US court to hear challenges to potential TikTok ban in September
reuters.com> Driven by worries among U.S. lawmakers that China could access data on Americans or spy on them with the app,
There's an arguable national security angle. Potential surveillance, and, especially, manipulation and dumbing-down.
Earlier, I also heard complaints about TikTok implications for individual health. Which, when implying US Big Tech social media as an acceptable alternative, sounds like an abusive parent: "If anyone's going to beat up my kids, it'll be me!"
Sounds like US Big Tech might've decided on the complaint angle of "some other country could spy on people" -- since all the other valid complaints about TikTok, including intimate surveillance, also apply to TikTok's counterpart US Big Tech products.
Outlaw the irresponsible behaviors, not the competition.
The other angle is war. Modern war is not necessarily bombing campaigns (even if we have 2 going on now). It's control of other countries citizens, even if through their own words.
For example if representational content of people falling in love with Osama Bin Laden is a total of 3 hours of content, and there are a billion hours of guitar playing good ole American BBQ content, TikTok can show the 3 Bid Laden hours to most people and 0.0000005% of the American BBQ content.
War through means we haven't figured out yet.
i never voted to be at war with China, i think most of this is fearmongering, and we managed to survive the entire cold war without banning foreign ownership of media outlets.
> we managed to survive the entire cold war without banning foreign ownership of media outlets
Because we did it in 1934 [1]. There were no Soviet TV channels.
Actually we didn’t. Licensure by foreign entities has always been restricted in the US. It happens in engineering business as well. I think it has something to do with the extent of juris on foreign entities without involving the department of state
You aren't american. It's been established many times here by many people. What 'we' are you referring to?
We disagree on Taiwan’s independence [1].
I genuinely don’t care about where you’re from or your thoughts about me. Like, sure, I’m a sentient cheetah with an igloo on Antarctica.
But I am curious about your thoughts. If you’re open to engaging on that level, I’m actually curious.
Imagine you tune into something and it's just Bin Laden or related stuff. If you don't find it interesting it's not like you're going to just sit there for hours watching it. Most likely you'd just find a different site if they kept shoving it down your throat. And, in fact, even if you somehow had to sit there for hours watching it, it's not like it's ever going to convince you to decide to convert to his sect of Islam and go become a Jihadist. The point I make with this is that people can only really be significantly influenced on things they don't already have preformed opinions on. And even then it tends to be quite brief, because more natural opinions start to coalesce pretty quickly. See - basically every war the US has ever been involved when the other country is some place most people couldn't even find on a map, at first.
IMO the real threat the US perceives isn't TikTok manipulating information, but them not manipulating it. Look up information about the Gaza War on YouTube and you'll be inundated with various sources promoting a uniformly pro-Israel narrative. The relatively low views on these hits (no recommendation had more than 400k views) for such a hot topic, with premium placement in the search results, suggests it's not resonating or organic, to say the least. But that's because, again, I don't think the goal is to actually get people to watch this and suddenly start cheering on Israel or whatever. Rather, I think the idea is to encourage people to think that they hold a minority view, and motivate them to self censor their own views and opinions. And that's pretty hard to do when you have this massive 'uncontrolled' site openly allowing people to express their wrongthink, and it not being artificially downranked.
> Look up information about the Gaza War on YouTube and you'll be inundated with various sources promoting a uniformly pro-Israel narrative
I encourage everyone to try this out in a private tab to see how untrue this is.
Here is the search I'm using: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gaza+war
Most links are covering the recent Israel strike on the refugee camp in Rafah, where dozens of civilians were killed in a single strike. That happened after the UN's International Court of Justice specifically ordered Israel to halt their offensive in Rafah. I think hyperbolic responses to this would not only be expected, but perfectly appropriate. Instead I'm just getting a bunch of links to stuff that is repeating Israeli PR verbatim - it was a "tragic mistake", multiple senior Hamas killed, and so on. Are you getting something different? Opening up the link in multiple Tor windows I keep getting mostly the same sites: livenow fox, channel 4 news, TBN Israel, StudyIQ IAS, etc.
I get a couple videos from Democracy Now and Al-Jazeera as well, some from TRT World further down, not to mention the recommended Shorts. None of the videos are shying away from showing the harrowing aftermath of the strike, and they make sure to qualify any statement from the IDF or Netanyahu as being such.
Honest question:
If Hamas used a precision strike to destroy an Israeli school full of children do you think the coverage would be similar? Or would it be conveyed as an act of terrorism rather than an act of war?
The "national security" argument was BS in 2018, and it's BS now. The only difference is now it's a real thorn in the side of the establishment in the US, because it's the only source of news and videos of Gaza that is not actively censored in the United States.
We have Russia Today in the US. We have CGTN. Both are okay because their viewership isn't sufficient to challenge the pro-Israeli propaganda put out by the MSM.
Even Mitt Romney admitted a lot of the pressure to ban TikTok came from the pro-Israel lobbyists: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/05/tiktok-ban-china...
> Both are okay because their viewership isn't sufficient to challenge the pro-Israeli propaganda put out by the MSM.
What pro-Israeli propaganda is the "MSM" putting out? Because all the pieces on the current invasion of Gaza I've been seeing have had a strong undercurrent of "what the fuck are you doing Israel?"
Since one of the most recent massacres a day or two ago, there has been a noticeable shift away from Israeli apologism. But the MSM has absolutely been staunchly Pro-Israel throughout the genocide.
All of the media I've been following have been consistently skeptical of Israel's actions since at least November. In particular, I've noticed that the IDF's press events at the big hospital they cleared out (multiple times!) have consistently fallen flat, with all the journalists expressing extreme skepticism of the military's claims in their articles about it.
Bias more often hides in the news you don’t see, not the ones you do.
For example, many people have heard about 40 beheaded babies. How many have actually heard of Zaka? An ultra-right first responder volunteer group that made up this and several other stories that were plastered all over western media with zero attempt to verify it. Even Israeli media extensively reported on this group’s activities, but NYTimes and WSJ has been weirdly silent about all this up until very recently.
You all saw Nytimes’ investigation into hamas’ systematic use of rape. How many of you saw the news from NYTimes that both the parents and kibbutz of one of the central victims of the story said there was no sexual assault. And this also is a fabrication of Zaka.
Again, these facts are extensively reported in even Israeli media, several months ago. US media have recently started talking about this, and even now barely scratched the surface.
I don't know what you've been reading/viewing, but every MSM outlet in the UK has been very obviously pro-Israel (as well as every story I've seen coming out the US, in the likes of the NYT etc) - to the point where it'd be comical, if what they were doing wasn't so deadly.
In their stories they usually have a tiny bit of criticism of Israel's actions, but even then always with caveats - I suspect this is to give the appearance of balance, and possibly to allow pro-Israelis to complain about how the press is against them. (to be clear, I'm not saying anything against yourself, it's a general observation!)
> We have Russia Today in the US. We have CGTN.
We’ll still have TikTok.com even if Bytedance refuses to sell.
Not necessarily. The bill [1] very much leaves room for the creation of the 'Great Firewall of America.' Two of the top things it prohibits are:
---
(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.
---
That is strongly suggestive of the creation of a national firewall, or a defacto national firewall where internet service providers have to abide a Federal censorship list or face legal consequences. This is one of the many things, like the Patriot Act, that people are going to look back in a decade wondering why they ever thought this was a good idea. Well actually they'll probably just convince themselves that they never supported it - much easier.
[1] - https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521...
> strongly suggestive of the creation of a national firewall
Not really. It means TikTok can’t be distributed through app stores and that Oracle can fuck right off [1]. (“By means of a marketplace” and “hosting,” not accessing.)
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/19/23174775/tiktok-oracle-te...
And what's the next sentence you didn't quote?
> Potential surveillance, and, especially, manipulation and dumbing-down.
I'm not a TikTok user, but over the long weekend was around people that clearly are. The things they discussed we so outlandish that I was confused on where they got their information. Of course it was a lot of TikTok and YouTube being used as sources.
Personally, I'm much less concerned by any potential surveillance tool. However, the especially part of your sentence is much more worrying to me.
> Outlaw the irresponsible behaviors,
By this do you mean people posting utter nonsense? At that point, you verge on censorship. I recognize that free speech includes speech I don't like, but holy shite batman!, I've never seen such an effective tool for the crazies to find not just a voice with a megaphone but a 30,000w sound system where ever they go. Oh, and they are monetarily rewarded for behaving that way.
So other than slippery slope reasons, I couldn't careless if TikTok were to no longer exist. The net negative of it existing is not worth it in my opinion.
Outlaw the irresponsible behaviors of the companies controlling the channels. (Not outlaw the speech of the citizens, of course.)
would be better if you provided maybe a single example of the outlandish things discussed
did people not believe crazy things in the mid-20th century? i remember that polling suggests that a third of people believe they have literally spoken with the dead
Just this weekend, I was told that we were in WWIII, but in secret. Of course there's all of the big lie nonsense. There's still talk of which ever Kennedy coming back. Why should I be the one that as to point out specific issues with content being pushed. Are you denying that bullshit is being spread?
> did people not believe crazy things in the mid-20th century?
Why is that even a question? Of course the crazy was around. It was just much more difficult to spread it around. You had 'zines that were available. You had AM and shortwave radio programs. Just by telling someone you listened to AM/shortwave content already set people in the correct frame of mind of where the information was obtained. In modern times, it's everywhere on the socials. It just so happens the time the socials were gaining usage with people that specifically do not know critical thinking nor have been taught the ways to investigate sources.
The internet as been an equalizer for everyone doing anything. As much as it has done for retail, it has also been huge for not just the conspiracy theory sites but propaganda from anyone including foreign actors.
> Why should I be the one that as to point out specific issues with content being pushed. Are you denying that bullshit is being spread?
I'm not, I was actually curious what your examples were.
> It just so happens the time the socials were gaining usage with people that specifically do not know critical thinking nor have been taught the ways to investigate sources.
I would be curious about the rate of misunderstanding and how it has changed. My feeling is that kids today are generally smarter and better informed than kids of the past. I'm pretty skeptical of the notion that more people are misinformed today than in the past.
> My feeling is that kids today are generally smarter and better informed than kids of the past
wow, that's exactly the opposite of the way I see things today. They definitely have access to a lot more information much more easily than I did as a kid. However, my point to the whole ease of spreading disinformation is much more widely used. Also, most kids do not stray far from TikTok or whatever social platform of choice. So typically, a researched concept is only confirmed using another user from a social platform. So their confirmation bias is coming from an echo chamber. There's no deep dive into who actually runs the account whether its a bot or an actual human. If enough people are subscribing/liking, then it must be good seems to be the prevailing logic. "surely, someone wouldn't deliberately mislead someone, right" is an actual comment I was told. And Jesus wept.
> since all the other valid complaints about TikTok, including intimate surveillance, also apply to TikTok's counterpart US Big Tech products
Big Tech aren’t Chinese. There is no public coalition civically engaged against Big Tech’s surveillance. There is a solid bloc concerned about China.
If you want to regulate surveillance capitalism—and I do—convince people to care about the issue (and call their electeds and vote).
> If you want to regulate surveillance capitalism—and I do—convince people to care about the issue (and call their electeds and vote).
But the people being targeted by the platform are all watching videos telling them how their votes don't count, the deep state, and other things to encourage people to believe the system does not work. It is the absolute ultimate anti-democratic tool I have ever seen.
> the people being targeted by the platform are all watching videos telling them how their votes don't count, the deep state, and other things to encourage people to believe the system does not work
Sure, but they have the right to self select out of the civic process (as well as to hear and repeat such things). I wouldn’t support this bill if TikTok.com were going to be blocked; the speech still has a right to the light of day.
> I wouldn’t support this bill if TikTok.com were going to be blocked
Do we have anything other than "it wasn't explicitly called out in the bill" to back this up? There are a lot of catchall clauses built into the bill which could easily cover the website as well.
> Do we have anything other than "it wasn't explicitly called out in the bill" to back this up
The specificity of the enforcement language, the First Amendment, how Trump’s attempts floundered, et cetera. The closest thing that could happen is the domain is seized and it winds up behind TikTok.cn.
> The specificity of the enforcement language, the First Amendment, how Trump’s attempts floundered, et cetera
All of which can be argued for the app as well. Frankly, I'd want something a bit more specific. Especially since the government has used vague laws and language to quite effectively nuke specific websites before.
The thing that could happen is TikTok being findable only at 205.251.194.210 or its ipv6 equivalent.
TIL tiktok.com was a thing. I had assumed it was app only. <shrug>
Would you support regulating or banning a conspiracy theory website, hosted in AWS US East 2?
I don't like the content, but I would NOT support banning it.
To me, there are things that a fun to play what if with for entertainment purposes and hanging out while puff-puff-passing, but only if there's a strong link to reality with the individual reading it. For those without that link and they conspiracy seems tangible that they accept that as their reality it is no longer entertainment.
With the dumbing down of critical thinking in education, things that get pushed on the interwebs become much more accepted as normal instead of being able to say maybe someone is pushing an agenda instead. The ability of someone being a shill and not know it is just a sad state of affairs.
So you'd support censorship if enough people took it seriously. It's a good thing the government has never lied and said something was a conspiracy theory when it was actually true. What was that guy's name? Snedword Owden?
Are people really that brainwashed that they don’t realize that the only reason tiktok is being banned is because of the Israel Lobby?
A foreign nation wants to ban it because it doesn’t serve its interest, this foreign nation happens to buy up all our politicians.
Is September a fast track though? Outside of IT I feel everything is moving at slow motion. Sure they need armies of lawyers but I assume they already hired a lot? Why not a direct ban but requires the army of lawyers to request an appeal? I bet this would send motions faster -- they won't wait for 4 months.
Because this has little to do with TikToc, bytedance or even China. The specifics of whether TicTok is or isn't an actual national security concern will not be considered. The issues at the supreme court will be about constitutional powers, about whether congress may or may not pass laws mandating the sale of single companies, if done in support of national security. Such decisions should never be made hastily.
Because due process.
ALso, the bill doesn't ban Tiktok. It forces Bytedance to sell Tiktok to a US controlled entity so the US security state can more easily threaten them and force them to censor their anti-imperialist content.
China announced years ago it would not support the divestment of China's interests in TikTok/Bytedance. So it's always been a de facto ban of TikTok hidden behind the justification that it's not a de jure ban.
Destroying the company rather than selling it for billions of dollars is a crazy stance for a supposedly independent business, and should be taken with a huge grain of salt. There is a good chance they are bluffing, which would be a reasonable strategy as they try to push back on the bill.
The only reason they would go through with burning the company down is for geopolitical reasons, which would show how beholden Tiktok is to the CCP and confirm one of the arguments for passing the bill in the first place.
Brand damage from the new owners + having reveal algorithm could easily be worth far more for TikTok than they'd get from selling. There's also the question of how a ban would even be implemented. For instance India "banned" TikTok but you can still use it if it's installed. And you can get the APK installer from their site for Android users, and Apple users can just change their region to download it normally.
Whatever the means chosen to ban it is, it'll probably face even more legal challenges.
China won't care that they give up a few billion in a one time sale if it creates a rift between a majority (or huge minority) of regular users and the US government. They'd probably consider it a bargain. Additionally, they have a very good chance of winning via our court system. This is not the first attempt at shutting down TikTok in the US using these tactics.
At the end of the day, China - or any government for that matter - won't sacrifice their alleged propaganda and cyber-warfare platform for a few hundred million in recurring revenue.
1. TikTok is actually not Bytedance's most profitable product.
2. If you sell, you lose. If you let it get banned, you might just need to wait out the current political climate (i.e. end of the Israel/Palestine war; no one really cares about teens' health or some vague Chinese risk - the US can ban it overnight in case war ever erupts with China).
3. Even if they were open to a sale, it's beneficial to publicly maintain that they aren't.
> It forces Bytedance to sell Tiktok to a US controlled entity
No, it does not. (It requires sale to a non-foreign adversary controlled person. A sale to an Indian, South African or Brazilian company would be fine.)
The sale must be personally approved by the President of the United States. Every buyer will be blocked until they find one that is sufficiently hostile to the idea that Palestinians deserve human rights.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/05/tiktok-ban-china...
> sale must be personally approved by the President of the United States
No, it does not. Your link doesn’t even say as much.
It requires the President determine, “through an interagency process,” that the app is “no longer controlled by a foreign adversary” [1]. That language invokes the APA [2], explicitly rules out personal approval, and provides an objective endpoint that can be challenged in court.
[1] https://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20240311/HR%207521%20Up... § 2(g)(6)
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_Procedure_Act
"Through an interagency process" of people handpicked by the President is not meaningfully distinct from what I said.
> "Through an interagency process" of people handpicked by the President is not meaningfully distinct from what I said
No, this is again wrong.
Picked by the President, confirmed by the Senate and required to adhere to an objective end per the APA’s process. The APA seems to be where your knowledge is lacking. (Also, if Bytedance disagrees with the outcome of their process, they can have the courts review. The law is written specifically to suspend absolute executive deference.)
The claim that this is is about national security is absurd. It's about Palestine, and Blinken and Romney admitted as much.
https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/05/06/senato...
> Romney replied, "Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians, relative to other social media sites — it's overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts."
Practically everything passed by the Congress requires a coalition. That means single attributions are rarely correct. The protests added a coalition partner to the team, but that was marginal and far from the bulk of electeds’ (and voters’) concerns. First and foremost, this is and has been for a few years now about China.
Single attributions are rarely correct until it's about Israel/Palestine. You might need to immerse yourself more in the issue before you start noticing these things.
That coalition is looking like Politicians wanting that juicy AIPAC money
> coalition is looking like Politicians wanting that juicy AIPAC money
They want those voters. Again, most people who called their electeds and have a voting record seemed to mention China, at least in New York, Arizona, Wyoming and California, where I know some of the folks.
I know that US has liberal constitution and liberal market economy but putting aside national security risks; why would US let ByteDance reap billions of dollars in profit from US market when Google and Facebook are not allowed to participate in Chinese market and reap profits as well? You could argue that Facebook and Google could abide by Chinese censorship laws and then what? Strip down like 50% from overall content because it is not in line with CCP's ideology?!
Meta still gets billions (10% of global) from PRC based advertisers. IIRC sure Google in billions as well. And have been this entire time.
>strip down like 50% from overall content because it is not in line with CCP's ideology?
Of course, play by same rules/guidelines as domestic players. Will also have advantage in offering filtered content from abroad vs domestic players, also will gain a shitload of unique content from PRC net. Many of interesting content producers in PRC if Google leverages AI to transcribe, translate, dub. Plus handover dissident information, but thats table stakes. And eventually get pressured to block antiPRC rags like FLG media globally or be put on sanction/unreliable entity list.
US tech companies jump through a lot of hoops to play in Europe.
> why would US let ByteDance reap billions of dollars in profit from US market when Google and Facebook are not allowed to participate in Chinese market and reap profits as well?
Google and facebook are allowed to participate in the chinese market. If they follow chinese rules. One of them being storing chinese data in china which google and facebook refused to do.
Why are microsoft, apple and other tech companies allowed to do busy in china? Because they follow chinese laws.
> Strip down like 50% from overall content because it is not in line with CCP's ideology?!
As opposed to stripping content to line up with israeli ideology, european ideology or anyone else's ideology?
Other than hypocrisy, do you have a point?
You can shill for CCP as much as you want but when speaking of European or Israeli ideology, yes there are censorship laws but what censorship laws? For Nazi content, why you may ask? Because Nazi regime was mass murdering regime and on the other hand, in China, mass murder Mao is glorified as the father of the nation. That's the difference. Give Chinese people free speech as there is in US and then we can speak about fair competition.
> Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press
How can that be reconciled with abridging the freedom of speech of millions of citizens by requiring that their preferred press must only controlled by the government's preferred owners?
Even if it deals with national security, the law must pass either strict or intermediate scrutiny [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_scrutiny
I think it won't.
> requiring that their preferred press must only controlled by the government's preferred owners?
By “preferred owners” you mean literally anybody not from China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia or Venezuela [1]. Anyone in America, Europe, most of the Americas, most of Asia, and all of Africa. (Oz can come too.)
[1] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-15/subtitle-A/part-7/subp...
Yes, as you have just shown, there is a category of "preferred owners."
> there is a category of "preferred owners."
There isn’t. There is a category of foreign adversaries. It’s negative selection, not positive. “Preferred owners” would be the U.S. government requiring joint venturing with a hand-picked JV partner. Like Beijing.
Come on, spend 5 more minutes thinking about this.
Phase 1: restricted if from China
Phase 2: restricted if influenced by China
Phase 3: restricted if sympathetic to China
Phase 4: China isn’t the only bad thing for America. If you have the following ideas, those are just as dangerous. “Speech is violence.” Also “silence is violence.”
This has been lived out in front of our eyes so many times.
> This has been lived out in front of our eyes so many times
If you’re referring to McCarthyism, note that his House Un-American proceedings lost steam when they were thrown out by the courts [1]. (It was also limited to government employment, where the state has more power.)
Otherwise, this is just a slippery-slope argument that can be used against any regulation, including the First Amendment.
It sounds like you aren’t old enough to remember life before 9/11.
You used to be able to get on an airplane without scanning your retinas.
You used to be able to walk into a bank and make a transaction without it being immediately reported to the IRS.
Your private correspondence was not scanned and digitized by the post office.
All the above freedoms, and so many more, are not only gone they are illegal.
Slippery slopes exist and the government uses them with great competence.
> It sounds like you aren’t old enough to remember life before 9/11
Incorrect. Focus on the argument.
> Slippery slopes exist
Sure. But concluding by arguing their existence is a literal fallacy.
Another slippery slope: food safety. Or our aversion to animal and child cruelty. Compounding social effects that build on themselves. That these exist isn’t disputed. That they exist also doesn’t mean they always manifest. In this case, there is zero evidence of compounding and every one of moderation through iteration. (Contrast Trump’s first efforts with the House’s first bill with what finally passed.)
The first amendment says nothing about ownership of the press.
Sure, the first amendment doesn't say much in general - but ownership of the press laws almost certainly impact on the 1A as interpreted today.
If you want to include the precedents that explicitly include examples of limiting ownership of media and distribution channels then sure
And the fourth says nothing about computers and hard drives. And yet, they are safe from search without a warrant.
… right because the fourth amendment says “search and seizure”. And as you say, that’s a search.
I am not contesting that the first amendment fails to name TikTok. I’m contesting that the first amendment does not protect your right to own media distribution channels.
We have laws that limit ownership of distribution channels already.
What do you make of limits/approval regimes for broadcast services then?
I think that the first amendment prevents congress from banning tiktok for the reason that the content is objectionable. Instead they would need to argue that it is a nation security risk (spyware, etc)
The "National security" needs of the day trumps the 1st amendment. Only U.S. (and a certain other place which won't be named) propaganda is allowed.
Foreign propaganda is allowed. (Lamont vs. Postmaster General)
https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/lamont-v-postmaster-...
Limits of foreign ownership/approval regimes for broadcast services are a thing, no?
If we regulate the Internet like we do the airwaves, "obscenity, indecency, and profanity" are now illegal.[0]
>It is a violation of federal law to air obscene programming at any time. It is also a violation of federal law to broadcast indecent or profane programming during certain hours. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) defines indecent speech as material that, in context, depicts or describes sexual or excretory organs or activities in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium.
>Congress has given the FCC the responsibility for administratively enforcing the law that governs these types of broadcasts. The FCC has authority to issue civil monetary penalties, revoke a license or deny a renewal application. The FCC vigorously enforces this law where we find violations. In addition, the United States Department of Justice has authority to pursue criminal violations. Violators of the law, if convicted in a federal district court, are subject to criminal fines and/or imprisonment for not more than two years.
[0]: https://www.fcc.gov/general/obscenity-indecency-and-profanit...
Isn't that also showing some limits to first amendment protections (which was the point I was trying to make)?
Yes, but the law specifically refers to companies that hold a broadcast license. Of course, the law was written in 1934 so they could challenge TikTok based not on the letter of the law but on the spirit of the law. But, case precedence is also not in their favor as they approved a 100% foreign ownership of a media company in 2017.
I didn't mean to say that that law might apply here (no idea there), just that it seems to me possible at least in some situations to put limits on foreign ownership for certain mass media.
I agree. I just meant that they might have some trouble with that when it comes to the legal framework to do so.
Most of our social media companies can't operate in China at all. Some of the US companies that do operate in China take on part ownership of their Chinese company from the Chinese government. It's unbalanced that we would allow TikTok to operate without more oversight or some US ownership/control.
I think broadcast is treated very differently because of the limited number of frequencies.
> think broadcast is treated very differently because of the limited number of frequencies
Source?
Section 310 of the Communications Act, which bars licenses from being “granted to or held by any foreign government or the representative thereof,” was written in 1934 [1]. The Foreign Agents Registration Act was passed in 1938 in response to (slash fear of) Nazi propaganda [2].
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/310
[2] https://perspectives.ushmm.org/collection/propaganda-and-the...
> > think broadcast is treated very differently because of the limited number of frequencies
> Source?
The first thing that comes to mind is Red Lion Broadcasting Co., Inc. v. FCC [0], where part of the holding relied on the limited available radio spectrum compared to other publication mediums.
Can we please not? This forum is better than this.
There are already laws against foreign ownership of media companies.
Nobody talking about the elefant in the room: Palestine. It’s all about Pro-Palestinian protests and sentiments that are the reason for this ban.
>consider the legal challenges to a new law requiring China-based ByteDance to divest TikTok's U.S. assets by Jan. 19 or face a ban.
This legislation was overwhelmingly bipartisan supported and placed under national security, in an election year, whose court case will happen by Dec. 6 in order to seek review from the Supreme Court if needed before Jan 19th ban. But the election is 1 month prior.
That this most likely will become an election issue where republicans and democrats can 'be on the same page' about and show some unity.
It was bipartisan from the political establishment, not actual people. [1] That poll is the most recent available (this month). Democrats - 42% in favor of a ban, republicans - 65% in favor. Both those numbers are also on the decline. The poll also did not break it down by age where this question is also extremely polarized. Younger people tend to be highly opposed to a ban, and older people tend to be more in supportive of a ban, with elderly being highly in support of it.
[1] - https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/half-support-banning-tiktok-2024...
50% for, 32% opposed among all American adults—18 net is real popular support.
> But the election is 1 month prior
Which means the public can make it an issue if it wants to.
>Which means the public can make it an issue if it wants to.
That's what I'm saying, it's highly probable that it will be.
> it's highly probable that it will be
I’m sceptical, but not confidently so. The demo that would have been relevant has significant overlap with voters who will never vote for Trump or Biden. Unless they can mobilise convincingly down ballot, they’re for practical purposes out of the race.
That's an interesting idea. Trump/Biden doesn't matter but could tiktok form/boost a third party that beats the democrats and republicans.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx
The independent vote is huge.
Could this be Robert F Kennedy's time to shine?
> could tiktok form/boost a third party that beats the democrats and republicans
Probably not given the electoral math of the strongholds.