Comment by delichon
Comment by delichon 3 months ago
Given that the decision is unanimous just maybe it is in alignment with the constitution. If Clarence Thomas and Ketanji Jackson agree on something, that's some kind of signal.
Comment by delichon 3 months ago
Given that the decision is unanimous just maybe it is in alignment with the constitution. If Clarence Thomas and Ketanji Jackson agree on something, that's some kind of signal.
Neil Gorsuch is though and he signed on too. He even said that while he thought the government had to prove a higher standard than the opinion required, it didn’t matter to the decision because the government in his mind had met that even higher standard anyway.
Neil “the President can use SEAL Team 6 to eliminate his political opponents” Gorsuch?
He’s not a small government conservative, lol.
So you quote the extreme interpretation of the decision by the dissenters to describe what he believes as opposed to using his own words? Seems unfair.
Yes, I believe that in a court case, when someone says "what about Scenario X" and then you write an opinion that fails to preclude Scenario X, you are writing an opinion that can be criticized for allowing Scenario X.
Gorsuch saying "I am not considering Scenario X" does not actually mean his opinion precludes it. His opinion, as written, allows it.
Oh brilliant. So all we need to curtail someone's speech is assert they are "a foreign adversary hoping to decimate the USA?"
That clarifies things!
What about the speech of "the enemy from within" who is "more dangerous than China, Russia, and all these other countries"?
(And to be clear: I think TikTok is awful and should be banned, but I want much, much clearer arguments than this as to why it is able to be banned under our Constitution)
It’s pretty clear you haven’t read it (or the original law).
It allows US POTUS to force American companies not to serve content that POTUS says is 1) under foreign control and 2) a national security concern.
Note that (1) can be satisfied by POTUS simply saying the company is under the influence of foreign entities.
I.e., there is nothing in the law or the ruling that prevents POTUS from saying “Bluesky is under China’s influence” and banning it.
The commerce clause has been used since the founding of the country for this sort of thing. I never saw a way for it to be called unconstitutional.
For most of US history people's access to information was controlled by a few powerful news/media corporations and the Supreme Court did nothing to stop that. It's no surprise that when we finally get a decentralised information transmission system not beholden to the elites, the Supreme Court doesn't want to lend it a hand.
The information is decentralized (a hundred million different sources...), just not the infrastructure.
Social media algorithms are nuclear bombs for the mind. And they are beholden to whoever holds the detonator. It just happens that a lot of people are happy with China holding it.
When the mind-reading algorithm provides each user with their own reality to live in, then we are talking about editorializing. And allowing a communist, anti-Western government direct control over that power does not seem reasonable.
inb4 "better than my own government" - great, we agree that social media algorithms are a net negative to all society.
Communications is great. Video is great. Social media algorithms controlled by rage-inducing profit seekers and governments is not great.
> rage-inducing profit seekers
That pretty accurately describes Twitter and Facebook these days. TikTok, not so much, which you would know if you had used the platform. (Or, you have used the platform, and you prefer rage-inducing crap, so it continues serving that to you)
The proponents of the ban keep mentioning some kind of nefarious "communist" propaganda, and some kind of nefarious privacy data access, but I've yet to see someone show concrete examples of what that would look like.
My TikTok feed contains a ton of funny cat videos, Europeans shitting on clueless American tourists, OF models hawking themselves, the ubiquitous dance videos, people making caricature cringe videos, and a bunch of viral meme videos. And a lady drinking Costco peach juice.
Where's the propaganda? Not in my feed, that's for sure.
Where's the rage-inducing bait? Not in my feed, that's for sure.
What privacy data can the nefarious CCP access about me? That I like cat videos and memes?
It means your psyche has not yet been targeted by explicit reprogramming.
> “which would’ve led to the inescapable conclusion … had to be rejected as infringing … free speech”
When the EFF sounds about as sane as a sovereign citizen…
With friends like these, who needs enemies…
I worked at EFF for twenty years, and every iteration or incarnation of EFF would have said that it should be extraordinarily difficult for the government to prevent Americans from using foreign web sites or software. And that it should be extraordinarily difficult for the government to compel tech intermediaries to help block foreign sites or software. This would have been a bog-standard EFF position for the organization's entire existence.
(I would say something even stronger than "extraordinarily difficult", but then I'd be on thinner ice.)
Not only did it require specific legislation, but it had the near unanimous support of all 3 branches of the government (if you exclude the shifts in presidential opinion)
Signal of belief in an excessively strong state?
Clarence Thomas is not actually conservative in the small government sense.