, yet see it so often espoused.
Yes, the government censoring Tiktok's source code on Github would be a freedom of speech violation, but that's not what this is about, is it? See also: Tornado Cash. Publishing code facilitating money laundering is fine (you'll find the code still on Github!); running said code to facilitate money laundering isn't.
Or to go with an even more extreme example: Writing code for a self-aiming and firing gun is speech [1], running said code on a gun in your driveway isn't.
The fact that we are still debating such basics of the First Amendment here is baffling. This is almost as trivial as the other well-known limitations in my view (shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater etc.)
[1] At least at the moment, and as far as I know; I think we might see this type of speech being restricted in the same way that some facts about the construction of nuclear weapons are "innate state secrets".
American companies (Google and Apple primarily) have been told by the government that they cannot distribute binaries running certain code to Americans. That seems like the real 1st amendment issue to me and I was quite surprised to learn that ByteDance only claimed that their own 1st amendment rights were being infringed on (which personally I find to be flimsier).
EDIT: Tornado cash was taken down from GitHub though, so you don't have a point here
> American companies (Google and Apple primarily) have been told by the government that they cannot distribute binaries running certain code to Americans.
Yes, in the same way that American companies and individuals are routinely prohibited by the government from distributing other binaries to Americans, most notably anything that circumvents DRMs as regulated by the DMCA.
I really don't think the people that drafted the First Amendment had apps in mind when they thought of "speech", and would probably consider them something more like machinery (a printing press, a radio (not a radio station!) etc.) Interpreting Tiktok as a type of newspaper (which are widely protected even in democracies without an equivalent to the First Amendment) is much less of a leap of faith compared to considering an iOS executable speech.
So I would also argue that restricting DRM bypassing software is a violation of the 1st amendment and, more importantly, that it's a bad thing to restrict.
We'll never know what they would have thought, but I'll add that actual plans for machinery are definitely speech. We certainly do restrict these plans, with ITAR most notably, and I think it's reasonable to draw that line somewhere.
Note that I never said banning TikTok was as bad idea, just that it restricted speech by way of limiting distribution (which oddly looks unconsidered in the supreme court case), which it absolutely does. I'm uncomfortable with this level of power being granted to the government, but given that TikTok is obviously a spying/malware delivery tool by a foreign borderline hostile government I think it's probably warranted.
I think not being somewhat disturbed by the United States government restricting distribution of an application is a bit weird TBH. That's a huge power to have and can definitely be abused, especially if it's made easier to do so in the future.
Or does it just apply to the brainrotting addiction machine that shoves 800 videos a minute at teenagers?
I'm also a little unclear on which liberties are essential, versus those that are merely nice to have. We all give up the liberty of driving on the wrong side of the road, and nobody seems to mind.
But when you ban something 9 figures of people happily use, with some small chunk of that even being people making a living off of it, people will care about that because it directly and visibly affects them.
Are the congressmen so incompetent that they didn't see this coming? This backfired horribly for them in multiple ways... unless this was somehow part of a master plan my simple mind can't comprehend?
Did it somehow not backfire and I'm just being led to believe so?
The elite have always known the value of media and propaganda. TikTok could easily sway electorate decision making in the same way as Meta, X, and YouTube. The US oligarchs have no control over a sizable social media platform. The data security and privacy concerns are theater. The very same logic we use for TikTok applies to our own apps and social media. The only distinction is the false premise they have our interests in mind.
Are congressmen this incompetent? Yes. Are they bought by adversaries? Yes. Are they just humans who are as equally manipulated as you? Yes.
Did Trump get more money? Yes. Plan success.
Foreign governments not so much.
The issue is a foreign government having access to that data, to installed software on millions of phones, and foreign control of the primary information source for tens of millions of Americans.
Because, and I hate to say it, they're our snooping government agencies. I'd rather it be them that have access to all my data than the CCP apparatus.
If person A says "X implies Y", then person B points out that X would also imply obvious nonsense Z, it doesn't mean that B is saying Y and Z are the same, or even that Y isn't true. They're just pointing out that X is too general to possibly be true.
This essential liberty was freedom from being killed. Pretty fucking essential.
We give up that right in exchange for the permanent safety that a government is supposed to grant. Life is presumably more fundamental than money, but if it's the only truly essential liberty, there is a lot of room to give up others.
Homeowners have some power. But if the government really needs to (modern example includes building a new railway), They can elect to forcibly pay you and seize it (eminent domain).
>We all give up the liberty of driving on the wrong side of the road, and nobody seems to mind.
Auto transportation was never a right to begin with. As inconvenient as it is, you are free to walk wherever you want without trespassing. Even across a road. But there's a line when you start to simply endanger others by say, walking on a road at 5 mph.
You can legally the same content anywhere else, and Tik Tok would not be under fire if it were not owned by one of a handful of countries.
You sure about that one? (https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/05/06/senato...)
Obviously the transfer of ownership was always about the content, and implicitly the fact that if a Chinese company owns it, the US has no control over it. Opinion making in the US is always implicitly enforced, not explicitly.
There's a great bit of an old interview with Noam Chomsky talking to an American reporter in which the reporter asks Chomsky: "You think I'm lying to you, pushing a US agenda?" and he responds: "No I think you're perfectly honest, but if you held any other beliefs than you do you wouldn't be sitting in that chair talking to me"
this is the platform version of that concept.
The content wasn’t not outlawed; the platform was not outlawed.
Some aspect of the platform’s ownership has been outlawedd. That’s pretty different.
> Obviously the transfer of ownership was always about the content
Perhaps I should have quoted it so that it was clear.
Please address the actual argument, namely that in the US, when you hand platforms to people like Zuckerberg, you don't need to do any actual censoring because American business leaders change their political opinions in line with the sitting administration the way other people change T-Shirts. That is the point of the sale, anybody who is not utterly gullible can see it from a mile away.
On a Chinese owned TikTok Americans get information presented to them, whether intentionally or authentically, that the US powers that be do not like. There is no other security argument, data was already managed by Oracle in the US, the app was technically separated from its Chinese equivalent Douyin.
>Obviously the transfer of ownership was always about the content
I’m struggling to see why you say I didn’t.
> you don't need to do any actual censoring because American business leaders change their political opinions in line with the sitting administration
I think this is blatantly not true. Instagram, reddit, and others host a TON of anti-current-administration content.
Now, I’d like to discuss your assertion that there is no other security argument with a series of questions. I do not believe even a casual observer can uniformly answer “no” to the following;
Do you think it is likely that CCP has access to the data obtained by Tik Tok on US phones?
Do you think the US government warnings and security audit results were based on real concerns and findings?
Do you think it is a national security risk for millions of Americans to run CCP controlled code on their phones?
Do you think CCP is able to control the Tik Tok recommendation algorithms to promote their interests, possibly at the expense of American interests?
The only one I wouldn't uniformly answer "no" to is the last one as there's no real evidence for the first two and that one is at least in principle possible but what's important is that private American citizens running entertainment apps on their personal phones isn't a "national security issue".
Running TikTok on government phones in Langley probably is so banning an app like this from government devices is fair enough, but the interest of any individual American is that they have free access to services, domestic or foreign, even if it's literal propaganda because they're the ones who are supposed to make that judgement. Hell even if it's Red Star OS from North Korea and they want to run it on their personal computer, they should be able to.
American interest isn't a synonym for interest of the state department, because if that's the case you're living in a security state (ironically like China) and not a free country.
I personally picked 40% because I couldn't image a change of this sort being consistent with today's political reality.
That said, the fine print of that prediction can be interpreted that the ban is "in effect" even if it not enforced and has no legal liability. I doubt all the predictors were hanging their hat on that fine print when they predicted, though.
Sounds like they're operating within the law
"The Act permits the President to grant a one-time extension of no more than 90 days with respect to the prohibitions’ 270-day effective date if the President makes certain certifications to Congress regarding progress toward a qualified divestiture."
Sounds like he needs to work with Congress on at least a basic level for this to be within the law, not just make his own decision and declare all is good. And there is the small detail that he is not President, at least not today.
Having that along with a republican majority in both the congress and the senate this isn't going to be difficult for Trump to fulfill the requirements of the law.
As long as there is a fig leaf/smokescreen, and TikTok makes the right noises and contributions, they’ll be fine.
If anything, Keeping them technically in violation of the law is the leverage the administration will want to keep so they can squeeze TikTok whenever they want.
However, with regards to the absurd justification. The president (still Biden) hasn't granted any extensions, nor is the president even able to grant an extension without
> certif[ing] to Congress that-
> "(A) a path to executing a qualified divestiture has been identified with respect to such application;
> "(B) evidence of significant progress toward executing such qualified divestiture has been produced with respect to such application; and
> "(C) there are in place the relevant binding legal agreements to enable execution of such qualified divestiture during the period of such extension.
There is no evidence that Trump will be able to lawfully do any of those, and he has to do all, after he becomes president again.
> There is no evidence that Trump will be able to lawfully do any of those once he becomes president,
He can buy or be gifted a partial ownership stake?
Minority or even majority ownership change isn’t enough as long as the CCP still has control.
No actual deal is necessary here. It's obvious to everyone involved what the deal is: TikTok ensures that its content is friendly to Trump, TikTok stays unbanned.
You said TikTok content stays friendly to trump. Isn’t that exactly what I said?: Some deal was cut.
https://action.aclu.org/send-message/tell-congress-no-tiktok... https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/banning-tiktok-i...
Increasingly not, but still sometimes yes.
Expect a lot more “big wins” in the coming weeks- where he solves problems to massive fanfare that never existed or that he created- with empty “solutions” that also didn’t really happen or take no effort.
Appearing wealthy is especially attractive with narcissism since it is the most banal, obvious, and universally understood signal of success and greatness- but the money itself isn't the goal, and having wealth in secret - as may be necessary if it is under the table - without adding to the appearance of being wealthy would be uninteresting.
I thought Joe Biden signed the law?
Biden didn't stop it because he also supported the ban as well, which is even worse.
So TikTok would have been totally banned if either Biden or Harris won the election.
I do however, also believe that good leaders are people with their own principles and ideas- and are willing to do what is right even if it isn't popular, when necessary. However, a huge percentage of our political leaders on both the left and right seem to have a 'dark triad' personality with narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy- and no ideals besides getting more power and admiration, that switch everything they claim to stand for on a dime like a kid trying on play outfits. I'd like to see people notice and not accept that type of 'leadership.'
It's the same reason you see certain introverted personality types overselected for in backend engineering teams: only a certain type of person enjoys working on something that is inscrutable to most people even users of the service they help support.
===
> I do however, also believe that good leaders are people with their own principles and ideas- and are willing to do what is right even if it isn't popular, when necessary.
It's a slippery slope from this to oligopolistic rule. Obviously the US democracy is not direct and there's an understanding that politicians balance their principles against popularity but I also think the US is of a mood that Congress is run by disconnected elites right now. Now is the time to err to populism.
I would say we've certainly had politicians and leaders without 'dark triad' personalities, but the most sincere ones in my lifetime were often also the least successful.
I don't think standing up for your ideals is incompatible with democracy, if you make it clear from the outset what your ideals are, and that you intend to stand by them.
However, I do think people with real ideals and vision do become inspiring leaders, and we could really use that right now. I'll admit this mostly happens at a cultural level, and probably works best outside of a political office- MLK for example.
Maybe I just need to talk about it, but I'd like to think I learned something that might help someone else.
Honest question- whatever you like about whatever this politician says, do you believe it's sincere? If not, do you feel like your views and ideals deserve representation from people that sincerely share them and would actually make some person sacrifices to make them happen?
It's absolutely crazy to me that people like you assume if you question anything on 'their side' you must be 'on the other side' - as if all of human perspectives reduced to a single bit of information. I mean, if they really were even on their own side they'd be more critical of it.
What irks me is the cheap virtue signalling by the laptop class which has been told to hate him since 2016. They had no opinion of the man - who is a literal Hitler and who was 70 years old in 2016 - before that. I despise such fakery.
They didn't dislike him before 2016 because he was one of them, he went to their parties, donated their favorite people lots of money, and did TV interviews repeating all of their talking points.
Trump is absolutely nothing like Hitler- Hitler was a completely sincere true believer in his cause, solidified his views clearly before he had any fame or power and stuck to them consistently, and was himself willing to die for the cause of blaming all problems on people different than him. Trump switches stories and allegiances like an 8 year old girl trying on princess outfits until one 'clicks' and gets attention- and doesn't care if the one he ends up with is left right or center- he tried them all.
Both your "cheap virtue signalling by the laptop class" and Trump have an identical underlying strategy and postmodern world view that things like integrity, principles, and ideals are for suckers, and the only thing that matters is constructing a narrative that gives you the most power and attention right now: e.g. fakery.
Both are even using the same basic absurd narrative that some evil outgroup that deserves to be dehumanized is causing all of your problems, and supporting authoritarianism with them in power will solve it- just different outgroups but both chosen strategically by the same process.
There hasn't been any president during my lifetime that didn't have narcissistic personality traits and strategies, but I am not 100% sure all of them definitely had full blown NPD, I'm not a psychiatrist. It's a disability than harms the person affected more than anyone else- people with it are very alone as they make no real friendships or connections with people, and are not capable of improving their life through self reflection and self criticism. They can be very successful but won't ever enjoy it- they will still just be terrified and anxious about their facade collapsing. It is a disorder where fakery is the very core of every action.
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5078962-trump-s...
Trump did business in New York City for decades, and the Stormy Daniels payoff was the best prosecutors could come up with.
I guess you've been too busy to pay attention to Jack Smith's Florida cases, and to the January 6 committee's hearings and findings.
And no, I didn’t follow those cases, because I had closely followed all the accusations of tax evasion, receiving payments from Russia, etc., during the prior four years and those has amounted to nothing. As they say, “fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, well you can’t fool me again.”
It is apparently not a crime to meet with a Russian spy in your house, and to have a discussion about exchanging relaxed foreign relations for dirt on your political opponent. It's also not a crime for the campaign to share campaign data with a Russian FSB agent as the FSB carried out a psyops campaign against American citizens for which they are now indicted. Totally legal to lie about those activities to the FBI and Congress as well. Completely legal to use the fruits of the FSB hacking campaign to your political advantage, and it's also legal to publicly call for the FSB to continue hacking your opponent.
There just aren't laws against these activities and no one can actually prosecute them (if you break the law to become president and win, you just replace the people who would prosecute you with loyalists, so you can't get prosecuted for breaking the law while campaigning unless you lose), so everything Trump did with Russia in 2016 is now acceptable political activity.
It's now normalized that a candidate for president should, no, must lean on foreign governments to circumvent domestic campaign laws to gain as much leverage over their opponent as possible. For example, the 2028 Democratic candidate could make a deal with North Korea to hack the Trump campaign (he's already said he's running again) in exchange for relaxed sanctions, and that would be fine according to the norms of our time.
This is the maximally stupid outcome, so I suppose we should have seen it coming. I guess the conclusion is going to involve Trump taking an ownership stake in TikTok, possibly by swapping it for $TRUMP cryptocurrency or Truth Social shares something.
We can blame the state of New York for this, who convicted Trump of falsifying business records and then handed him a sentence of .. nothing.
Nothing yet: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czr72m57e1jo
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czr72m57e1jo
Don’t worry, I’m sure there will be some kind of ‘emergency’ this time.
There was no ‘instant revolution’ on Jan 6th. Near as I can tell, if that capital police officer hadn’t shot the woman climbing the barricade…
But then I watched it live on CSPAN, so I got to see it for myself instead of being able to be told afterwards that I didn’t see what I saw.
And maybe we should have a law that punishes politicians for paying money to cover up affairs. But we don't have that. Trump's prosecution was, instead, a triple bank shot combining three different vaguely written laws in a combination that makes the Double Irish with Dutch Sandwich look straightforward.[1]
As CNN's head legal analyst Elie Honig explained: "The charges against Trump are obscure, and nearly entirely unprecedented. In fact, no state prosecutor — in New York, or Wyoming, or anywhere — has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime, against anyone, for anything. None. Ever."
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-was-convicted-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Sandwich
[EDIT to respond a bit to the now-expanded parent, which was only a single sentence when I replied]: I do totally agree that the hush money prosecution was a bit of a stretch, and wouldn't have happened if Trump wasn't famous. You're just wrong about it applying to a time when he wasn't running for office.
Now, it'd be better if he simply got prosecuted for the initial crime. Absolutely agree there. But I'm not sure that "I can avoid prosecution for campaign misdeeds by committing them and then waiting to pay people back until after the campaign" would be a great precedent.
The judge summarized the case for the jury as follows:
> The allegations reflect in substance, that Donald Trump falsified business records to conceal an agreement with others to unlawfully influence the 2016 presidential election. Specifically, it is alleged that Donald Trump made or caused false business records to hide the true nature of payments made to Michael Cohen, by characterizing them as payment for legal services rendered pursuant to a retainer agreement. The People allege that in fact, the payments were intended to reimburse Michael Cohen for money he paid to Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, in the weeks before the presidential election to prevent her from publicly revealing details about a past sexual encounter with Donald Trump.
That summary implies that paying off Stormy Daniels "to prevent her from publicly revealing details" about the affair was the unlawful act. But under what law? And why wasn't he just charged with that law directly?
Basically, the crime alleged was violating a NY election law saying that you can't try to influence an election through "unlawful means". They provided a sampling of said unlawful means: violating federal campaign contribution limits, falsifying other business records, and violating state tax laws about how the reimbursement to Cohen was handled. The jurors didn't have to unanimously agree about which of those things they think he actually did.
The reasons to not charge him for those separately would seem to be respectively: 1. that's the feds job, 2. statute of limitations expired for the non-felony falsifications during his presidency when he couldn't be charged with anything, and 3. Cohen directly committed the tax crime so all Trump's guilty of is conspiracy to commit a really niche bit of tax misrepresentation that didn't actually cost anything.
The unambiguous bit is that he definitely falsified business records, and so the squabble is over whether he's guilty of a misdemeanor or a felony. It was apparently persuasive to the jury that he did the felony version.
That just gets you back to the temporal problem we started with. As you say, the only "unambiguous bit" from the jury's implicit fact-finding "is that he definitely falsified business records." But he did that after he won the election. How can you influence an election through unlawful conduct that happened after the election was resolved?
Insofar as the case was framed as election manipulation, you need some conduct prior to the election. Which is why, as you observe, the prosecutor had to add a third layer of uncharged alleged crimes:
> Basically, the crime alleged was violating a NY election law saying that you can't try to influence an election through "unlawful means". They provided a sampling of said unlawful means... The jurors didn't have to unanimously agree about which of those things they think he actually did.
Putting aside that each of the predicate crimes is deeply flawed (e.g. federal prosecutors investigated and declined to bring the campaign finance charge), you can't rest your triple-layer cake felony theory on a base of uncharged predicate crimes and tell the jury they don't have to agree as to the predicate crimes: https://www.justsecurity.org/96654/trump-unanimous-verdict. This is exactly the sort of thing judges are supposed to keep from being submitted to the jury.
It's personally embarrassing that lawyers at my former firm helped architect this travesty. If this harebrained legal theory had been used to convict a sex trafficker or murderer, lawyers at that firm would be falling over themselves to represent the defendant on appeal pro bono.
The klept will not spare the billionaires. There’s a reason Meta’s entire public posture has changed since Nov 6, there’s a reason the WaPo didn’t publish an endorsement. This isn’t a class thing - Trump is not a billionaire defending his fellow billionaires, he’s a mob boss in charge of the state.
Spare me the, "but this time it's different" without any good reason to expect it.
So Trump & his circle win !
And now about how the sitting president can profit from brokering it
Can you talk about the Tiananmen Square massacre on TikTok and show the few videos of people who were disappeared?
Are they accessible in the country that owns TikTok?
How can you complain about the CCP banning foreign social media and censoring when you have your own government willing to do the same thing -- in the name of Protecting the Democracy?
It's not about privacy or data or whatever the facade is. The crime that we are committing is none other than allowing ourselves to be fed information that could threaten the United States. So, therefore, even according to the SCOTUS, if Congress plasters the magical words "national security" in their laws, then the Constitution takes a backseat and we too can be like China/Russia/Iran. Will we start banning VPNs next--which circumvent our new found love for censorship? I'd not be surprised.
Yes, see www.tiktok.com/channel/tiananmen-square . Or read https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/tiktok-us-ban-congress... . Or just go search for it.
> The Tiananmen Square Tank Man is an iconic image that emerged from the protests and subsequent military crackdown that occurred in Beijing, China, in 1989. The protests, primarily led by students demanding political reforms and greater freedoms, took place in Tiananmen Square, a prominent public space in the heart of the city.
I'm not a TikTok user, it was down earlier but clicking now I see the famous tank man video, an article about Chinese censorship of AI, etc. Do you get something different?
Huh? Trump singlehandedly bringing TikTok back for tens of millions of malleable voters. Sounds like a pretty huge victory for him!
Get used to it.
To me, the whole banning of TT is political theater aimed to divide the US while existing tech oligarchs consolidate power and money.
Just look at the message TT broadcasted. Blatant pandering of incoming administration.
"Manipulation Playbook: The 20 Indicators of Reality Control"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3AN2wY4qAM
If you're wondering how Russia slipped from a flawed democracy into an aurocracy, it was because Yeltsin fixed the 1996 election, by holding an axe over the head of the press. He made it very clear that anybody who wants to keep their broadcast licenses will need to shill for him.
It's how a drunken autocrat with an 8% approval rating, credited for both hyperinflation and mass unemployment, who launched a coup (that killed a few hundred people and caused a constitutional crisis) ended up getting re-elected.
And then at the eleventh hour, after firing his cabinet, again, he declares Putin his successor and resigns over a $10,000 bribery scandal.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law
I'm not sure how so many people misunderstand the difference between "free speech" and "app controlled by hostile foreign government".
The people speaking on TikTok have not lost their right to free speech, they still are free to use a multitude of other channels that amplify their speech. No speech was blocked, only the app controlled by a hostile foreign government was blocked, and there are no provisions in a any legal framework that says we can't stop a hostile foreign government from controlling what people in this country see.
Additionally, why have we all forgotten that China does not allow any of our social media companies within their borders?
If we’re in the business of free trade, there’s no reason to let them operate a social media company in the US until they’ve opened their market to us.
This law does not trample free speech. Your view of what free speech means as it pertains to U.S. law is wrong.
This is an absurd framing. Free speech cannot implicate national security. If a social media platform controlled by a foreign government can manipulate the people so easily then you have a much larger and ignored problem.
> all of its national security risks
Which are zero. What you actually experience a risk from is the shabby way Google, Microsoft and Apple have put their platforms together. Designed to earn them money while utterly destroying your privacy.
> This outcome is worse
You're already in trouble. This outcome is a symptom of a much larger problem. The conversation around this is completely detached from reality.
If social media owned by foreign companies is a national security threat, then wouldn't that essentially make FB, X, YouTube a threat to like every other nation? Why not throw wikipedia in too? So now any nation can legitimately see any other source or collector of information as a national security threat and ban it at will? Taken to the logical conclusion, every nation should be enveloped by its own digital borders.
To me, it's the popular sentiment alone, for example people feeling sad and upset TikTok's gone and feeling happy that it's back, that's preventing this dismal future, otherwise governments would block apps on a whim. And this I'd say is a win.
If you sent letters to people via a middleman who decided which of those to forward onwards, you’d see that as censorship. I appreciate that that’s an over-simplified example - it’s meant to be a reductio ad absurdum. But control of the algorithm effectively regulates free speech, IMO.
Also (for clarity) the fact that China happens to be involved is not relevant to my point!
This presumes an assumption. I don't consider the banning as a lever for ensuring US controls Tiktok as bad behavior. America has a vested interest in snooping on and having direct control over popular mediums of communication. Giving Chinese ownership access to the methods used (like the physical devices, et al), is a security issue. It's a cold war game that seems a little sophisticated for this day and age (somehow). The lack of understanding explains a lot of these wandering conversation about tangents.
So this is the sort of statement that needs to be whacked a couple of times with a rolled-up newspaper.
The US government does not have a vested interest in doing things expressly prohibited to it by its own constitution.
Don't whack me, it won't change my beliefs.
China is an authoritarian dictatorship. Their government does not see anything wrong with violating the rights of their citizens, so they won't be fazed if we do it too: threatening to restrict access to social media in the US is not going to get them to stop doing it in China. If we follow through with our threat, not only will we be doubling up on the problem of illegitimate political restriction on public discourse, we'll also be behaving in a way that is far more improper and unacceptable for the US than it is for China, because we do not hold constitutional republics to the same standards of rule of law and respect for individual rights that we expect from authoritarian regimes.
The analogy only works if the US response to banning US social media was to do something similar like banning Russian social media that had no impact on China.
As for whether the ban is legitimate or not, The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that it is. We’ve banned foreign governments from owning television stations for decades.
It's not quite correct to say that the Supreme Court ruled that the ban is legitimate. It narrowly ruled that the immediate first amendment challenge wasn't sufficient to invalidate the law under intermediate scrutiny. The only thing they were evaluating was whether the impact of the ban was biased toward any particular content, which it isn't.
They didn't rule on the overall constitutionality of the act, whether its first section amounts to a bill of attainder, whether the forced divestiture would amount to a fifth amendment taking, whether it violated the broader freedom of the press under the first amendment, or anything else. Those questions might well be evaluated later.
The petitioners made those challenges as well. 3 lower courts denied them, and SCOTUS chose not to overturns the law based on those challenges, thus upholding the constitutionality of the law.
Based on your the argument, because SCOTUS didn't rule on the constitutionality of the ban with respect to the 2nd amendment, they didn't actually declare that it was legitimate.
So yes technically you are correct, but SCOTUS certainly choose not to declare the law illegitimate, which is the most legitimating thing they are ever going to do.
>So, by your way of thinking, if there was a chance that pooping on the floor myself might discourage my dog's bad behavior, I should go right ahead?
It's just a bad analogy. Come up with a better one.
No, I think the way of thinking is that it's irrelevant whether or not China (the dog) does it. If you want to deny the Chinese government the ability to use a Chinese-owned social media platform in a certain way, then you ban it. This isn't a tit-for-tat situation at all; the US is doing something it believes is beneficial for itself; it's not simply pooping on the floor which would serve no benefit.
The overall point is that your analogy doesn't fit the current circumstances, so stop using it to argue against the TikTok ban.
The Chinese government kicks out foreign social media because they want to censor a laundry list of topics and have near-direct control over discourse.
If we assume poor intent, the US wants to kick out TikTok in order to prop up the market share of US/Western-owned social media companies.
But if we assume better intent, the US wants to kick out TikTok in order to deny the Chinese government the ability to run unfettered political/social influence campaigns on US citizens. (Instead they'll have to play cat-and-mouse games on Western-owned platforms.)
Even if both intentions are there, I think this is much better justification than what the Chinese government does.
While the action may be similar, intent matters.
Or, more simply: no, intent does not matter -- you are responsible for the damage that proceeds from your purposeful actions regardless of what ideas were in your head at the time. Ends are not sufficient to justify means.
I am not willing to give the US government discretionary authority over what software I have access to in order to advance its geopolitical ambitions in relation to China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S20BoxH8W9g
How you see his position as different from ours is an astounding result driven by American imperialist propaganda.
None of these entities are on your side. Highlighting a false dichotomy does nothing.
As a former Google employee, during my employment I found plenty of internal blog posts from the China team at that time about this arrangement. It was amazing to me that a lot of these internal blogs simply weren't deleted because people forgot about it and storage was so cheap.
You're welcome.
Their preference to shut down instead of receiving tens of billions of dollars would be a clear violation of a company’s fiduciary duty to shareholders for any normal company. But ByteDance’s allegiance isn’t to their shareholders.
First I've heard of this.
The conflicting legal obligations remind me of the Microsoft "safe harbour" case, which is becoming a lot more relevant and still isn't really adequately resolved.
Ironically this would be enforcing the very same law that exists in China, where all companies have to be majority Chinese owned.
It's like saying the Pope isn't Christian. It's really a hidden statement about gatekeeping.
Edit: I think the distinction is important because the US has a tendency to label things communist before it goes to war with them, whether cold or hot.
To give an example for comparison, a lot of people want to say socialism is about workers controlling the means of production. But that doesn't come close to covering all of the things that were called socialism that existed before someone proposed that definition.
With communism it's similar but at least I'm not aware of any one jingle that people are pushing as the one true definition.
But there are definitely lots of people who want to say they understand Marx better than everyone else and the Soviet Union doesn't count as communist because of x. China doesn't count as communist because of y. Etc etc. it's a way to preserve an identity as a communist without having to admit there are any downsides.
For what it's worth I'd argue that capitalism is even less well defined and I've heard it used to describe every economic system that's ever existed including all communist countries.
That’s not what I did, and I’m not a communist. I’m specifically talking about China because people use the label, deeply incorrectly, to portray them as a threatening other, as though they work in a super different way to us and threaten our way of life.
> But there are definitely lots of people who want to say they understand Marx better than everyone else and the Soviet Union doesn't count as communist because of x. China doesn't count as communist because of y. Etc etc.
Im no scholar, but I’m pretty damn certain you can’t have a strong free market, alongside the consequent wealthy capitalists, under communism. Words have meanings, and that’s not what anyone or their mother would think of as communism.
See, names are meaningless.
So functionally maybe a little like Albertson's is the only legal party, but if you prefer your region can have a subsidiary of Albertson's like Safeway or Shaw's.
If you read Marx, communism isn't possible to achieve until after capitalism has run its course, so the way things are in China ATM are perfectly at harmony with that.
One day test prep schools are illegal and immediately shut down. Tech CEOs suddenly became pariahs and started getting carted off to re-education camps. Etc.
You never know what could happen to an executive, company, or sector.
Subtler manipulation still works great, and the opacity of algorithmic content recommendation makes that an ideal instrument. Nobody outside ByteDance knows to what extent the CCP is putting its thumb on that scale already, but they certainly have the power to.
https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/an-update-on-recent-conten...
A different account operated by the same user was banned for something relating to an image of bin Laden in a different video. I've been unable to locate that video. I haven't found any reference stating that she praised him. She described her use of that image as satirical, and TikTok itself seems to recognize that (but stands by that ban):
> *While we recognize that this video may have been intended as satire, our policies on this front are currently strict.
In any case, the video in question is the Uighur one. TikTok quickly stated that one was a "human moderation error" and reversed it. My point is irrespective of whether their rules were morally correct or correctly applied, though--whatever those merits, they clearly drew more attention to the topic by censoring here, not less. So it's not surprising they don't apply blunt Chinese-style censorship outside China, since it's counterproductive without Chinese-style control of all major media.
Look up Mitt Romney’s comments where he plainly says they need to ban TikTok because they can’t control the narrative on Israel-Palestine. Narrative being his word.
It’s a restriction on my speech. Telling me where I can publish a video? Telling me what apps I can download? Telling my software vendor what software they’re allowed to let me get? Telling internet providers what servers they’re allowed to let my device access?
The law doesn’t fine TikTok. The law fines the people who let me download an application I’ve chosen to use. At $5,000 per instance.
It’s not about TikTok’s rights being violated. It’s about mine, and yours.
Is the difference really about whether you can post on the platform or not?
Another huge difference is broadcasting is about usage of a shared resource and has always had regulations on who is allowed to do what. They don’t ban RT from setting up their own venue or printing a newspaper. RT and other outlets are able to operate in the US and people are able to chose to watch them.
You are being ridiculous now. None of those are forms of speech.
And restrictions on your ability to perform certain actions is literally what being in a society is about. If you don't like it then find another society. Just like you can find another ISP, place to publish your video or platform to use apps you want to use.
They concluded that these regulations were okay at those levels of scrutiny, but it is not absurd or ridiculous to analyze these as forms of speech, and indeed, our courts do so.
That said, just because there is a conflict with freedom of speech doesn’t prevent all government regulation, it just means the laws involved must pass an elevated level of scrutiny. That applies here, for multiple reasons, and with multiple parties.
The foreign-controlled part in particular implicates Congress's obvious and explicit power to regulate international trade, and it seems obvious to me that there would be something less than strict scrutiny applied to alleged violations of the 1A when that Congressional power is in play.
(I also agree that this is a different case, I only point to Bernstein because it is a clear part of case law which states that software distribution is and can be a free speech issue and restraints on it would be expected to be evaluated with some level of scrutiny.)
Not that the case is relevant because restrictions on the availability of products is well established under the law. I can’t just buy nuclear weapons for example.
Isn't use of any non-violent means to advocate one's belief to change the society is the whole point of the democracy? Your point is rather very totalitarian.
This is incompatible with living in a society.
I also see why people are interpreting my comment to mean that because it’s a restriction on my speech it’s not constitutional because that’s how people usually act on the Internet. But I don’t and didn’t. What I said was it was a restriction on my speech and I believe that’s more of interesting case than the restriction on TikTok’s speech. The ramification of that is that the courts would adjudicate the free speech restriction at an appropriate scrutiny level and determine whether that restriction is allowable. As we all know, some restrictions are allowable and constitutional. Others aren’t.
It’s not unreasonable, wild, or strange to point out that there’s a restriction on speech here, and to point out that conflict needed to be resolved to determine constitutionality.
Most are handled at the district level, if the court felt there was no legal issue at play, they would have denied cert. Their opinion did end up being per curiam which suggests the court feels clearly about the case, but does not suggest they never felt there was an issue worth arguing.
I don't agree that it is, though. The restriction is on where you cannot put your speech[0], not on the speech itself. If there was nowhere that you could put your speech (or if the available avenues became much much much smaller in reach), then I would say that your speech is being restricted.
But that's not the case here. You can publish that same speech on YouTube, Facebook, Threads, Instagram, Twitter, and a host of others where you can reach more or less the same audience you can reach on TikTok.
You also mention elsewhere about not being permitted to download a particular app onto your phone (and/or that a service provider isn't allowed to provide it to you). That just isn't a free-speech issue at all. And besides, if you have an Android phone, you absolutely still can install the TikTok app on the phone, because Android allows sideloading. If you have an iPhone and can't sideload, then your beef is with Apple, not with the US government. Beyond that, www.tiktok.com still works just fine, and will still work fine even if/when it ends up hosted on infra owned by non-US companies.
[0] Note that I did not say it is a restriction on where you can put your speech; it is a specific restriction on where you cannot, which I think is an important distinction.
Why do people on hacker news keep drudging up freedom of speech ad nauseum??
“ At the same time, a law targeting a foreign adversary’s control over a communications platform is in many ways different in kind from the regulations of non-expressive activity that we have subjected to First Amendment scrutiny”
And the opinion talks about foreign adversary, those exact words, at least 30 times. It mentioned freedom of speech twice
And “free speech absolutism (for me, not for you or anyone else)” is the current right-wing cause celebre.
It's not a free speech issue.
Given that the infra for serving US tiktok customers is in the United States(inside of Oracle Cloud), I am curious if Tiktok/bytedance responds to US law enforcement requests.
You have it backwards. The US gov is concerned that an app installed on half of all US cell phones is controlled by a company that is 100 percent beholden to the Chinese gov.
It is just such a ridiculous argument but if you repeat nonsense enough times, people start repeating it back as if it is real.
We never had to deal with this before because the WW2 generation was obviously not stupid enough to let the KGB publish children's books and Saturday morning cartoons inside the US and have a KGB influence campaign that says to ban the books/cartoons would be a free speech issue.
Obviously a non-starter. What you see with Tiktok is how completely infiltrated and corrupted things are in the US in 2025.
The unrestricted war from China started a long time ago and the IMO the US has already lost.
"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." ― Sun Tzu
As is "everybody is installing Red Note." The people who think this is true are the people who use tiktok.
This is like arguing graffiti laws are censorship.
Graffiti bans are unquestionably constitutional. Graffiti laws that regulate the content are not.
Telling people where they can speak is precedented, legal and necessary. Telling people what they can say is against the principles of free speech; the government doing so is illegal.
So if I wanted to hold a speech how corrupt the government is and then the government passed a law that a PA supplier isn't allowed to sell me a Microphone or speakers, that wouldn't infringe my first amendment right because I don't have a right to a microphone or a stage? (Im not American so I don't have any first amendment rights anyways but for arguments sake.)
It's the PA supplier would be in a better position to argue that their rights are being violated. Especially if a single customer was targeted because of their political views / protected characteristics etc.
The problem with the TikTok scenario is that no specific group is being targeted for restraint. And the government does have the right to regulate trade. E.g. there are embargoed countries, export controls, etc. The fact that you can't sell raw milk across state lines is different from a hypothetical restriction on selling raw milk to, say, people named Todd.
Your comment however draws a weird parallel later on though but first let’s take a moment here:
> Your 1st amendment rights are not being infringed by being denied access to TikTok
That is what the court found but it opens some interesting questions that really do have impacts.
I would bet that you would find a law that says op-eds can only be published in an approved list of venues to be clearly wrong, yet it is equally just determining venue and not content.
As would a law which banned foreign ownership of venues while also introducing a regulatory scheme for domestic ownership stakes of sensitive industries and defined news and commentary as a nationally security sensitive industry. (Which this law essentially does for certain types of apps.)
So at some point a law can be “content neutral” and about access to venue not content but I bet almost any reasonable person would agree it’s an unreasonable restraint.
Now for a situation you draw the above as a parallel with but is very different:
> just as the far right isn’t having their 1st amendment rights being infringed by being denied to use BlueSky as their platform.
Bluesky can do whatever they want but if the government were to get involved in defining regulations around which users could use BlueSky… yes absolutely I would expect it to be thrown out on first amendment grounds and expect it’s a significantly stronger case than any of the examples above.
It’s a much weaker and almost irrelevant case when directed at a non-governmental organization in which some folks are using “free speech” as an argument over what entities which are not enjoined from almost any actions may do with their own venues. But yeah, if it was the government telling BlueSky who to ban? You bet that’s got first amendment implications and I’d expect a court to review it under strict scrutiny. (And I wouldn’t expect it to survive.)
That's a poor analogy, because allowlists and blocklists are not the same thing and do not have the same effects. The government only allowing a list of certain approved media outlets would be an obvious 1A infringement. The government blocking certain media outlets is not.
The law (and the US constitution) does not guarantee any particular platform for your speech. It just guarantees that you can speak, and courts have interpreted that to mean that you need to have some reasonable platform, and that laws can't put an unreasonable burden on your ability to speak on some platform.
As an aside:
> Telling internet providers what servers they’re allowed to let my device access?
The law does not target internet providers at all. They are not required to block traffic to *.tiktok.com or any of their IP addresses.
Anybody with that kind of financing readily available is throwing it at AI and not another social network, no matter how useful it might be for domestic propaganda.
Why would the US government be involved in paying tens of billions ?
The idea is that ByteDance would sell it to Meta, X, etc and would be a private transaction.
Just like happens in China and in many other countries.
The CCP would not miss out on taking advantage of the situation and demanding trade concessions for agreeing to sell. US government would absolutely be involved in raising the necessary finance, as banks won't be bending over backwards to lend Musk money for another speculative venture.
Congress doesn't appear to care if TikTok survives or not. TikTok bans are not news.
* If ByteDance divests their US TikTok operations, they create a new competitor that could potentially out-compete them in other (non-US, non-Chinese) markets.
* Whatever amount of money they get for this divestiture would be much lower than what the business is worth to ByteDance (when your options are sell or shut down, potential buyers will not feel the need to bid high).
* ByteDance's US TikTok operations are certainly of non-financial value to the Chinese government. That value is likely orders of magnitude higher than their financial value to ByteDance. Selling that user base is probably not preferable to shutting down. Influence campaigns are certainly easier to run on a platform you own, but certainly those campaigns are already running on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Why add another platform that they can't control where they have to run influence campaigns?
Don’t need trust when you have the second most powerful state entity backing you. Corporate America has a complete jammed full history of its interests getting screwed over by foreign entities only for the US government to step in either with military force or some coercive measure resulting in a corrective action. Im sure China is well aware of this playbook and are probably apt to copy it too.
They should have seen a law like this being passed coming years ago. That is more than enough time to divest.
Too late now for them, I guess. They can take the financial hit for being so bad faith.
Why wouldn't American investors still want to buy it?
My guess is that American investors would want to buy it, but want the algorithm, but ByteDance is not willing to sell the algorithm out of fear that sharing it would degrade its competitive position outside the US.
It is not. A company would be (financially) punished if it didn't follow regulations. DiDi was an example. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/23/investing/didi-us-delisti...
https://action.aclu.org/send-message/tell-congress-no-tiktok... https://www.thefire.org/news/fire-scotus-tiktok-ban-violates... https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/eff-statement-us-supre...
It seems to me that they aren't "pretending" they honestly believe the issue is about free speech. Laws that does not explicitly curtail free speech but effectively still does just that can certainly be created.
Tolerance is a social contract of leaving alone others whose ways differ from your own so long as they do the same for you.
One must not tolerate those that call for violence and subjugation of differing groups, which is almost the exact opposite meaning your comment seems to be implying in my reading of it, instead calling for wholly unfiltered speech by whosoever should deem to speak.
Racists and similar hatemongers calling for others to tolerate them while they are screaming for those they disparage to be caste down and out cannot be tolerated in any reasonable forum.
As such, any reasonable forum must ban some facets of free speech.
That we disallow this power for governments is a reasonable limit on the powers of the elected to rule, lest those powers be abused.
Thank you!
I would very much agree this is the case. But it's not how a lot of people think
Neo-Nazis are a subset of Nazis though, no?
In the context of "literal Nazis" the ACLU had argued for the rights of - like the German American Bund, which contained actual members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, not exactly.
It always seemed to me that the US was fuzzy when the very clear text of the Constitution rubbed up against the realities of a complex State. For example,
- the 1st Amendment doesnt say the speech can be overridden by a compelling national security interest, which is the argument here. But the US has security services, and legitimately there are cases where to allow speech does harm. But if you are going to be honest, shouldnt there be an amendment giving the State an override of 1A?
- 2A is infamous, of course, and for the love of $deity lets not discuss it here, but why does "not abridged" get overriden by bans in, say, machine guns, which have been on the books since the Chicago gangster era? Either you abridge or not. Or at least be honest about it .
- Some speakers in the covid era made a very strong appeal to personal bodily autonomy when it came to vaccine mandates. Ok, let's follow that. Does it not then also follow that a woman cannot be forced to carry a baby to term? That would seem logical, but the connection is not made. Conversely there is no "commonweal" override written into the Constitution and we are left with random SCOTUS decisions over the last 240 years.
No it isn't. The argument here is that it isn't a restriction on speech at all.
An amendment process that in practice is impossible to exercise is just as good as having no amendment process at all.
No, and no one is saying they can. The law says American companies can't do business with a certain foreign-owned company.
It is beyond settled in law that this is something that the US government can do.
Sure, the government can do that, and when doing so infringes on Americans’ speech or access to information, it introduces First Amendment questions that must be addressed.
“The government says CNN can’t post stories from BBC” isn’t immediately resolved by “it’s a foreign company.”
But this doesn't do that. Everything that Americans could post or watch on TikTok, they're still allowed to post or watch anywhere else.
Is the government allowed to shut down Harvard because the same classes can be taken at ASU?
The courts have various categories for how important something needs to be to allow certain levels of unconstitutionality, eg suppose I have "legally" built the nuclear device featured in a recent kurgesatz video with enough kiloton to start by itself a nuclear winter kill every person on the planet... I seriously suspect SCOTUS will be ok with the state taking the ignition keys away from me
You seem to be confused between principally defending everyone having the same rights vs defending everything anyone can do.
The ACLU defends Nazi’s rights because they believe Nazis should have the same rights as everyone else irrespective of who they are.
That doesn’t mean they defend every possible action that can be considered a civil liberty.
Eliminating traffic laws would make individuals more free in a literal sense, but those rules also make it so people can get from place to place quickly and safely. The liberty interpretation is that what people actually want is to travel, not to drive however they like. So you trade a freedom most people don't miss to enable another.
Vaccine mandates are a great example of this contention where under normal circumstances nobody cares about having to get vaccinated but they do care about not getting polio. Covid was strange in that the number of people opposed was significantly larger than I think anyone expected.
In September 2021, the ACLU wrote a New York Times op-ed defending vaccine requirements, arguing they actually advance civil liberties by protecting the most vulnerable and allowing more people to safely participate in public life. David Cole and Daniel Mach, the authors, wrote that individual liberty isn't absolute when it puts others at risk.
Surely, one can be pro vaccine mandates. But I would not expect a civil liberties organization to hold this position.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/02/opinion/covid-vaccine-man...
There is "freedom to" and "Freedom from" lots of people not getting vaccinated affects people's freedom from getting infected.
I am personally happy with vaccine requirements, but IMO the ACLU should have been defending the people who weren't.
That’s a clear curtailment of their civil liberties. And assuming they’re in a rural area may not harm anyone else either.
This is an obviously extreme example but the point still stands. Any civil liberties organization cannot focus absolutely narrowly on that question in every situation but has to apply a broader approach.
>but the point still stands
On what, exactly?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon
All individual rights are balanced with the rights of other individuals/society. You can be given the choice to vaccinate or be forcefully quarantined. This has occurred many times in the US and the right of the state to do this has been upheld.
While corona was weak we will eventually seem some dangerous bullshit spread and the anti-vax dipshits are going figure out exactly what their rights entail as they are being drug from their house at gunpoint with the express will of the majority of the population.
A broad, sweeping quarantine in relation to COVID would have been so unpopular that you can see why they went about it in a "softer" way, but sometimes the government can't have its cake and eat it too.
Those vaccine mandates were broadly ruled illegal, even in light of the quarantine power. These sorts of civil liberties are complicated, and the ACLU found themselves on the wrong side of this one.
Edit: Maybe they didn't.
Interestingly, the myriad freedom of travel cases happened so long ago and were so decisively settled as a strong right that everyone has kind of forgotten about them because there is little interesting left to decide. Not as controversial as questions around the meaning of speech. But I think the last significant questions were addressed around the Second World War.
It is unambiguously unconstitutional to prevent everyone from traveling, even for quarantine purposes. It must be evaluated on an individual basis subject to judicial review to establish that the individual presents a clear and present danger, and only for a very limited duration. No different than restrictions on speech.
This is the reason no State anywhere, regardless of who was in power, instituted hard lockdowns during COVID. This is known to be settled law to such an extent that attempting to prevent the population from traveling without clearing the strict scrutiny standard would be met with an instant Federal court injunction, likely coupled with a withering public statement questioning the competence of the State’s Attorney General. There was no upside in taking that risk.
The idea that you can forcibly quarantine someone solely because you don’t like their choices is wishcasting, not based on credible Constitutional foundations.
If someone actually went to court over this, I would hope/expect that the NRA would send some lawyers. The ACLU isn't that into the second amendment and has never been. However, nobody has gone to court over this. They did go to court over vaccine mandates.
By the way, the only grounds the government would have to stand on here are radiation-related. It is broadly legal to use explosives on your own property unless you're too close to someone else's property. It is also broadly legal to build your own weapons.
Requiring inoculation/vaccination, shut downs, masks, and quarantines was generally considered a legitimate use of state power to prevent the spread of deadly diseases and not an infringement of civil liberties.
Actually this goes back to even before the US was founded. George Washington imposed mandatory smallpox inoculation on his army during the revolution. This probably contributed significantly to his victory because both the British army and native tribes that had sided with the British were heavily weakened by smallpox but Washington's was not due to that inoculation requirement.
There may have been isolated examples in the past, but the degree was not the same.
In cases from "Roe vs Wade" to "Masterpiece Cakeshop" and "Hobby Lobby" the ACLU came out against things supported by the religious right. And although the ACLU regularly supports the free speech rights of swastika-tattoed nazis - Republicans don't see that as supporting their side, because no reasonable person wants to think people with swastika tattoos are on their side.
I think “trying to pretend” is just one of those thought terminating cliches to pretend that you have a winning argument.
> Honestly these "civil liberties" orgs have lost the plot a long time ago, or are just at "useful idiot" mode
Exactly. When I read "many American civil liberties organizations think," my first thought was "they think a lot of things, that doesn't mean what they think is true or a good idea."
Additionally: they're all essentially lawyers arguing one side of the case. Just listening to them is not going to lead to the correct outcomes (e.g. if courts only listened to prosecutors only, tons of innocent people would go to jail; if they only listened to defense attorneys, tons of guilty people would go free).
Shocking news: different players have different motivations.
Yes. Foreign-ownership rules have been a thing in America for almost a century [1].
[1] https://www.fcc.gov/general/foreign-ownership-rules-and-poli...
Of course there is. It’s obvious that a huge chunk of the momentum behind the TikTok ban stems from a desire to suppress anti-Israel content.
The actual purpose of a law or system is the actual outcome of it and not what it's dressed up to say its purpose is. A law that says "we don't allow mosques unless they're owned by people not descended from countries on a terrorism watch list" is still an infringement of the freedom of religion. We don't have to pretend there's good faith here.
This is at best vacuously true. Since China is the most powerful adversary of the US, you'd say that literally anyone else is more under the thumb of the US government than they are.
Like with tik tok, the ban itself isn't a speech issue because there's nothing bytedance can change about it's communication to not be banned, it's an ownership problem.
Clearly it's not.
Yes, the government can make laws that effect speech platforms just like we can make them pay taxes.
The physical equivalent would be if China was hosting a TED-talk-like conference where anyone can come and hold a presentation, and after certain kinds of talks became popular congress would tell them that they are no longer allowed to let Americans in, neither to hold presentations nor to listen to them.
Technically that doesn't violate the constitution, but it's not difficult to argue that it does violate the spirit of the constitution
At some point, it becomes State Propaganda masquerading as grassroots activists.
Control over content can influence and distort public discourse and understanding. This is also against the spirit of free expression envisioned in the constitution and instead injecting an intentionally divisive voice.
Those Americans can host the exact same content on youtube or any of the many other video hosting sites.
This is not a free speech issue, it is a megaphone issue.
So if the alternative places where such speech could be hosted were extremely limited, expensive or very difficult to use then the law banning a platform could create an unreasonable burden.
Of course, plenty of comparable alternatives do exist.
>>>> It would be harder for me to learn piano if my teacher was convicted of murder.
>>> Nonsense. You can easily find another piano teacher.
>> Right, just like people who use TikTok can easily find another short form video platform.
> That's a terrible analogy.
Nonsense. If TikTok was convicted and shut down because of rampant financial fraud, your First Amendment rights would be similarly unaffected.
TikTok was told to close because they refused to bring their corporate ownership in line with requirements set out in US Code passed by Congress. The content of any video was never at issue.
I think if that were the situation then yes the first amendment would be in issue. But I don't think anyone is saying that this is happening here. As I understand it this has nothing to do with what anyone is saying on TikTok and there are no social or protest movements gaining ground on TikTok that the government is trying to suppress. The only issue here is the foreign ownership and how that ownership is used. I don't think anyone is saying the government is doing this to silence any TikTok users
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.
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.
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.
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.
> Also, tiktok.com is a thing that works on everything.
Sounds like you're arguing against yourself. TikTok hasn't actually been banned.
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.
You’re quoting the Declaration of Independence.
[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C18-8...
Forced corporate divestiture is a thing, for example Merck.
And this ruling had little to do with any of that -- the first amendment challenge was that the ban imposed content-based burdens on the speech of the users of TikTok, and the court ruled that it did not. So the ban therefore survived the challenge under intermediate scrutiny.
The domestic vs. foreign ownership element of the ruling only pertained to the evaluation of whether there was a compelling government interest in enacting the ban, not whether the government was exempt from first amendment scrutiny at all.
Corporations are considered "legal persons" for the purpose of applying the law to them in a convenient and organized way, but in real life, corporations are just organizational models employed by human beings for the purpose of coordinating their activities.
The restrictions applicable to what the government is allowed to do to "people" as defined in the constitution apply regardless of what organizational models those people are using to coordinate their activities. Ultimately, everything in society reduces to people, and the government is not entitled to use reified abstractions to escape the constraints on its authority.
That Constitution also includes numerous clauses granting Congress the authority to regulate international commerce (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3). TikTok is a foreign commercial enterprise. We have restricted foreign products and services since the Boston Tea Party.
Sort of true. Sometimes the constitution just says "persons", which has generally been interpreted to anyone.
But it's not material, because the 1st amendment is a restriction on congress. That's why it starts with "Congress shall make no law...". The argument isn't about if TikTok has rights, it's about if congress is authorized to take this action. They're inter-mixed a bit because if TikTok does have the rights they claim, then congress automatically isn't authorized, but they are separate.
There were some people on here saying that national security is just a pretense and the government is actually doing this because they dislike some of the content being posted on TikTok. I don't know if that's the case but if it were then I would concede there is a first amendment issue. But absent that I think it's safe to say that this case doesn't raise the first amendment.
I still think it does, but it's Apple and Google's right to propagate the app, not TikTok's right to be on the app store. And since neither Apple nor Google are party to the lawsuit, nobody really has standing to take that particular line of argument.
You can say the same thing about an antitrust law that forces Alphabet to sell Youtube.
Go read the SC unanimous judgment. It’s very clear and lays out exactly why they’re wrong.
In fact they do a lot more than that because they state off the bat that there isn’t even a first amendment question (a Chinese corporation doesn’t have first amendment rights in the U.S.), but they go beyond, assume the first amendment does apply, and still explain why that isn’t valid.
Haven't these people heard of Wickard v. Filburn?
How can the first amendment be interpreted so broadly that large multinational corporations financially supporting politicians is considered free speech, yet so narrowly that social media isn't part of the media?
You do realize that Rupert Murdoch was forced to become a US citizen because of the same laws that are in question about US media ownership.
Social media is 100% the media. Social media has freedom of speech. Businesses don't have freedom of ownership, including media business. Kinda fucky, but this is very long standing law.
As for social media - it's an advertising platform. The algorithm is deciding what you see based on what sells ads. Who is exercising free speech there? Tiktok and Meta are exercising corporate speech in the name of profit making. They have no right to host such a platform, and the government certainly has the right to regulate it if they do have one.
The government can't compel Meta, Tiktok or individual users to say X, Y, or Z, they can declare the ads-based algorithmic-content business model illegal or subject it to strict regulation - especially when its in the furtherance of free speech, like preventing Facebook from deplatforming people for having the wrong opinions that advertisers don't like.
How is this ban actually enforced? By fining American companies for serving specific content. That is the First Amendment issue. SCOTUS simply asserting that it's not in order to make their ruling convenient does not actually make it so.
Is that also free speech? Again, it's just the law and how it is enforced.
"Foreign governments saying things" also existed at the same time the 1st Amendment was written, and there were no carveouts from 1st Amendment in light of that.
In any case: If SCOTUS during its early cases on copyright law (or copyright on the Internet) simply asserted "this has nothing to do with the 1st Amendment," they'd also be wrong. That would be a clear avoidance tactic not to wrangle with the substantive issue. In reality, the big cases on copyright are riddled with 1st Amendment questions, considerations, and constraints.
The law indeed needed to be carefully written to "skirt" any first amendment violations, and SCOTUS unanimously agreed it had done so successfully.
Universal City Studios v Corley
No, it fines American companies for providing services to a certain foreign-owned company.
If this isn't permissible, then sanctions can't be a thing and OFAC can't do its job. (Whether or not that would be a good thing is a separate issue.)
A SCOTUS that simply asserted these questions do not exist would also be laughable.
One very recent entry on this discourse:
https://knightcolumbia.org/content/knight-institute-and-foun...
https://action.aclu.org/send-message/tell-congress-no-tiktok... https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/banning-tiktok-i...
The short term "number go up" mentality is breeds is a cancer.
I really hope this changes your mindset. The number go up mentality is purely a result of avarice from those enacting it, it has 0 to do with any laws, it's all personal greed.
And if anything, if tiktok US is sold it will be way below its actual value, so there are many reasons to resist this apart from the political ones. And I assume they expect they will come to a concession in the first place.
Your interpretation would make shutting down any place where people assembled unconstitutional which was clearly never the intent.
In your example, Musk could stop the app in the EU, much like TT is/was doing.
With this said, is the EU law written like the long standing US laws that give the TT law the power it has? If they have to enact new laws that would conflict with its member states wishes/dealings with other nations, expect it go to nowhere.
A lot of folks here are saying that the TT ban had nothing to do with free speech. A couple of indirect rhetorical questions that might be relevant to help illuminate opinions about TT:
1. If there were a single newspaper (in the pre-internet era) that developed and printed a lot of reporting with a particular political outlook and was the home of many columnists known for being the premier thinkers with that outlook, and a law were passed that had nothing to do with the content but had the effect of shutting down that paper, and only that paper, would this be a speech issue?
2. If a political rally were assembling to petition for redress of their grievances, and a law were passed that told them they could say what they wanted but the rally was only allowed to occur in a specific field 30 miles outside the city and 3 miles from the nearest paved road, would this be a speech issue?
3. Given that deadtree-books-in-physical-libraries are not the primary point of reference for most people anymore, if you wanted to block access to certain kinds of information and/or make a statement about doing so, what action would you take in the 21st century to do the equivalent of a book burning? And would this be a speech issue?
There are obvious and easy things you can point out about how the TT law is different from each of those three scenarios, don't @ me about that. But it seems to me that most people who are serious (or, publicly serious, which is a little different) about supporting the TT ban give reasons for it that would be inconsistent with their answers to one or more of those three questions.
That's a pretty substantial difference.
(2) Also doesn't match the situation, there is no requirement that TikTok restrict the reach or audience of their content in any way AFAIK.
(3) The situation is more akin to "foreign government owns the local library, and can decide based on the identity of the person walking in which books the person is allowed to see and check out" - seems obviously problematic at least /if they do that/
As an analogy you could imagine that all the people in the cases above are neonazi pedos and you might conclude that they do not deserve free speech, but the point of the parent is that in all of those cases the free speech of the people was being infringed upon (the question is whether that is justified or not)
I am shedding tears for those poor shareholders.
This is only true if you assume the US is the only market that matters. But TikTok is very much an international phenomenon, and selling would likely harm the company far more than a couple billion. Firstly it would give another company everything they need to run a global competitor to TikTok, including software, infrastructure and userbase. Secondly it might encourage other countries to also force TikTok to sell.
Giving in here would be the beginning of the end of TikTok and could well be argued to be a violation of the company's fiduciary duty to shareholders. It would be the ultimate version of chasing short-term gains by selling the long-term future.
Wouldn't that be a no-op if they already did so?
This has been a possibility for a lot longer than 8 months. Trump was talking about it during his first term more than four years ago. You can take the time to line up buyers even if you don't end up having to sell, but if you have the time and then don't use it, whose fault is that?
> Besides I don't think any company's strategic decisions like this should be solicited by a government. That goes against the free enterprise.
Of course it's not free enterprise. It's a government regulation.
If the US passes a law that says US companies aren't allowed to do business with Russia, that's not free enterprise either. Should those laws be unconstitutional? Maybe, but not any less than this one.
"Free enterprise" is a fantasy. We don't have that, pretty much never had. And I think that's a good thing. Free enterprise/free markets tend to monopolize and prey on workers and consumers.
This is not strictly true - when a company leaves a huge market, it is imprudent to leave behind a well-resourced competitor in place. If I were a ByteDance shareholder, I'd hate if it spun off TikTok America LLC, and then having TikTok America compete against ByteDance in Europe and the Rest of the world on an equal technological footing, but perhaps even deeper pockets from American markets.
TikTok has the power to sway any election how they want. The data available to them about what reels sways what people in what direction is immense. The only question is if they are doing it.
In 20 years I expect either democracy to vanish, or algorithmic social media to be widely banned, or control over algorithmic social media to be viewed more like control over nuclear weapons...
We are talking about a single country.
Now, expect Musk and his billions to push lobbying weight around to ensure Brazil paid dearly for it.
International politics is a treacherous game.
Is a freedom of speech issue.
Would you argue for Tesla or Apple to sell to China? Do you think Musk would divest his China business? The parallels are almost identical
1. Tesla cars collect a huge amount of data.
2. Tesla is already banned from being driven by government officials.
3. Tesla has the best self driving algorithm
4. Chinese cars are already banned in the US
5. China is Tesla's second largest market
6. Tesla is the 3rd largest EV company in China
Would you be surprised if Elon decided to exist China instead of "receiving tens of billions of dollars" from China?
Your argument is a false dichotomy, and it's made in bad faith. You argue that they should have taken a 10B pay day, meanwhile they are alive today and arguable worth over 100B.
Occam's Razor suggests this was due to both a matter of national security from the perspective of the intelligence community and pressure from US companies who have struggled to outcompete TikTok. Basically an "everybody wins" move for the powers that be.[1]
China understandably didn't want to lose its influence, and ByteDance didn't want to give up this incredibly valuable asset, so they said "We'll call your bluff and fight you on the basis of the freedom of speech".
The US government then moved to get a law signed that carves out a very specific way to force ByteDance's hand. I'm sure there were lots of lawyers involved and maybe some back channel with the SCOTUS to make sure this was done in a constitutional manner so that it would survive a suit from TikTok which was all but guaranteed.[2]
That plan worked, so now ByteDance/TikTok/CCP are again forced to sell, except they come to this round of negotiations in a much worse position than they were originally. This makes it better for the many, many buyers that have come out of the woodwork and made public and private bids for the asset.
But these buyers don't want the actual value of TikTok to drop to zero, so they must also be pressuring president-elect Trump to reinstate the app so that it can continue to be used by Americans and therefore remain valuable, so that when they actually get their money's worth when it inevitably changes hands.
Trump isn't restoring TikTok so that it can continue to operate as in the "status quo ante bellum negotii". He's restoring it so that {insert buyer} can claim the spoils in a few weeks.
---
[1]: We can debate whether "everybody wins" includes the US population, but I think they do, because Chinese influence over US culture is strictly worse than US influence over US culture, seeing as incentives are by definition irreconcilable and therefore always worse if under control of the CCP.
[2]: It stands to reason that all of the US government and the top echelons of business and finance is operating in concert here to drive the outcome they want, which is to remove the influence of the CCP over young American minds and to benefit from forcing the asset to be controlled by a US entity.
I appreciate the analysis even if I disagree with it.
<< many buyers that have come out of the woodwork and made public and private bids for the asset.
It is mildly funny given that China is not selling it. It was defacto made a real geopolitical issue with 170m US users as pawns. They may well be buyers, but China is not in a position of weakness here. If anything, the past 48h showed that users can simply say 'fuck it' out of spite.
In short, from game theory perspective, even if they decided to sell, they can now extract heavy concessions. Yeah, US won so hard on this one.
As I may have mentioned in another post, individual players may have gained some ground, but that is it. US lost a lot in this exchange alone.
Everyone already knew TikTok was valuable. This isn't new information. They have no concessions to extract here.
Users haven't said anything out of spite. Some people signing up for some other services was not what drove Trump to announce this executive action.
To me, there is a strong appearance of quid pro quo between ByteDance and Trump. In that case, there doesn't need to be a sale. Trump likely will require a simulation of restructuring which enables him to declare ByteDance in compliance, and the whole things goes away.
Well, did they? So far it is not that clear.
<< They have a precedent now to ban apps from hostile power.
Is that a good thing? If so, why?
<< They gained even more respect from countries
Heh, you honestly may want to reconsider this statement. It is not respect, when China openly effectively says 'nah' to sale and shutters the app instead..
<< Chinese government took this takedown with a whimper
Huh? Dude... where did you see a whimper. Allow me to revisit events.
1. Congress passes a law effectively banning TikTok 2. TikTok sues over free speech and loses appeal with SCOTUS 3. Rather than selling, it shuts down the app 4. Users go everywhere, but ( apparently ) US apps 5. Incoming administration gives assurances it won't actually enforce anything for now
I accept there are ways of looking at things, but this is something else.
I'm not sure I follow as I didn't say Trump will require anything and I don't know what "meaningful" means in this sentence.
> What’s important is what TikTok can do for him, not anything related to national security or ownership concerns.
You're neglecting what the _sale_ of TikTok can do for him, which is to curry an immense amount of favor with Big Tech, Wall Street and the intelligence community, and possibly one or several unnamed players in this negotiation.
I thought you said that Trump would require TikTok to be sold. Did I misread? I was asking why you think Trump will require anything meaningful of TikTok. More specifically, why do you think Trump would require TikTok to sell?
> You're neglecting what the _sale_ of TikTok can do for him, which is to curry an immense amount of favor with Big Tech, Wall Street and the intelligence community, and possibly one or several unnamed players in this negotiation.
Is that any more valuable than the things which TikTok can give him?
1) Cash (purchase Trump's meme coin, stock grant, etc.)
2) Prominence on TikTok
It has nothing to do with free speech. The US was always going to wind up owning TikTok and influencing speech on the platform. The key issue was price, which is affected by leverage. The strict top-down, centralized control ideals behind CCP/ByteDance/TikTok (they're all the same) were once again outdone by the aforementioned "powers that be".
Quick reminder: TikTok is available for most of the planet (except China), so a US ban does not make the actual value of TikTok to drop to zero.
It makes a sell-off very unlikely, but I doubt it's going to happen no matter what.
It's quite puzzling why ByteDance didn't bring up the idea of making a TikTok US in the same way TikTok CN (a.k.a. Douyin) works.