TikTok was a malicious entity from its inception, they can struggle all they like but they're not going to Tom Sawyer us into thinking the US Legislator's decisions were too unfair.
this post was submitted on 08 May 2024
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Apparently, the classification levels in the US are illegal! Snowden will rejoice, he can come home, as the first amendment allows free speech, even when it damages national security.
I did not read the article, but the summary made me actually laugh out loud. Hell the supreme court has already said the government has the right to intern a whole class of US citizens based on national security. The SCOTUS rulings do seem rather crazy at times to me though, so perhaps this is a winning strategy for ByteDance.
Will be interesting to read the arguments and hear what experts have to say.
There is some precedence that corporations do have first amendment rights.
A hypothetical argument from TikTok is they think they are allowed constitutional rights, in this case to publish whatever they want, in the act of doing a commercial activity and that the law which was passed to force a sale to a local owner is a violation of their right to speak freely.
I suspect TikTok operates in the USA under an American registered entity that is wholly owned by a foreign entity. Whether that grants or removes any such constitutional rights seems unclear.
Next, it doesn't seem like the law intends to block TikTok's "speech", rather it specifically allows the executive branch to block this particular type of foreign entity from doing business on American soil on the grounds of security, enforced most likely by blocking it from doing business with the app stores. This also has precedence - a lot of it, in fact - when it comes to security. The US blocks all kinds of foreign businesses from trading with American businesses. Like arms dealers and drug dealers.
So TikTok will need to defeat the idea that even as a foreign businesses they don't need to be subject to the whims of the executive branches power to block foreign businesses AND that even congress doesn't have the power to write a law that gives the executive branch this power (because, ya know, they just DID write that law).
And then TikTok will need to win on the idea that somehow their rights have been suppressed.
Seems like a long shot to me and the precedence that would be established by making it difficult for Congress to write laws that give the executive power to block foreign entities because it risks their unlikely right to speech in the US seems a bit whack.
I was under the assumption that the Constitution applies to all within the sovereign territory of the US, not just citizens. That's why undocumented immigrants are still given trials for suspected crimes.
I was under the assumption that the Constitution applies to all within the sovereign territory of the US, not just citizens.
Corporate entities though? I'm not sure we should be onboard with giving companies constitutional rights (just the people), let alone foreign companies.
It looks like they do, yes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wong_Wing_v._United_States
The fact that they bothered to pass a law at all could be argued to be a tacit admission that tiktok has constitutional rights, if it doesn't then you could just march in and confiscate it's servers, since it wouldn't have the right to due process.
I will be honest, i am fully against tiktok and everything it stands for. It should burn in hell.
...However, the law the us passed to ban tiktok makes no sense whatsoever. At its core its as bad as china's grasp on a lot of markets. I believe a more correct way is to ban the practices tik tok does and ban it from federal devices. However, such a law needs more effort and would also get us-based companies in trouble.
But even then, its a way better solution to the problem
TBH if they're arguing against the forced sale then they still don't have any defence against the new laws that shipped alongside it making it illegal to collect and send data to adversarial nations, so that would effectively accomplish what you're asking for.
But also, this is very clear as day a Chinese Military Operation, so fuck em and fuck their rights in particular.
Whether they win or lose their lawsuit I see it as a win for the US Citizens.
At its core its as bad as china's grasp on a lot of markets.
The government should be allowed to regulate markets as much as necessary to protect citizens from the dangers of capitalism. Laissez-Faire doesn't work.
I agree fully, but pushing for a law that basically says "apps from a list of 6 countries are not allowed here unless moved to the us" is a bullshit thing and forces them to give the us more power and control over the data. Hence my comparison.
I believe they should put laws in order a la gdpr to protect users from the data stuff. You know, the actual issue of tiktok.
I agree, but part of the issue is also that this app is operating in bad faith with local laws, so trying to regulate their behaviour is an uphill battle. They just ignore fines or find ways of hiding their bad behaviour better. Obviously they aren't the only ones that do so, but I'm not going to complain about one shitty company getting what's coming to them.
Hm, youre right. It is an uphill battle, and its a battle the eu has been trying to fight with big us tech for a few years now. They too should be punished and limited, just like tik tok. There has to be a way to punish them all, without forcing tik tok to become part of the big us tech family that the us can leach off. Its causing a shit ton of issues and problems that this does not solve imo.
Also, they cant ignore fines if you do it right, but the us will never do it right hehe :p
So, lets just kill off data hoarding and data sharing between platforms. Kill all shit like tiktok, meta, twitter, ... In one fell swoop.
I'd love to see it, but as I said, I don't like letting perfect be the enemy of good. Banning Tiktok is a good thing IMO. I'm not going to complain that it shouldn't be done just because there is more work to do.
Oh, my idea isnt perfect. Not even close haha
It would cause platforms to become subscription based or be backed by large companies for their own profit ( see linux, github, and every open source, non profit organisation backed and/or managed by bigger companies ). No person on the internet would agree with that and its a hard bullet to bite.
Its just that from a eu citizen standpoint, this ban solves nothing for them. Its like giving the keys to everything for some bad guy to some other bad guy that both want to be above you.
And american citizens also dont benefit jack shit from this. If not, makes it worse for them as the tiktok data can now be used to make their lives worse, easier.
I will say that i agree something is better than nothing and something had to be done, dont get me wrong. I just think it was a half ass, political war bullshit choice they made with the resources they had that solves nothing besides "oh no, china be harvesting more data than us. Quick! Respond!".
Meanwhile some eu countries took on a grander scale and banned tik tok apps on government devices, which does a better job than this imho ( source : https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/28/tech/tiktok-eu-ban-intl-hnk/index.html ) AND they did it last year :p
There were also ideas pitched around to extend this to all social media apps, but i assume that was shut down due to obvious reasons.
I believe a more correct way is to ban the practices tik tok does
But then they have to ban their own data mining spyware social media platforms.
... You didnt read my whole comment did you :p
I said the same thing, but more neutral and political :')
Yeah, but I cut it down to a bite sized shitty joke lol.
Yeah I don't think ByteDance has a legal ground here.
Also this coming from a Chinese company, is rich.
I'm 100% not an expert on this, I'm actually stupid, so know that before you read what I write.
As much as I get what you are saying, the United States has continually expanded the rights of corporations to essentially be.. people. So on that they seem to have some legal standing? But then we factor in national security interests, and those override everything.
Without the national security interests I'd be curious which way this would go, but I don't expect, "I deserve to spy on your citizens because I have free speech," to fly..
So in a way I agree with you and in other ways I disagree with you, in the end.. I said nothing, but I did say I am stupid at the top, so really it's your fault for continuing to read this far.
At the very least it's gonna be interesting. I doubt it will spark any introspection for politicians to think, "Hm, maybe we shouldn't have given corporations more rights than people.." Nope. Poison the waters. Contaminate the soil. Torture the animals. Burn the sky. Cook all of humanity.
But hey, line go up.
then again, theres that thing, you cant sue the us government without their explicit consent.
They can literally say "lol no"
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_United_States
If Tiktok doesn't deserve to spy on Americans, is it the counterpoint that US big tech does?
Heck no, but conflating two arguments at the same time makes them both unsolvable. I just approach one topic at a time. I'm very much anti-gov-spying. It's fourth amendment stuff.
But I think the constitution is more of a talking point than something American politicians care about these days. They like to use it to say, "Do the thing I like! But wait, stop using it to stop me from stopping the things I don't like!"
It's corruption all the way down.
You put forward a couple of different points - I'm not conflating things, just hoping to skip past the constitutional one (which in my opinion is non-sequitur) to address the other. I might have boiled it down to a one-liner, but here's some light further reading/viewing which may help to scratch below the surface of why this corruption as you put is probably happening: https://youtu.be/Fhgm5b8BR0k
Oh sorry, I didn't mean that to come off as an accusation.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/Fhgm5b8BR0k
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Only muricans get to spy on muricans! Now let's do like the commies and nationalize TikTok so it too can be murican and then it's ok for it to spy on muricans!
The true american way is to nationalise tiktok then give it away to your donor friends like a massive handout.
As much as I get what you are saying, the United States has continually expanded the rights of corporations to essentially be.. people. So on that they seem to have some legal standing?
Afaik, the Citizens United case - which gave corporations First Amendment rights - was won based on the idea that the government can't stop a corporation from publishing books. It'll be interesting to see how this ruling goes when it's not about books, but about an online media platform.
That said, I agree that the national security aspect will definitely come into play here. As a non-American, I'm curious to see how it goes.
the Citizens United case - which gave corporations First Amendment rights
SCOTUS has generally defended the idea that corporations have first amendment rights since Grosjean v. American Press Co. in 1936 - a case where a Senator pushed for a tax designed to target papers critical of him and tax them into submission.
To quote Wikipedia on the case:
The case is often cited because it defined corporations as "persons" for purposes of analysis under the Equal Protection clause.
The Citizens United case was that a corporate entity or nonprofit distributing political messaging about a candidate is not considered a campaign contribution (even when it costs them to do so) so long as the entity in question is not attached to or coordinating with the campaign.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban,” TikTok wrote in the lawsuit, “and bars every American from participating in a unique online community with more than 1 billion people worldwide.”
John Moolenaar, R-Mich., the chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, said: “Congress and the Executive Branch have concluded, based on both publicly available and classified information, that TikTok poses a grave risk to national security and the American people.
“The statements of congressional committees and individual Members of Congress during the hasty, closed-door legislative process preceding the Act’s enactment confirm that there is at most speculation, not ‘evidence,’ as the First Amendment requires,” the lawsuit states.
TikTok further claims the law violates the right to due process under the Fifth Amendment and is an unconstitutional bill of attainder — or a legislative act declaring a party guilty of a crime, and imposing a punishment for it, without trial.
If the law remains in place, the lawsuit stated, it would enable the federal government to invoke national security and force the publishers of other platforms, including news sites, to sell or be shut down.
“TikTok has prevailed in its previous First Amendment challenges, but the bipartisan nature of this federal law may make judges more likely to defer to a Congressional determination that the company poses a national security risk,” Hans said.
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