Comment by delichon

Comment by delichon 3 months ago

34 replies

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.

llamaimperative 3 months ago

Signal of belief in an excessively strong state?

Clarence Thomas is not actually conservative in the small government sense.

  • ls612 3 months ago

    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.

    • llamaimperative 2 months ago

      Neil “the President can use SEAL Team 6 to eliminate his political opponents” Gorsuch?

      He’s not a small government conservative, lol.

      • monocularvision 2 months ago

        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.

        • llamaimperative 2 months ago

          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.

      • braiamp 2 months ago

        Pss, dude, nobody is small government anything. They are just want the regulation to apply in a manner that they are content with.

  • EasyMark 2 months ago

    signal in belief that freedom of speech has limits, and it doesn't extend to a foreign adversary hoping to decimate the USA has been my conclusion from the 9-0 decision of SCOTUS

    • llamaimperative 2 months ago

      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)

      • EasyMark 2 months ago

        THen you should go read the SCOTUS final decision, it's pretty succinct for a law document.

        • llamaimperative 2 months ago

          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.

twobitshifter 3 months ago

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.

logicchains 2 months ago

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.

  • phito 2 months ago

    Wait, since when is TikTok decentralised?

    • jazzyjackson 2 months ago

      The information is decentralized (a hundred million different sources...), just not the infrastructure.

      • braiamp 2 months ago

        The way that it is distributed is centralized and controlled by a single party. You can generate content all day, but unless the algorithm pick you up and make you popular, your content may as well not exists.

      • phito 2 months ago

        The consumer doesn't choose what gets fed to them. Neither does the producer. Tiktok chooses who gets to see what. It's absolutely centralised, with crowd sourced content.

  • unethical_ban 2 months ago

    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.

    • henrikschroder 2 months ago

      > 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?

      • tstrimple 2 months ago

        I don't know... The baseball error videos TikTok keeps sending me are making me want to seize the means of production.

      • unethical_ban 2 months ago

        It means your psyche has not yet been targeted by explicit reprogramming.

      • [removed] 2 months ago
        [deleted]
gjsman-1000 3 months ago

> “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…

  • schoen 3 months ago

    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.)

    • munchler 3 months ago

      It required specific legislation to ban TikTok. I would say that's pretty extraordinary. I think even the EFF should admit that allowing the Chinese government to control a major American social media app is an unacceptable security risk.

      • accrual 3 months ago

        It's amazing that all three arms of the government can come together so quickly to ban an app, but we can't have affordable housing, public healthcare, a higher minimum wage, or send kids to school without bulletproof backpacks.

        • ok_dad 2 months ago

          Stop talking about that or they'll ban HN next!

      • packetlost 2 months ago

        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)

      • hedora 3 months ago

        The second paragraph of the EFF statement says the ban provides insufficient protection of US security.

  • EasyMark 2 months ago

    I agree with the EFF on a lot of stuff. I don't believe in absolute _________ without considering life is virtually never that simple.