Yes, the US Government Threatening to Block TikTok Violates the First Amendment

While it seems slightly surprising to claim that a Chinese company has the full benefit of first amendment protections, it certainly feels like the government would be on far less controversial ground if it just <i>passed some personal data protection laws</i>. That would make it clear to everyone what the limits are on data collection via apps, what you can and can’t ship overseas, and it would be far easier to point to a specific foreign owned app and explain exactly why it can’t be permitted to operate that way.<p>Instead we get this sort of national-security justification, which can be applied arbitrarily and leaves everyone uncertain about what the limits actually are.

I have to say, while on its face I&#x27;m open to the thought that a large social media site, which relies on consuming and analyze marketing and training data, and is partly owned by a &quot;competitor&quot; with a very different perspective on personal liberty and government —<p>Can someone show me the receipts!?<p>As the author points out, there are these vague claims by now two administrations of different political parties. Or I hear sort of hazy assertions from The Verge that TikTok is doing bad things.<p>What is the evidence? If we don&#x27;t have the evidence, why are we still making the murky claims? If we DO have the evidence, why on earth haven&#x27;t we done something about it yet?<p>I have to assume I&#x27;m really quite ignorant, that there is some reason for the inaction by political leaders, and so I come here genuinely from the standpoint of wanting to learn. Maybe I&#x27;m naive in either case! XD

Last I checked, there was no freedom of international trade enshrined in the First Amendment.

This article fails to ask the only question that really counts: if the President (or Congress) bans TikTok on national security grounds, would the current SCOTUS majority overturn that on the basis of the 1st Amendment? Nobody can know for sure, but personally, I doubt the answer would be “Yes”. The article makes a lot out of how some District court ruled, but District court rulings are close to useless at foretelling how SCOTUS will rule. It also cites some decades old precedents, but ignores that SCOTUS will likely find some way to distinguish the current case from those precedents, rendering them inapplicable.

I think the author is severely downplaying the threat of the CCP using the algorithm as a weapon against the US. Obviously they&#x27;re not going to show banner waving videos of communist military parades to kids.<p>What they will do is find relatable, young, all American creators who have ideological overlap with CCP values, then you give these creators disproportionate weight in the algo. There is enough noise on any social media platform nowadays that you just have to have control over what is promoted in order to gain traction.<p>Take reddit for example, where bot armies are used to shape comment sections in artificially promoted stories posted by innocent bystanders. The person pushing whatever agenda doesn&#x27;t have to create or post anything. The noise of the platform is high enough that any narrative can be shaped if you have enough power to push around the algorithm.<p>All this being said, it should be clear why you wouldn&#x27;t want a communist dictator who granted themselves a life term to control the country gunning to take Americas place on the world stage...control over what content people in America consume.<p>Data privacy concerns be damned, those are secondary, far secondary.

TikTok itself doesn&#x27;t produce any content. They host the content of others. So shutting down TikTok cannot infringe on TikTok&#x27;s own first amendment rights. Compare to last year when the FCC&#x27;s ban on chinese telecom companies was upheld.<p>So the only question is does it infringe the rights of the users posting content. This is a better argument. One thing on the government&#x27;s side is that content-neutral bans are a lot easier to justify as long as they serve a significant government interest and provide alternative avenues for expression. The latter seems easy to argue since TikTok has many alternatives (YouTube, Instagram, and others). And I think they could probably convince judges that national security is compelling enough.<p>Note that the comparison to Trump&#x27;s actions in 2020 isn&#x27;t really valid since that wasn&#x27;t done via law. It seems like the author just threw in Trump&#x27;s name because he is unpopular?

Chinese citizens residing in China have first amendment rights?

Forget about free speech, this should be a trade issue.<p>In what other trade context would it be acceptable for one trading partner to block all access to its own market (social media) whilst still enjoying full access to everybody else&#x27;s?<p>How is this remotely acceptable?

&gt; Finally, as we’ve been saying all along, rather than moral panics and fear mongering, let’s focus on the actual problem. Banning TikTok won’t solve the issue of any potential privacy violations. As we’ve noted over and over and over again, the supposed data that TikTok is “collecting” on its users is available from basically anywhere to basically anyone with a few bucks. Want to fix that? Pass a real privacy law.<p>The EU banned TikTok from official devices[1]. Anyone who thinks a &quot;real&quot; privacy law would alleviate the concerns people have about TikTok should explain how this &quot;real&quot; privacy law would differ from EU privacy law.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;edition.cnn.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;02&#x2F;28&#x2F;tech&#x2F;tiktok-eu-ban-intl-hnk&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;edition.cnn.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;02&#x2F;28&#x2F;tech&#x2F;tiktok-eu-ban-intl-h...</a>