Supreme Court to hear TikTok's appeal against law that would force it to shut, or sell The US Supreme Court has decided to consider made-in-China social network TikTok's appeal against the law that requires it to shift to local ownership, or close, by January 19. TikTok and its owner ByteDance have argued that the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PFACAA) is …
Alternative narrative: Alphabet and Meta have had a duopoly on teenage video sharing with YouTube and Instagram. They have been slurping personal data then charging advertisers for "targeted audience" for years.
Along comes TikTok and provides competition for the first time. "That money should be ours" they cry "It's not fair that they're doing a better job than we are. Do something Uncle Sam or our line might stop going up".
"Time to deploy our lobbyist network" they think. And they only need to use two words: "But China".
They collect creepy amounts of tracking data in order to profile American teenagers? True, "But China". They develop algorithms to maximise scrolling time rather than social engagement? True, "But China".
Their lobbying campaign achieves two objectives: it removes a competitor and distracts attention from their own creepy and controlling practices.
like most piles of crap, there is more to it. It was found that people use the app that shouldn't, in places they shouldn't, it is being monitored by china. This is known because US spies found that china documented secret military bases due to geo tracking by the app on service members phones.
so sorry (not) to all the kids that live in video clip worlds, but yes the app is abused by spies, just like everything else. Mitigate what you can if you can.
I would not want any of the big 3 in the US to own it, but that's not my call. As for distracts - no I think it brings awareness to social apps spying capabilities in general, or we wouldn't be talking about it.
To bad people aren't required to understand the risk of using social media before being allowed to use it. but oh well.
"This is known because US spies found that china documented secret military bases due to geo tracking by the app on service members phones.... but yes the app is abused by spies"
Whose spies?
All those kids posting videos giving away US secrets. Must be a security risk.
By this logic, any app used by service members - which has permissions for location, should be not only banned but forced to sell to US companies….
Also, if the location of a “secret” base is the issue: then you’re fucked since China put satellites in orbit. I think the secrets of secret bases are really their capability and not headcount. Anyone with a bird in the air can find movement and determine a base.
It’s completely crazy that the US will not allow a foreign company to operate within their borders, they should have adequate controls from the last 200 years of global trade….
This is all bullshit
Does Free Speech also include the right to encourage children to commit suicide, eat dish washer pods, or completely disturb their thinking.? Tik Tok appears to be the worst of the Apps that promote stupidity... That for me is not Free Speech, it is a black mark on society... ( TikTok are not the only ones and the others should also be made to keep their content sane)
And as a reminder : Children are people under the age of 18.... They are people who have not yet developed the capacity to completely analyze that which is being presented to them, they are easilly led. ( Some might be capable, but they are not the majority).
Is there a real danger of spying etc, I doubt it, or at least no more that what Google, Meta, etc are already doing.
"Yes, free speech absolutely includes all of those things, your idiotic claims to the contrary notwithstanding."
Nope, that's exactly where you are wrong, Free Speech does not allow you to say absolutely anything, so please "Fuck off" with your under-informed statements.
Incitement to Suicide is forbidden. There are many others too that are also forbidden
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions
Ok it's Wikipedia but there are countless places to read the same information.
But they dragged their feet on the far more important presidential immunity case that was appealed almost exactly a year ago. They managed to magnificently delay that case long enough to run out the clock and make it impossible to be heard by a jury. They couldn't make their corruption more plain if they tried - they will rule in favor of Tik Tok, because even though Trump wanted to ban Tik Tok in the past he did a 180 last spring after the billionaire owner of 15% of Bytedance visited him in his swamp palace. Since then he's been singing a different tune, and the Supreme Court knows what their marching orders are.
Someone needs a new RV but doesn't want to resign....
As usual, confusing a right with a commercial platform that has nothing to do with Free Speech.
You have Free Speech. You can go to the street and yell and rant against the President, the Government and whatever other political figure you want, you will not get arrested for it.
Tik Tok (or any other "social media" platform) has nothing to do with your right to Free Speech.
In a just world, that appeal would be trown out on that basis alone.
The "speech" bit doesn't just cover talking. If the government banned other means of expressing yourself - paper, pens, email, social networks, etc. then they would be impinging on your right to free speech. That's why it's going to the Supreme Court - there's a view that if the government can just shout "Security" and point at TikTok without any evidence then it sets a precedent for them doing the same for anyone and anything they don't like.
Tik Tok doesn't create any content, so what is all this speech that they are complaining about..
Oh you mean the users content. Well no one is taking away the users right to Free Speech.
Tik Tok don't have a leg to stand on as the 1est ammendement doesn't apply to them in this case.
For those who haven't actually read the 1st Amendment, here it is:
"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."
How that applies in this case I leave to the reader to decide.
One thing I will throw in is that it says "Congress" so presumably executive orders are exempt.
You're forgetting the free press part of the 1st amendment.
Ticktock is, by any sane definition, a publisher of speech. This shouldn't have needed to get as high as SCrOTUS. This idiotically unconstitutional law should have been tossed out by the first district court to look at it.
That principle doesn't work. Otherwise, why couldn't I, who control a majority of the seats in the Congress, simply ban any site that doesn't take you down if you post things I don't like. You are allowed to say whatever you want on the sites I allow to exist. It's not my fault that most of those choose not to let you say it?
Whether that's a valid argument against this is another question, and it is not the legal argument I would have guessed to be their best option. Then again, I'm not a lawyer, and I assume they've got several who came up with this plan. If it fails, it won't be your argument that does it. The ease of abuse from an interpretation like the one you've made is too obvious unless you're planning to set up a dictatorship.
I agree with that part. That's why I would have guessed this to be not their best argument. Yes, their local company does have its own freedom of speech rights, but I don't think that's going to help them, and I wouldn't be surprised if their attempt to argue on behalf of their users gets tossed out as they can't speak for their users.
That isn't the argument you made. Using your argument, their users could also not get heard as they are free to speak somewhere else. Not only that, your version is severe enough that it makes it seem like TikTok actually should be able to make an argument on those grounds.
I'm Canadian. There emphatically are limits on free speech in a nation of rules and laws.
We are not allowed to protest inside or near certain government buildings, both federal and provincial, unless we have a permit to do so, and have notified the authorities in advance so they can prepare for our arrival and any potential issues that may arise.
We are not allowed to hold protests within the work boundaries of hospitals and schools, which extends far beyond the entrances and exits of the buildings to the boundary of the property and as far beyond as is necessary to ensure the safety of the staff.
Canadians are a people of rules, laws, queues, and order on par with the finest Britain has to offer!
How can you claim a "right" on the internet that doesn't exist in the real world?
Restrictions on free speech do exist, although the specifics in Canada, the US, and any other country someone might be reading from will differ and if we're going to refer to them, we'll have to use the US ones because this is a US case. However, it is probably useful to understand that they aren't written as such. The law doesn't say "you have free speech except in the following cases which can be changed by the legislature". Restrictions come when some other harm, such as that experienced by people who can't enter a hospital when they need to, overrides it. In many cases, this difference may look academic, because the result is the same, so the causes can't be that important.
There are two cases where that stops looking as unimportant. The first is in a court of law. If a court is going to decide that restrictions on the content or conduct of speech are necessary, they have to provide a reason that is compliant with other laws. In this case, that reason is "national security", which is now to be debated. The generic argument that you started with, that it isn't restricted if you could go somewhere else, is much broader than that and not supported by any law, which leads us into the second case where your version and the version currently in use look very different: in a world where there are active abuses.
There are always people who think that their free speech should have no limits whatsoever who think their inability to block a hospital door if they want to without being arrested is a violation of their rights. Those people are wrong. Most others understand why that is not allowed and wouldn't want to do that anyway. When free speech is eroded, the restrictions that are placed almost never say the right has been eliminated. They just put more and more restrictions on how you can exercise your right. For instance, when there were protests in the US about civil rights, the states that sought to block them never did that by passing a law saying that those protests were not allowed. They passed laws saying those protests were definitely allowed, because those people have the same speech rights as anyone else, but coincidentally you couldn't protest in the places where those people were likely to start doing it. They would then arrest people who tried. That was an illegal restriction, struck down several times by courts, that takes the form that you defended in your original argument. That is why your argument is incorrect from a legal perspective and undesirable if you could write it into law and why, even though it is, TikTok may well lose their case because it doesn't protect them. They will be protected or unprotected on their free speech claims by the court's interpretation of the national security value of a ban.
TikTok had some better, in my mind, legal arguments. This law appears to me to be a bill of attainder, a law that simply declares a certain entity is criminal without criminalizing any action they do. Those are not allowed. If I were a lawyer, I would have tried that. Their lawyers did and a court decided it didn't apply. As I am not a lawyer, let alone a constitutional lawyer, I don't know enough to know if the court had a good reason or not to decide that. I thought that was more likely to succeed than any free speech argument, and my opinion on that has not changed.
I wonder if the only reason they supreme court is bothering to even hear this is because the Trump appointed judges have heard how Trump doesn't support a ban anymore .
Of course Trump doing a 180 has nothing to do with the visit from the billionaire owner of Byte dance to Mar a Largo, that is purely a coincidence.
But i expect that if the TikTok ban is struck down by the supreme court the algorithm on Tiktok will suddenly start to push way more right wing and pro Trump content to its audience.
the Trump appointed judges have heard how Trump doesn't support a ban anymore.
Trump is still asserting TikTok is a threat to America's national security. He hasn't changed his mind on that.
But he is willing to allow it to be an ongoing threat to national security, is willing to endanger America and Americans, because... Facebook.
Go figure.
I think this is an overstep. At the same time it's hard not to argue against banning social media all together so idiots stop arranging their alphabet soup to spell something they don't like and recording it to post "OMFG is [multibillion-dollar conglomerate] not on our side?!"
Tiktok really shined in that after the hurricane in NC where everyone self-hypnotized into a government conspiracy to destroy hurricane aid out of a contextless-but-suggestively-titled 30 second video of government helicopters waving off a landing.
I hate TikTok, but I hate goverment overreach and censorship even more. Banning a major platform hosting speech on vague national security concerns, especially with no evidence whatsoever, is unacceptable.
I urge the commenters here wishing for a ban to reconsider - there is no harm TikTok is causing that is particularly unique to them, and if this is allowed to happen, many more platforms will get the same treatment in the near future.
Allow videos that advocate suicide, self harm etc to children is not what I consider as being non harmfull.
The following is from Amnesty Intl...
So exactly what is the issue?
1. Are they claiming the content is a national security issue? Have they any examples of this?
2. Is the ability of operators in one country can see personal data of users in another? If so, then why, as a matter of principle, does the US not forbid its own companies to see personal data of users in other countries?
3. Is this in competition with US companies offering similar services?
There is only one word to describe issues 2 and 3: hypocrisy.
I think the biggest issue with Tiktok is that it can probably influence public opinion. If I remember correctly, Facebook did controlled tests which showed they could relatively easily manipulate the mood of their users depending on what they saw on their feed. In theory, it would be relatively easy to influence elections.
Technically I'm not sure that there is a law against influencing public opinion though. In the case of Tiktok it might be possible to use regulations limiting foreign influence, but if say Twitter or Facebook decided to actively manipulate users for political reasons rather than for clicking on ads, as they are US companies I don't know what would stop them.
"but if say Twitter or Facebook decided to actively manipulate users for political reasons rather than for clicking on ads, as they are US companies I don't know what would stop them"
Well, I think recent events has shown that there was nothing to stop them doing, and continuing to do, exactly that.
Any time the argument for/against social media pops up I am reminded of this clip from Person of Interest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZfQymnABxQ
Government agencies needed more information about people and couldn't figure out how to get it, until they realised most people would give it away willingly.
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