Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline
(cnbc.com)936 points by kjhughes a day ago
936 points by kjhughes a day ago
TikTok is also banned in China. For the Chinese market, Douyin is there from the same company ByteDance. Americans need to understand this decision is not an emotional one but for the nation, just like the opposite party does for its nation.
> this decision is not an emotional one but for the nation, just like the opposite party does for its nation
I'd argue that it is an emotional decision for both, and it does seem ironic that the US would be following China in restricting a platform that people see as a major tool for free speech. Whether you agree with that or not the optics are terrible, and the users are very aware of it. If this is really a big concern then they would also ban facebook/instagram/snapchat, but they aren't being included in this, despite having a worse track record.
I find this line of argument particularly uncompelling and offensive - it’s like saying the arresting of a Soviet spy per a valid warrant by the courts is against the constitutionally rights and is also hypocritical given how the US protests against people being disappeared.
Uncompelling! The particulars matter!
Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat are not functionally owned & operated by an unfriendly foreign government that would have incentive to destabilize the USA via civil unrest by influencing our algorithms.
They are owned and operated by unfriendly actors with no allegiance to the government - they just need to be profitable. If there was a publicly owned and operated alternative I would feel better about that, but for example Facebook has been shown to experiment with their algorithm and increase depression rates in the past. If the argument is that the US should own/operate it then I'm not opposed to that because we could remove the profit incentive, but then meta/snapchat would have to become parts of the government instead of independent companies, and with them already being global I don't see how that would actually be implemented. Right now the proposal is to continue letting them do all the harm and data collection, so the reasoning for the change doesn't match up with the actions being taken.
The US government protects Facebook, and is what enabled them to become they company they are today. There are plenty of examples of their loyalty to the US government. They make back doors available and allow the US government to moderate content. Seems like they are very aligned!
Theoretically that can happen. But functionally, that hasn't happened - and in fact, the primary incentive is for that not to happen (bad business, etc).
I think there would need to be some basis in fact for these claims, right?
Direct from the horse's mouth: https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/press-release/chairman-mcca...
"enormous threat to U.S. national security and young Americans’ mental health. This past week demonstrated the Chinese Communist Party is capable of mobilizing the platform’s users to a range of dangerous, destabilizing actions. The Senate must pass this bill and send it to the president’s desk immediately.”
Nobody is talking about music?
For the last 4 years, TikTok has been my primary music discovery engine. Probably is for a large chunk of users.
What effect will this have on the music industry?
And just yesterday I saw a news where UK had best music revenue ever, and I do not think US is published but first 1/2 of US also had record sales. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/articles/cn858xgng2vo)
And I agree, even for me, music discovery is (was) via TikTok.
I imagine you'll get the same content on YouTube shorts or Facebook reels? I don't like using apps, so I never bothered with Tiktok, but tiktok watermarks are still on most of the short videos I view, content creators are either putting their work on multiple platforms, or someone else is ripping it off and putting it on different platforms.
I’m hoping https://www.albumoftheyear.org/ takes off
Regardless of one’s view on the outcome, this case is a reminder that textualism as a legal philosophy stands on shaky ground. This case is decided not on some strict analysis of the words written by a legislator, but on the court’s subjective view that there is a compelling national interest (which in turn seems based on speculation about the future, rather than a factual analysis of events).
Textualism might give the court some useful definitions, but it is after all still called, quite literally, an opinion.
You misapprehend what textualism is. It does not say that every legal case can be decided by interpreting written law. It is merely a philosophy of how to interpret written law when its meaning is what's at issue. What American lawyers call "textualism" is how most continental european courts interpret written laws. It would hardly merit a label, if it wasn't for a long history in the 20th century of jurists departing from written law in making decisions. In this case, there is no dispute about what the written law means. It's about applying a pre-existing legal concept, the freedom of speech, to particular facts.
Another example that highlights the distinction: Justice Gorsuch, one of the Supreme Court's preeminent textualists, is also one of the biggest proponents of criminal rights. Those cases similarly involve defining the contours of pre-existing legal concepts, such as "unreasonable search or seizure." Nobody denies that such questions are subjective--in referring to what's "unreasonable," the text itself calls for a subjective analysis.
For anyone curious to dig into this more, the terms to read up on are "common law" [0] vs "civil law" [1].
Common law is basically just the US, UK, AU, and NZ. Outside the anglosphere it's mostly civil law.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(legal_system)
Not to wave anybody off an interesting rabbit hole, but is that the germane difference here? My understanding: common law features a relatively smaller "source of truth" of written law, and relatively more expansive and variably-binding jurisprudence, where judge decisions set precedent and shape the law. Civil law writes almost everything down ahead of time.
I guess civil law gives you less room to explore ideas like "living" statutes and laws that gain and change meaning over time; if there was such a change, you'd write it down?
Regardless: whether you're a textualist or realist, in the US you're still operating in a common law system.
> Textualism is a formalist theory in which the interpretation of the law is based exclusively on the ordinary meaning of the legal text, where no consideration is given to non-textual sources, such as intention of the law when passed, the problem it was intended to remedy, or significant questions regarding the justice or rectitude of the law.
Textualism in modern context is a tool used by conservative justices used to uphold laws that serve business interests and conservative causes.
This was a unanimous decision. The only points where Sotomayor and Gorusch disagreed with the majority decision was whether TikTok's operation qualified under strict scrutiny for first amendment considerations, but both agreed that even under strict scrutiny, the law would have survived the challenge.
Much of the decision is indeed based around an analysis of the words written by the legislature.
It's not really speculation, though. Certain aspects of the intelligence relationships between the US and China are highly asymmetrical already.
For example, Chinese nationals can enter our country and gather information on our infrastructure, corporations, and people with relative ease because English is prevalent, and foreign nationals have, with the exception of certain military/research areas, the same access that US citizens have. On the other hand, foreign nationals in China are closely monitored and have very few rights, assuming they know Chinese, are physically in China (Great Firewall), and know how to get around in the first place.
China has unfettered access to our media ecosystem, research, patents, etc., and they do their best to create an uncompetitive/hostile environment for any other country to attempt the same on their territory. Some of this has to do with trade—to be fair, these are intertwined—but the situation regarding intelligence is bleak.
What exactly is your issue with this, as a textualist?
>[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes; . . .
This is foreign commerce. It falls under the explicit jurisdiction of Congress.
Well gosh, that sentence makes it seems like Congress could do anything!
However, this case is about something else. The opinion states that there is a first amendment interest, but that interest is secondary to a compelling national security interest that, in the court’s view, is valid. That may or may not be correct - but it is a subjective interpretation.
>that sentence makes it seems like Congress could do anything!
Yeah, it's the perhaps most powerful clause in the constitution. A large number of laws are formed like "[actual law ...] in commerce." That is the hook needed for a lot of laws to be constitutional. Technically those laws only apply to interstate or international commerce.
There are even supreme court cases discussing this:
>Congress uses different modifiers to the word “commerce” in the design and enactment of its statutes. The phrase “affecting commerce” indicates Congress’ intent to regulate to the outer limits of its authority under the Commerce Clause. [...] Considering the usual meaning of the word “involving,” and the pro-arbitration purposes of the FAA, Allied-Bruce held the “word ‘involving,’ like ‘affecting,’ signals an intent to exercise Congress’ commerce power to the full.” Ibid. Unlike those phrases, however, the general words “in commerce” and the specific phrase “engaged in commerce” are understood to have a more limited reach. In Allied-Bruce itself the Court said the words “in commerce” are “oftenfound words of art” [...] The Court’s reluctance to accept contentions that Congress used the words “in commerce” or “engaged in commerce” to regulate to the full extent of its commerce power rests on sound foundation, as it affords objective and consistent significance to the meaning of the words Congress uses when it defines the reach of a statute.[0]
[0] Circuit City Stores, Inc. v. Adams, 532 U.S. 105 (2001) https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/532/105/case.pdf
Whether Congress has jurisdiction here is not at issue. The court is deciding a different question, which is whether the ban would violate the first amendment. We look at their ruling:
>We granted certiorari to decide whether the Act, as applied to petitioners, violates the First Amendment.
This is about as much foreign commerce as it is me buying a Xiaomi phone.
I know there's court precedent, but corporations aren't people. It's yet another Chinese platform that Americans use to communicate with other western companies.
> corporations aren't people
Corporate personhood is irrelevant to this case.
>This is about as much foreign commerce as it is me buying a Xiaomi phone.
Isn't that obviously foreign commerce?
I'd use the term 'originalism' rather 'textualism', but you have a point. For 1st amendment cases, the court hasn't (yet) tried to use their new fangled originalist methodologies. In fact justice Gorsuch wrote separately in the Tiktok case to dig on the levels of scrutiny.
I think it's understandable, in a Chesterton's Fence sort of way - they better make sure that if they're going to start using a new methodology, it works better than what they use now, (these weird judge-created levels of scrutiny), but there's so much 1A precedent that is hard to be confident.
For 2nd amendment, they have used 'originalism' already. There isn't nearly as much precedent in that area, and so they were able to start more or less from scratch.
Rather I think this a good example of how people go through the steps of delegimitizing institutions if it dosen't agree with their opinion. If the Supreme Court's opinion is "shaky" then I guess the Pro-TikTokers would teetering on pole in the middle on the ocean.
> a compelling national interest (which in turn seems based on speculation about the future, rather than a factual analysis of events).
I keep seeing this claimed, but these aren't hypothetical risks. China has managerial control over ByteDance. China has laws that require prominent companies to cooperate in their national security operations, and they've recently strengthened them even more. China has already exercised those powers to target political dissidents. This is the normal state of affairs in Chinese business; this is how things work there. It isn't like the west where companies have power to push back, or enjoy managerial independence.
Let's not forget that the US government has forced US companies to secretly hand over user data for "national security" purposes. Anyone who denies that China does similar things either doesn't know how the world works or is consciously denying reality.
As do countries on every continent.
But China is a bit different in that they don't simply have the authority to request data, they have the authority to direct management of the company.
> Textualism might give the court some useful definitions, but it is after all still called, quite literally, an opinion.
I don't think you understand SCOTUS' decision here. They are not banning TikTok. Congress is doing so (actually forcing a sale of TikTok or be banned). They are simply ruling whether Congress acted unconstitutionally by doing so. In other words, if they overrule Congress, they would have to show how Congress' ruling contravenes the Constitution, when the Constitution grants Congress the authority to regulate commerce and decide matters of national security.
Congress isn't banning TikTok either. The law says US businesses can't work with TikTok. TokTok is choosing to shut down to try and force the issue politically. TikTok can choose stay running, the app will still be on your phone, no IP addresses are being blocked. The laws impact comes from choking off revenue and marketing (access to app stores).
You're right, though it's effectively a ban on the iPhone because the only way to get apps is through the Apple Store; but yes, it's not like the app itself will stop working, or there will be some IP block, by order of Congress.
But why didn't Supreme Court find the first ammendment arguments compelling? As per first ammendment it is legal and protected to print/distribute/disseminate even enemy propaganda in the USA. Even at the height of cold war for example Soviet Publication s were legal to publish, print and distribute in the USA.
What changed now?
Even a judge, Sotomayer said during this case that yes, the Government can say to someone that their speech is not allowed.
Looks like a major erosion of first amendment protections.
Are they banning any TV channels from hostile countries? RT, for example can be watched by Americans without restriction.
The justices seem to have argued that eliminating a platform for speech does not inhibit your ability to voice that speech on another platform, so is not a violation of the first amendment. I think this is an important outcome and really goes against what many so called "free speech absolutists" would argue.
they found some of the arguments compelling and acknowledged that the law may burden free speech. But they also found that the law is not about speech, it's about corporate ownership. In these cases the court will often (not always) defer to congress / the state.
Because the law bans the operation of software by a foreign adversary. It does not ban speech.
Legal precedent holds that source code (the expressive part of software) is speech, but that executing software (the functional part) is not speech. Even when the operation conveys speech, the ban is on the functional operation of the software, so the First Amendment doesn't apply.
It seems like everyone missed the analogy of TikTok being like a Soviet newspaper, but the better analogy was like Tiktok being a tracking device, which transmitted your exact location, along with a microphone and video camera provided by the Soviet. The hardware may be Apple (made in China, designed in California), but the software extends the hardware usage to the software provider. I'm not sure there was any era of US history which the law would have permitted that.
> Even a judge, Sotomayer said during this case that yes, the Government can say to someone that their speech is not allowed.
> Looks like a major erosion of first amendment protections.
It's not an erosion because it was already true and has been true for centuries.
It's opinion regardless of the specific legal philosophy. Each philosophy makes decisions about what kinds of information, sources, context, etc are considered to form the "correct" interpretation. Those decisions are opinions.
Since I'm a reasonably well-known textualist, I'll bite:
First, the court was not asked to reconsider the meaning of the First Amendment. In the US, we generally hew to the rule of "party presentation," which generally provides that courts will consider the parties' arguments, not make up new ones on their own.
TikTok's claim was that application of the statute in question to it violated the First Amendment's clause that "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech." The Supreme Court has considered the interpretation and application of that clause in...well, a whole lot of cases. TikTok asked the court to apply the logic of certain of those precedents to rule in its favor and enjoin the statute. It did not, however, ask the court to reconsider those precedents or interpret the First Amendment anew.
Since the court was not asked to do so, it's no surprise that it didn't.
Second, as noted, the court has literally decades' worth of cases fleshing out the meaning of this clause and applying it in particular circumstances. Every textualist, so far as I'm aware, generally supports following the court's existing precedents interpreting the Constitution unless and until they are overruled.
Third, even if one is of the view that the Court ought to consider the text anew in every case, without deferring to its prior rulings interpreting the text, this would have been a particularly inappropriate case for it to do so. A party seeking an injunction, as TikTok was, has to show a strong likelihood of success on the merits. That generally entails showing that you win under existing precedent. A court's expedited consideration of a request for preliminary relief is not an appropriate time to broach a new theory of what the law requires. The court doesn't have the time to give it the consideration required, and asking the court to abrogate its precedents is inconsistent with the standard for a preliminary injunction, which contemplates only a preview of the ultimate legal question, not a full-blown resolution of it.
Fourth, what exactly was the court supposed to do with the text in question, which is "abridging the freedom of speech"? The question here is whether the statute here, as applied to TikTok, violates that text. Well, it depends on what "the freedom of speech" means and perhaps what "abridging" means. It's only natural that a court would look to precedent in answering the question. Precedent develops over time, fleshing out (or "liquidating," to use Madison's term) the meaning and application of ambiguous or general language. Absent some compelling argument that precedent got the meaning wrong, that sort of case-by-case development of the law is how our courts have always functioned--and may be, according to some scholars, itself a requirement of originalism.
Surprised not more people are tying this to the Uber-Didi situation. IIRC it was a big complicated mess, but e.g. (this)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersecurity_Law_of_the_Peopl...] seems to imply that e.g. Uber would have to use Chinese domestic servers subject to auditing, etc. Upshot is eventually Uber stopped dumping billions to try to get a foothold, and eventually divested their Chinese operations.
(Also later Didi got kinda screwed imo right after their IPO in IMO a retaliatory move by the Chinese gov). So, is this TikTok ban one more shot in a new form of economic warfare? Is this type of war even new? Again, IMO, I think in instituting this law, this kind of stuff was on at least some of congress' minds.
Didi/Uber was more complicated than just data stuff.
At a high level, chinese tech culture is an insane no holds barred cage match with very little legal structure to protect IP or employees or anything and most companies who enter fail at participating in this.
Didi did a lot of corporate espionage and sabotage at uber china. They'd have "double agents" working for uber they'd pay to f stuff up. This type of thing is not practices in america because it is extremely illegal, but it was fine in China at not something that uber could do "back" to didi. There were people on the uber china fraud team paid by didi to tip off fraud networks on how to fraud. In the last year in china, they moved a ton of important work back to US offices because the china office was "compromised".
It is a lot more complicated, and I agree with the vibe of your comment based on some readings, but couldn't find much regarding sources about the sabotage. I found [this article](https://www.digitalaoban.com/why-uber-failed-in-china/), and I also found another by searching "IMEI FRAUD UBER DIDI SIM CARD", (but that other article was literally copy pasted from the first) (couldn't find sources from the first) (I have some hurtful things to say about tech journalism but this website is too polite for that) Again, don't really doubt, but more sort of wondering where you sorts get primary information from.
In a more functional democracy we would see that mass data collection of any sort, by any company (foreign or domestic), is a national security risk.
Have witnessed first-hand the threats by foreign state actors penetrating US-based cloud infrastructure. And it’s not like any of our domestic corporations are practicing the type of security hygiene necessary to prevent those intrusions.
So idk, the whole thing feels like a farce that will mainly benefit Zuck and co while doing very little to ultimately protect our interests.
We would be much better off actually addressing data privacy and passing legislation that regulates every company in a consistent manner.
> In a more functional democracy we would see that mass data collection of any sort, by any company (foreign or domestic), is a national security risk.
You obviously don't mean "democracy," but some other word. We don't see mass data collection as a problem because most Americans don't care about privacy. The only reason this Tik Tok thing is even registering is because of the treat of China, which Americans do care about.
You're falsely equating mass data. If anyone can buy the data from brokers then it's effectively public and could be weaponized by anyone. If TikTok collects their own data and doesn't sell it, then it's not public and can be weaponized exclusively by the Chinese government. And that's separate even from algorithm manipulation, which is another liability that's difficult to catch & prove definitively.
It's questionable what a more functional democracy would actually do, since there hasn't really been one in history. There's been other forms of democracy, but they've all had their flaws, and none of them so far have acted in the interests of all the people in that country.
I am not an "America bad" type of fellow, but US democracy is clearly reaching a local minimum. I suspect "never more functional" is an idea with which even your representative would disagree. There are multiple major issues that Congress should have addressed decades ago and instead they've only become more intractable. The country is more than its government, but the core democratic component, Congress, simply gets very little done. I do not think it can go much longer before some series of events forces broad compromises and realignment.
Everyone obsesses about the US president but congress has had a terrible terrible approval rating for decades now.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
We'll probably pull a Rome and go from republic to dictatorship, kick off a civil war or two, and eventually it'll settle down into empire. I'd say we have 25 years left.
That is blatantly wrong.
The EU has been trying to ban encryption for the last 3 years so that it can read all your text messages, listen to your conversations and monitor the images you send to your loved ones/friends without requiring a warrant from the authorities, therefore granting them an unlimited access to everyone's private life without offering any possible recourse.
The EU's pro-privacy stance is a just a facade, they want as much data as the US government, they just don't want to admit it publicly.
Claiming that “mass data collection” by our own government is inherently a natural security risk is not an assertion based on rational evidence.
Sounds like we have our answer. Have China flood the internet with "content". American scrapers train on it. Now we can ban LLM use on American websites, compromised by China!
Because Twitter (or letter 24) generates the rediculous hot takes that Reddit can laugh at.
FWIW, this has driven many users to RedNote, which is even more Chinese in every way, regardless of whether it's even the same kind of platform. I doubt it would ever be anywhere near the same numbers as TikTok (assuming ByteDance didn't sell off) but it does illustrate the trouble with this i.e. cat-and-mouse game.
Edited for word choice.
If it reaches more than 1 million monthly active American users, it too can be subject to the same scrutiny under the law in question.
It runs and operates outside US. How exactly would you enforce the ban? Seize the domain?
> runs and operates outside US
…same as TikTok. Removed from app stores.
I don’t know the details of this app’s corporate structure, but if it’s developed here and user data stays here it would not qualify under the act. Based on the context of your and other comments I assumed it was also a foreign-controlled app
They will levy fines on google and apple if they don't remove it from their stores.
This is very misleading "news" and it doesn't illustrate anything, a bunch of users installed rednote out of protest, but this is a fully chinese app with 100% chinese content and 99% of users will move to youtube, instagram, etc
Fake news.
Looks like you have never used TikTok or RedNote.
Chinese users are starting to caption their videos in English. American users are posting regularly.
It is the number 1 app in my country right now, because of the TikTok ban.
Look up the playstore and you will see. Download it for yourself and you will see.
According to CNN, roughly 700,000 people have installed Rednote—though that figure only represents those who have tested the app and doesn’t necessarily reflect sustained usage. By comparison, TikTok is said to have around 110 million users in the United States, meaning 700,000 installs amount to less than 1% of TikTok’s user base.
Meanwhile, YouTube’s user numbers in the U.S. are estimated at 240 million, but it’s unlikely to gain many new downloads since almost everyone already has the app.
In my view, it’s unrealistic to think Rednote will replace TikTok.
Rednote has been shown as the top free app (per Apple’s own App Store in my device at least) for going on a week, so the magnitude may be larger than you imply.
Also, having tried it myself, the algorithm works much like TikTok whereby it learns to show English speakers English content pretty quickly.
Also the general consensus among people who have used IG and TikTok (I personally don’t use IG) seems to be that the former does not at all substitute for the latter, particularly in terms of the subjective “authentic” feel of the content (IG often said to be lacking the community feel of TikTok).
I explicitly stated in a different comment that Rednote will not replace TikTok. I don’t think anyone seriously believes that. It’s subject to the same ban after all.
The interesting aspect here is rather the magnitude of dissatisfaction that a large percentage of users feel towards the other mainstream US social content platforms.
This may be because RedNote is going to "wall off" US users from the Chinese ones:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/rednote-may-wall...
I don't think that's going to happen. The party official seems to be positive about the event overall based on their press release recently. IMO it's going to the opposite direction, where they try to get more foreign users on the platform and have them stay there. If I were a CCP official, I would love to have more soft power by having everyone on a Chinese platform.
A non-trivial number of videos I've seen this week mention also being able to find the creator of said video on Rednote. It is also the number 1 downloaded app in the US iOS store this week. The news may be a logical extreme, but it's not fake.
Having a non-trivial number of videos is not the same as being the replacement platform. Youtube is also being spammend with tiktok users uploading old content. The idea that after the dust settles the majority of 110 million tiktok users will end up using a tightly censored chinese social media platform rather than moving to obvious alternatives such as instagram and youtube seems very very unlikely.
It asserts how critically powerful platform media is now and that the government sees it as an essential part of managing their citizens
I agree. I'm not sure if I think all of this is good or not. Even if you, a gov't, didn't have an interest in managing your citizens vis-a-vis some platform, it doesn't mean other govt's don't have that interest, so maybe there's some validity to it in that case. But all of that raises even more questions, like "so what?" and "to what end?"
I feel like the protest move to RedNote will be short lived. The censorship there is draconian - if you say even the slightest thing that offends the CCP on red note, you get banned. See this discussion on the subreddit for TikTok (https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTok/comments/1i2wll3/how_to_not_...).
Something I read that’s interesting - RedNote changed the English name to cover their actual name - the Chinese name is little red book, as in the red book of Mao (not sure if true).
> the Chinese name is little red book, as in the red book of Mao (not sure if true)
That is the Chinese name of the app (although I've heard mixed reports on if "little red book" as a term for the book actually common in China). The founder claims it's because of the founder's "career at Bain & Company and education at the Stanford Graduate School of Business" which both use red, but I'm pretty sure it's a pun on his name also being Mao.
They dont need to wonder. The US is constantly operating media propaganda campaigns around the globe interfering with elections and promoting coups.
Democratic outcomes that don't agree with our politics are officially deemed illegitimate, even if the elections are certified as fair.
It would be crazy to believe the US is somehow shy about running psyops when we openly arm rebels and bomb countries.
And they’re right to. In the news today: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/european-union-o...
Other countries that were concerned about this started blocking websites of their adversaries decades ago.
Sadly they won't, that's just one more reason for e.g. the EU to censor more social media on the grounds that one of their """allies""" does it too.
Right?
I'm a Canadian. Almost every major Canadian newspaper is owned by American ideologically-conservative hedge funds, the only variance is how activist they are in their ownership. Our social media (like everyone's) is owned by Americans, men who are now kowtowing to Trump.
And meanwhile, Trump is now incessantly talking about annexing our country. The Premier of Alberta is receptive to the idea.
So, how should a Canadian federal government responsibly react to that?
Sort of. In a mobile browser, it almost immediately tries to get me to download the app, which is the opposite of pushing the web version in a marketing sense. Pushing would be telling app users that the app will become unavailable soon and they should use TikTok on the web.
My wife and I are split on this, though neither of us are regular TikTok users.
I keep coming across elected officials who are apparently briefed on something about TikTok, and they decide there’s a reasonable threat regarding the CCP or some such. The idea that the CCP could drive our national conversation somehow (still murky) bothers me.
My wife feels like this is the US Government trying to shut down a communication and news delivery tool.
While I don’t agree with her, I don’t think she’s wrong. It seems all the folks who “have it on good authority” that this is a dangerous propaganda tool, can’t share what “it” is.
If the President had over Meta and X the sort of control the CCP has over TikTok, Instagram and Twitter would be banned in most countries. The only reason this is debated so much here is we’re (in my opinion correctly) very cautious about free speech.
> owner of X is in the government
One, he's not. Two, there is a massive difference between the owner of X being in the government and the government being in X. Three, the owner of every media platform is not in the government.
>about to be in the president’s cabinet
source? DOGE is not a real department and so he's not part of the cabinet.
rich people affecting government officials is as old as time, nothing new. what has never been true in the US is the ability for the gov to legally compel X/Meta to do their bidding, which is the whole issue with TikTok.
I believe theres a related argument that congress might be making here, idk.
> The idea that the CCP could drive our national conversation somehow (still murky) bothers me.
Even if all the CCP can do is modify how often some videos and comments show up to users on tik tok, there's a chance that level of control could have been enough to instigate the whole jump to red note we're seeing. After all, the suggestion originated within tik tok itself as the videos talking about it (and the comments praising it) went viral. Sure everyone was primed to do something with the deadline approaching, but it's entirely possible that the red note trend isn't an organically viral one, but a pre-planned and well executed attempt to throw a wrench in the works.
red note's infrastructure seems to have had no problems absorbing millions of new users at the drop of a hat, cloud scaling is good, but that kind of explosive growth in mere days, when unexpected, often results in some visible hiccups. Maybe the engineers are just that good, or maybe they had a heads up that it'd be happening.
Utter speculation on my part, but I've found it interesting I've not come across anyone else mention the possibility.
> It seems all the folks who “have it on good authority” that this is a dangerous propaganda tool, can’t share what “it” is.
No need to speculate too hard here, there are plenty of examples of censorship on TikTok: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_TikTok
Censorship is a form of propaganda, and even the very obvious/reported examples we've seen reported over the years are pretty bad. And you have to assume that there is more going on than is actually reported/noticed, especially in subtler ways. It's also just obvious it's happening in the sense that the Chinese government has ultimate control over TikTok.
I tried to find a "Censorship by Youtube" wiki but couldn't find one. Only one documenting the censorship OF youtube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_YouTube.
I don't see a section on their main wiki either, even though YT is pretty notorious for deleting stuff, even political stuff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube
The "reasonable threat" is that TikTok prevented US leaders from being able to control the conversation around Palestine. Nearly half of the country has realized how insane sending tens of billions of dollars to fund genocide is, when previously it was unquestioned.
Maybe. Network effects are strong, though. I wonder how much losing access to the US market sets back TT's financial & competitive positions
This will ultimately benefit the current Big Tech incumbents. Tiktok was gaining ground rapidly on advertising money and I wouldn't be surprised if there was lobbying that stifled the competition.
Instead of banning TikTok, we should be trying to compete with them and make a better product that wins customers over. It's sad to see the US becoming more authoritarian and follow China's example.
It's really quite funny to read the timeline in the opinion.
Essentially, Trump started the TikTok ban, Biden continued it, and Congress finally put it into law. And now both Trump and Biden, as well as Congress, are shying away from actually enforcing the ban.
• In August 2020, President Trump issued an Executive Order finding that “the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in [China] continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”
• President Trump determined that TikTok raised particular concerns, noting that the platform “automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users” and is susceptible to being used to further the interests of the Chinese Government.
• Just days after issuing his initial Executive Order, President Trump ordered ByteDance Ltd. to divest all interests and rights in any property “used to enable or support ByteDance’s operation of the TikTok application in the United States,” along with “any data obtained or derived from” U. S. TikTok users.
• Throughout 2021 and 2022, ByteDance Ltd. negotiated with Executive Branch officials to develop a national security agreement that would resolve those concerns. Executive Branch officials ultimately determined, however, that ByteDance Ltd.’s proposed agreement did not adequately “mitigate the risks posed to U. S. national security interests.” 2 App. 686. Negotiations stalled, and the parties never finalized an agreement.
• Against this backdrop, Congress enacted the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.
2025, despite all this going on for four years, Gorusch complains bitterly about having had to rule on the case in less than a fortnight
The whole thing, including Biden setting the deadline for literally the last day of his presidency, strikes me as extremely odd. I have no idea what the real story is here, but it very much seems that what is happening is not at all what it seems.
Link to opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24-656_ca7d.pdf
And it was an unanimous decision. When was the last time we had those for such an impactful decision I wonder?
The majority of Supreme Court decisions are unanimous, including on major issues. The recent trend of divided opinions is relatively new.
The interesting bits from the text[1], relative to the now flagged sibling
-----
(3) FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLICATION.—The term “foreign adversary controlled application” means a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application that is operated, directly or indirectly (including through a parent company, subsidiary, or affiliate), by—
(A) any of—
(i) ByteDance, Ltd.;
(ii) TikTok;
(iii) a subsidiary of or a successor to an entity identified in clause (i) or (ii) that is controlled by a foreign adversary; or
(iv) an entity owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by an entity identified in clause (i), (ii), or (iii); or
(B) a covered company that—
(i) is controlled by a foreign adversary; and
(ii) that is determined by the President to present a significant threat to the national security of the United States following the issuance of—
(I) a public notice proposing such determination; and
(II) a public report to Congress, submitted not less than 30 days before such determination, describing the specific national security concern involved and containing a classified annex and a description of what assets would need to be divested to execute a qualified divestiture.
-----
The way I read this is that Congress is bootstrapping the law with its own finding that ByteDance, Ltd/TikTok are Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications, but then, in (3)(B), the President is responsible for determining any other entities this law should cover given previously stated parameters (what they mean by "covered entity" here), using the procedure it then provides.
I believe that addresses the concern about this being a "Bill of Attainder".
Edit: Obviously IANAL, but it also doesn't appear that this issue of this being a Bill of Attainder was raised by TikTok, nor was it considered in this opinion. Perhaps they will do so in a separate action, or already have and it just hasn't made its way to the court(?), but if it were such a slam dunk defense, you think their expensive lawyers would have raised it.
[1]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521...
The Supreme Court has made only very narrow rulings around Bills of Attainder.
To me this bill seems problematic on that front in two directions. One is that it explicitly names a target of the ban. Secondly, it grants the president power to arbitrarily name more. Similar to how a King can declare certain Subjects be Attainded on His Whim.
But the petitioners (TikTok) did not raise this issue so the court did not have to decide on it. Instead they focused on the first amendment issue, which seems like a loser -- there is no speech present on TikTok that the law bans; any content on TikTok can be posted to red-blooded American apps like shorts or reels so the speech itself is not affected.
> I believe that addresses the concern about this being a "Bill of Attainder".
The definition of "foreign adversary controlled application" in the bill is explicit in including either (a) this specific list of organizations, OR (b) other organization that might meet certain criteria later. I'm not sure how the existence of (b) addresses the concern that (a) amounts to a bill of attainder.
I'd like to see less pervasive chronic use of media, so would hope Canada follows suit, but I don't think banning specific services for political reasons is necessarily a good way to get there. Along with other toxic outlets like gambling, we should be able to make coherent judgements about what belongs and what doesn't based on assessments of well-being indicators that evolve over time. I know it's a fairly conservative take, but it's one I'm happy with, and have a hard time seeing how we're better off with the existence of things like TikTok that provide such an easy way to siphon off human hours in a way that few things other than TV before.
Incidentally, I feel almost controversial for seeing more ads for alcohol and gambling than anything else, and thinking "when did we agree it was a good thing to be more permissive about encouraging objectively addicting risky behavior?".
An implementation detail that might be interesting is that the discussed method of the ban is to use the same ISP block that is used for torrent sites (and other websites).
This may be a bit of relevance when talking about how banning a website get applied through the legal system.
That’s a good point. Apparently VPN popularity is already exploding in states that PornHub had to block.
Maybe we will finally get the decentralized computer network we thought we were building in the 1990s (as a combination of software overlays and point to point unlicensed wireless links).
No matter what you think of this ban, the court is obviously not the right place to solve it. It is completely unsurprising that this is a unanimous decision because foreign trade is one of the few powers expressly given to the federal government in the constitution:
>[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;[0]
(The actual law may not have relied exclusively on the Commerce Clause, you would have to read it to find out. But from a high level there is nothing stopping congress from regulating any instance foreign trade.)
[0] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8...