Comment by abduhl
Sure, but why can't my teenager smoke cigarettes?
The point of my response is: sometimes you have to be paternalistic, and the federal government doesn't need to meaningfully defend the ban to someone who doesn't like it because those people don't matter. They meaningfully defended the ban to the courts.
I don't think we really disagree in general. I specifically said that I would favor a broader ban. Just that if you're going to be paternalistic you need a good reason. In the case of smoking, "it's literal poison" is a pretty good reason to ban it (which we haven't done, lol).
My point is that I don't think "access to this information services will stoke negative sentiment towards the US government" is a good reason to ban access to said service in a liberal democracy. It would be a good reason to ban the service in an autocracy of some sort, but standards for individual freedoms are higher (though not infinitely high) here. At least, they ought to be higher. That's where the disagreement comes from: I do not care that access to TikTok threatens the US Government. I care about US citizens generally. The interests of these two parties are increasingly disconnected, a sign of a decaying democracy.