TikTok Sues US Government Over Law Forcing Sale or Ban (nytimes.com) 169
Less than two weeks after President Biden signed a bill that will force TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the popular social media app or face a ban in the United States, TikTok said it sued the federal government on Tuesday, arguing the law was unconstitutional. From a report: TikTok said that the law violated the First Amendment by effectively removing an app that millions of Americans use to share their views and communicate freely. It also argued that a divestiture was "simply not possible," especially within the law's 270-day timeline, pointing to difficulties such as Beijing's refusal to sell a key feature that powers TikTok in the United States.
"For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban, and bars every American from participating in a unique online community with more than one billion people worldwide," the company said in the 67-page petition it provided, which initiates the lawsuit. "There is no question: The act will force a shutdown of TikTok by Jan. 19, 2025." TikTok is battling for its survival in the United States, with the fight set to play out primarily in courts over the next few months. While lawmakers who passed the bill have said the app is a national security threat because of its ties to China, the courts must now weigh those concerns against TikTok's argument that a sale or ban would violate the First Amendment free-speech rights of its users and hurt small businesses that owe their livelihood to the platform.
"For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban, and bars every American from participating in a unique online community with more than one billion people worldwide," the company said in the 67-page petition it provided, which initiates the lawsuit. "There is no question: The act will force a shutdown of TikTok by Jan. 19, 2025." TikTok is battling for its survival in the United States, with the fight set to play out primarily in courts over the next few months. While lawmakers who passed the bill have said the app is a national security threat because of its ties to China, the courts must now weigh those concerns against TikTok's argument that a sale or ban would violate the First Amendment free-speech rights of its users and hurt small businesses that owe their livelihood to the platform.
Yawn .. not even unprecedented (Score:5, Insightful)
https://www.theverge.com/2020/... [theverge.com]
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
My advice is to suck it up, buttercup, and enjoy the billions you'll bring in from shitty dancing videos and misinformation so fucking dumb it makes flat earthers look sane.
Re:Yawn .. not even unprecedented (Score:4, Informative)
That's a very different event. Grindr was an American company that was sold to Kunlun, a Chinese company. Kunlun did not submit its acquisition of Grindr for CFIUS review, Which lead the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to request the transaction be reversed. No new laws against Kunlun were created. Nor did we force a Chinese created company to be sold to an American firm.
Details matter.
Re:Yawn .. not even unprecedented (Score:5, Insightful)
TikTok is a platform...is it not speech.
Banning TT on the basis of national security, does not, in fact, ban or restrict any US speech....there are plenty of choices out there to use as a platform/public square to post your speech.
So, this should not be a 1st A case at all.
platform != speech.
Re:Yawn .. not even unprecedented (Score:5, Interesting)
the platform is such a national security risk than even china doesn't allow it. why should US. has byte dance sued china?
Re:Yawn .. not even unprecedented (Score:5, Informative)
Part of the issue is that as a Chinese company, Bytedance, BY LAW, is effectively an arm of the CCP. There's valid reasons to think that corporations are too powerful in the US and can thumb their noses at it. But in China, the exact opposite is true. You piss off the CCP, they will destroy you. Jack Ma is the seminal example. The CCP as a state entity is quite literally above the law in China. A CCP decree has to be incorporated into court decisions and supersedes any legislation, and must be carried out by the executive branch. A mere DRAFT of regulations on gaming tanked Tencent value by 50B overnight. That's how potent they are, they make the FCC and FTC and others look like weak children in comparison.
So to that end, if a large number of Americans are getting their political news from Tiktok, that means China can absolutely do a shadow campaign to sway American's to effectively do their bidding. Unfortunately, they full on demonstrated this by how much they were able to persuade peopel to try to oppose the ban, so the power is certainly there.
Same with Facetwitter (Score:2)
If they can do a shadow campaign and not get caught, they could also do it on Facebook et al. I'm sure they have moles in other media co's.
Since they wouldn't be allowed to directly fiddle with the tech, they'd get moles to do it, and moles can be in any co. In fact it would be easier to hide moles at Facebook because they'd have less scrutiny per s
Re: Yawn .. not even unprecedented (Score:5, Insightful)
Douyin and TikTok share exactly one common aspect in that they are short form video platforms. However, it is disingenuous to gloss over the stark contrast between the two apps in terms of the content on each of them by dismissively saying Douyin is on a separate network.
Douyin is a heavily censored, tightly regulated platform in China. Most of the content is either educational or serves the interests of the CCP. There are strict time limits for younger audiences. The parent company, ByteDance, is effectively controlled by the CCP.
If Douyin were no different than TikTok, then there would only be TikTok. There is a reason the CCP does not let its citizens have access to TikTok.
Re: Yawn .. not even unprecedented (Score:4)
Have you actually used Douyin? It's pretty similar to other Chinese apps. Censorship levels are the same. No Tiananmen, porn is technically illegal in China but the rules are somewhat fuzzy and not enforced. Plenty of violent content on there, some of it pretty disturbing.
In other words there is stuff that is legal in China, but not in the US, and vice versa.
Let's be honest and have a real conversation about this. I agree that censorship by the government is a concern, but that applies to both China and the US government's attempt to ban TikTok.
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China isn't communist.
Re: Yawn .. not even unprecedented (Score:3)
I am decidedly uninterested in nitpicking descriptors or playing a game where we argue about finicky details over what does or does not make China communist because it is irrelevant to my main point. I am also not interested in picking sides or declaring one side to be more correct or virtuous than the other.
The fact remains that there are clear incompatibilities between the way China operates and the Western world operates. Whatever you decide to think of China as being and whatever labels you use to defi
Act of Attainder (Score:3)
Banning TT on the basis of national security, does not, in fact, ban or restrict any US speech.
No but it is arguably an act of attainder: finding them guilty of violating national security by passing a law instead of letting the courts decide. I'm no expert on the US consitution but in most democratic countries acts of attainder are generally not allowed.
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Ok I'll help you.
When something is declared a national security threat, it is not something that is done through the courts, never has been.
Re:Yawn .. not even unprecedented (Score:5, Funny)
Okay Alito, stop goosestepping in your black boots and loose the SS uniform.
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Yeah, from a 1st Amendment perspective, I think they're identical.
The only issue the law may have is mentioning TT/ByteDance by name instead of just letting the president add them to the list. It would be bad if that killed it forever, but it seems like something the SCOTUS could just remove via scalpel.
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shitty dancing videos and misinformation so fucking dumb it makes flat earthers look sane.
Ever had a look at this thing on the interwebs called YouTube?
Is China covered by the US constitution? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is China covered by the US constitution? (Score:5, Informative)
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generally the constitution applies to anyone (or entity) in the country, not just citizens.
In fact the word entity does not appear in the constitution, only "persons" are covered (and non-citizens still do not have all the same rights in that case).
The law in question is compelling Bytedance (based in Beijing and incorporated in the Cayman Islands) to put Tiktok under the control of such persons as the constitution pertains to so, so if Tiktok wants to enjoy those constitutional protections they should be quite happy to follow through with the divestment.
Of course the objection is absurd but ever
But arguably not a security risk (Score:3)
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Getting metadata on normal citizen is not covered under "security risk" and the government can forbid its actor (military and otherwise) to not use tiktok, like they forbid stuff like peloton on military basis. But forbidding it to everybody is clearly not a matter of national security. If it was, they would forbid ALL actors (e.g. facebook, google etc...) to gather data and sell it to everybody which, they do.
There are three things that Tiktok does:
1. gather data on individuals
2. gather HUGE amounts of aggregate data, enough to train ML models and discern connections and trends not apparent without millions of datapoints
3. control the "algorithm" by which broad public opinion on a topic is undetectably influenced
I think that (2) and (3) are obviously the security risk areas, so I don't know why you chose to only reason about (1).
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And the US government has given itself powers to get access to all that data if it wants.
The situation of US internet platform companies is symmetrical to the Tiktok situation.
To be consistent then, all the other countries should ban facebook, google, X, etc.
That way, we can all have our paranoid nationalisms to ourselves, protected by our walls.
Right?
Re: But arguably not a security risk (Score:2)
"forbidding it to everybody is clearly not a matter of national security. If it was, they would forbid ALL actors (e.g. facebook, google etc...) to gather data and sell it to everybody which, they do."
All national social media services are known to be part of PRISM. They are literally part of the panopticon. Therefore they are essentially defense contractors. What they sell and to whom is probably under a lot more scrutiny than you think. Anyone buying that data and trusting it to be accurate is as dumb as
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At any rate, it's laughable that they think the 1st amended protects them from being a national security risk.
Forget the national security risk. Their understanding of the 1st amendment is lacking in general. The fact that a user can voice an opinion on a platform does not protect the platform under 1st amendment rights.
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generally the constitution applies to anyone (or entity) in the country, not just citizens
If the US government can detain people without trial and torture them (gitmo), then clearly that doesn't hold. Though this may be the case that people get far fewer protections than companies.
Anyhooo there seems to be the modern meme that literally anything is speech so the first amendment makes it more or less impossible to pass any laws on anything. Hyperbole... but only a bit.
Re: Is China covered by the US constitution? (Score:2)
It's not true anyway, different constitutional rights have been held to have differing scope. The 1A has long been considered to cover actual people from anywhere, but not so much for corporations. There's not one standard for them and never has been.
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Re:Is China covered by the US constitution? (Score:5, Interesting)
We both know that national security is just an excuse. And the real reason is TikTok can provide people with content outside of establishment's control.
Not really. It's under the control of a different establishment, one that is clearly hostile to US interests (both establishment and the general population), and with a history of violently suppressing anyone they consider inferior - which is everyone.
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Re:Is China covered by the US constitution? (Score:4, Informative)
Because these people are just internet shit posters mostly, it's a privileged position of living the wealthiest nation that people living in it can be so opposed to what it does. It's the same on the far right just with a different wrapper, they drape their hatred of America in the aesthetic of patriotism while standing against the core values all while living inside the country that allowed them to do so.
It's important to have that antagonism in a free country, the USA has done and still engage in shitty terrible behavior but like everything else since the advent of the internet it has gotten far dumber than the civil action of the civil rights and Vietnam era. The extremes on both sides are just devoid of idea but the media puts them front and center because of sensationalism, conflict and laziness.
Re:Is China covered by the US constitution? (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe they are patriots and want to improve their country, rather than abandon it.
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Indeed. Where I come from, we call them "losers." Or "idiots."
Re:Is China covered by the US constitution? (Score:4, Insightful)
ByteDance is own and completely controlled by the government of China. The first amendment doesn't apply to foreign governments.
So yeah, you missed a lot of things.
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If that is true then why do they keep getting regulated by the Chinese government? Surely their owner would simply order their employees to do what they want. And surely a government agency like the NRTA would never dare tell the CCP what to do.
If supporters of the ban can't be honest, we must assume there is an ulterior motive.
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If supporters of the ban can't be honest, we must assume there is an ulterior motive.
That's pretty funny coming from someone defending China, specifically the Chinese government.
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I'm not defending China, you Muppet. I'm pointing out that the US government is not being honest, which is something that Americans should care about.
Members of the US government don't like the content on TikTok, and are trying to stop you accessing it. My government is doing the same and it's wrong.
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I'm not defending China, you Muppet.
Liar.
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This is the stupidest reply I've seen on Slashdot for a long time. It's literally impossible for it to be true, because the bit you quoted clarifies the intent beyond all doubt.
The really worrying thing is that they somehow convinced you that TikTok is a bigger threat than your own government picking up tips from the CCP on how to make sure you think the right things.
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This is the stupidest reply I've seen on Slashdot for a long time.
Then why'd you make it?
Re: Is China covered by the US constitution? (Score:2)
It doesn't have to say it anywhere in practice. What matters is what has been done historically, we call that precedent.
The precedent is for the 1A to apply to humans everywhere, but only to US corporations.
There is ample precedent for doing basically anything in the name of national security as well, so good luck with your argument. Normally you're not even allowed to know about it (See: National Security Letters - wait, you don't GET to see those...)
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"The Constitution isn’t a suicide pact."
Have a grown up explain it to you.
Re: Is China covered by the US constitution? (Score:2)
I didn't say anything was "okay", what I Said was that it's legal.
Work on your reading comprehension, it is important when you want to communicate with text.
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govt would classify any speech it didn't like as "hostile to US interests", and that would defeat the entire purpose of First.
You are correct, this is all stuff the founders considered thusly why there exists the separation of branches.
Legislative passes law, Executive enforces law. Law can be taken to court where the Judicial branch will decide whether the first two are allowed to pass and enforce the law or how they should enforce it.
There are plenty of laws I don't personally agree with but if they have passed through the process like this one is and came out intact the other side then it is what it is. If i want to change it
Re: Is China covered by the US constitution? (Score:2)
Did the founders follow the process in breaking away from England? There was no process that would work for that, so no.
Did the founders foresee that we might have to have a revolution every few generations? Yep, some of them wrote about it explicitly.
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the govt would classify any speech it didn't like as "hostile to US interests"
What you, and many others, don't understand is that there is an actual list in US law of who the adversary nations are: Russia, China , North Korea, and Iran.
So it isn't "any speech [the gubermint] doesn't like," it is specifically things that these four countries do where is a huge presumption by the Courts that claims of "hostility to US interests" are to be determined by the political branches of government.
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Ah, The Establishment is behind this. Quick Batman, to the Moron-O-Mobile, The Man is after us...again...where are my meds?
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You mean the part of the Constitution that says "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.". This has nothing to do with the nationality of the country, it has to do with the fact Congress is prohibited from punishing a single entity with a law and bypassing the judicial system.
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US military has it's own laws so Gitmo is covered under UCMJ?
Pretty sure I've been told that when you enlist one of the first things they tell you is you are under the laws of the UCMJ and not the standard Constitutional laws.
Now whether people in Gitmo should be under the purview of standard US justice I would agree, the prisoners there should be charged under US criminal law and prosecuted in a US federal court, but that's the method that is used, the people there are considered prisoners of war, not pris
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Actually America claims they are not POW's, but rather unlawful combatants and therefore neither the Constitution or any Treaties apply to them.
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That's really wrapped up in the issue on war's in the 20th century, it's primarily around non-state actors. Al Queda, Isis, Hezzbollah, the Houthis etc. Are they civilians or enemy combatants? What country do they belong to? So much of the rules around armed combat were built around nation-on-nation combat. It's very muddled and you get situations like this.
We charged the '93 WTC bombers in civilian court and several terrorists are not in Gitmo but ADX Florence. I also think it sets a good example of ho
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I don't understand how a Chinese company, or one that is owned by foreign interests (even if it the company is established in the US) could be covered by the US constitution anyway
14th Amendment.
nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws
It says ANY person. In fact, the sentence before this one indicates citizens and this sentence indicates ANY. So that's always been known to mean, "applies to anyone". So anything happening within the United States isn't deprived of "due process". So a foreign company has the right to ask the court if it has a first amendment right or not. They are allowed "due process" but that doesn't mean that they have every right that say a citizen has. It's an incredibly important difference here.
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Regardless of whether TikTok sells their American subsidiary or not, the bill will prevent Americans from accessing a site on the Internet where they currently exercise their right to free speech. It's not TikTok's right to freedom of speech, it's American posters.
A Montana judge already ruled that Montana's TikTok ban was unconstitutional on freedom of speech grounds.
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The challenge and verdict were based on freedom of speech, not interstate commerce.
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I don't understand how a Chinese company, or one that is owned by foreign interests (even if it the company is established in the US) could be covered by the US constitution anyway. Moreover, it has nothing to do with the constitution, it's a health safety issue, and national security issue
Forcing a breakup for TikTok is similar to individual countries imposing breakups and other harsh conditions for approval of mergers. It's not that the country can control a foreign company. Rather, it's that each country absolutely has the right to control the activities of companies inside that country. ByteDance doesn't have to divest TikTok, but they don't get to refuse and also override US government decisions about regulations in the US. As the Chinese government is fond of saying, this is an inte
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GOP judges had nothing to do with that. It was the 14th Amendment and a headnote from a court reporter (J.C. Bancroft Davis) in the Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company case in 1886.
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a bit confused, where in the 14th does it say a person == corporation and vice versa
Re: Is China covered by the US constitution? (Score:2)
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The Citizens United majority opinion makes no reference to corporate personhood or the Fourteenth Amendment, but rather argues that political speech rights do not depend on the identity of the speaker, which could be a person or an association of people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
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That's the rub isn't it? What's the dividing line between a company and any other association of people? If I want to band together 500 people in my area to lobby the government on something we want to enact are we not allowed a voice in that effort? The issue with CU was if we stop this then are we setting a precedent of restricting other speech.
Like many USSC decisions the ruling creates new issues that have to be solved legislatively, the SC only deals in process. That's usually why in many decisions
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That's how it works now, if you donate to a candidate there are caps. CU said that if you are an organization that is not coordinating with any candidate then those rules don't apply, thus the SuperPAC.
Of course we all know the coordination thing is bullshit, how can you stop or prove such communications? But that is where I would say more precise legislation drawing those lines and enforcement has to come in. That or someone has to bring a challenge to the courts and if you make it to SC they have to hear
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Partly true... (Score:5, Interesting)
> app that millions of Americans use to share their views and communicate freely.
This is absurd. TikTok is one of the most heavily censored communications platforms in existence, and in any case, freedom of speech protects the right of the people to express whatever opinions they want; it does not protect, and has never protected, the right of a foreign government to do business in America as it sees fit. That fundamentally isn't in the first ammendment's wheelhouse, at all.
However,
> It also argued that a divestiture was "simply not possible,"
This, however, is certainly true. Bytedance absolutely can't sell TikTok, because they're not a normal company that has the right to sell whatever assets they possess. The creation of Douyin (of which, TikTok is the English-language version) was sponsored and funded by the CCP, and it's a significant strategic asset; they're not under any circumstances going to allow it to be sold to any entity they can't fully control. Imagine if a foreign government demanded that Lockheed Martin sell the F-22 Raptor to a company in their country. They simply don't have the authority to do that. Which, the real purpose of the bill, at least in my view, was to more publicly *expose* the fact that it's the Chinese government, or the Communisty Party, that controls TikTok and will not allow it to be sold. People who have taken the trouble to educate themselves on the matter are already fully aware of this, but a lot of "narrative shaping" has been poured into making sure _most_ people think otherwise. Hopefully, this bill will allow us to lay that question to rest in the minds of a lot more people, as we see Chinese state-run media responding, and doing things like declaring that the app cannot be sold (which is not something you'd expect a government to declare if the app were a normal asset of a normal private company).
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Hmm does the constitution prevent a private company from censoring, or does it apply solely to the government?
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If the private company is owned and controlled by a government, it's not a private company, it's an arm of that government.
The Constitution certainly doesn't prohibit the federal government from regulating what foreign governments do in the US.
Re:Partly true... (Score:4)
That was exactly my argument against Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram when they came down heavy on "fake news"/non-establishment media during the 2016 election.
Turns out the FBI and the DNC were directly feeding Twitter (at the least) accounts to censor and ban, amongst other things. Considering they moved in lockstep with Meta, it'd be hard to believe they're not all involved in the same kind of treachery.
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Imagine if a foreign government demanded that Lockheed Martin sell the F-22 Raptor to a company in their country. They simply don't have the authority to do that.
They absolutely could, even just seize it by force. Don't put a F-22 Raptor factory in China.
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> This is absurd. TikTok is one of the most heavily censored communications platforms in existence
Maybe in China, but not in the US. I can post things on TikTok that would for sure have me banned on Reddit subs. Tiktok is about as free as Twitter but definitely not as free as known cesspools such as 4chan or Slashdot.
(Slashdot may be full of down voting simps but I've only ever had 1 comment removed in over 20 years.)
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I can post things on TikTok that would for sure have me banned on Reddit subs.
Can you give some examples, just curious what your exact experience has been.
Reddit is also a weird things since so many subs are user moderated, like 9 out of 10 bans are just sub bans which are very subjective and plenty of little fiefdoms. An interesting comparison would be Youtube Shorts.
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Let me just say that YT Shorts sucks balls. I have found if I scroll down even a little bit, whatever "short" I thought I was going to see jumps to something else and there is no way to get the original one back. Every single time.
Mind you, I don't view shorts on anything resembling a regular basis and have probably only selected four or five, but the condition above has happened with all of them. Can't scroll down or you lose the vid and can't
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> Can you give some examples, just curious what your exact experience has been.
On Slashdot I'll get downvotes for asking why someone who had and beat COVID needs a vaccine since they already have antibodies. On Reddit it will get removed, on TikTok it isn't an issue. Sometimes people will flag it but the appeal usually goes through.
Posting anything positive about Trump stuff outside /r/Wallstreetbets or the the now removed /r/The_Donald may or not get you banned from the sub. TikTok has no issue eith
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Well, like I said that's the issue with Reddit. The platform didn't ban you, the subreddit unpaid moderators did.
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Don't mention certain left wing sacred cows in a negative light and you won't be marked 'troll' or 'overrated', etc. - things like AGW, "green" tech, and similar topics are the usual culprit.
If you don't worship at that throne, expect a negative response, no matter how diplomatic you are.
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I've had comments downvoted to oblivion -almost immediately-, and always on a very specific topical point of discussion. I've had suspicion for a while that it's not an organic occurrence, and that it's a botted operation to keep certain opinions from gaining visibility.
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Maybe so, but it's the only US platform where dissident, non-regime opinions are able to be amplified and shared freely.
Every other major platform bans dissent.
Free speech issue - but not the one you think (Score:2)
Can people say anything they want on TikTok without getting deplatformed?
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Irrelevant argument, The Constitution apples to the government not to companies.
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Which is a dangerous cop-out. When the Constitution was written it inconceivable to have a communications platform like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, etc. It was incomprehensible that a private entity could wield as much power as the big corporations do today. It was only thought possible for the government to be that powerful and wide-reaching, so that is what was limited.
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Newspapers and book publishers existed when the Constitution was written. Neither is under any obligation to print your letter to the editor or book, respectively.
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The speech issue is a symptom though and not the root cause. The lines re pretty clear and correct in my opinion on the speech issue. If you own a platform you get to control the content on that platform. If we want to carve out exceptions for these platforms based on their size we need to start from the ground up and define those lines, how do you qantify the "power" of a company in this space, that whole process will also have constitutional questions to answer.
Where, imo, the government can use it's mu
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No it's not. The constitution protects your right to speak, it doesn't grant you a right to use a megaphone. The size of the platform is irrelevant.
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Only the CCP.
Re:Free speech issue - but not the one you think (Score:4, Interesting)
Not at all as the platform is heavily censored and regulated. You see the dumb Tiktok lingo leaking into other parts of the internet now. For example the words suicide or kill can't be used so the term unalive was born. You'll also see lots of censored words like P*rn or S*x too.
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What security risk? (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, though, our country (United States) has no real laws for data brokers or website date security -
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Google and Facebook should file as "friends... (Score:2)
... of the court". They are banned from China for "national security" reasons.
Good for TikTok (Score:2)
Can the U.S. based social media companies now sue? (Score:2)
Interesting. So I guess the U.S. based social media companies that are currently banned in China by the CCP can now sue same? Turnaround is fair play, no?
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companies that are currently banned in China by the CCP can now sue same?
Yeah. In a Chinese court. Let's see how that works out.
in case you're not from America (Score:2)
Not just TikTok (Score:2)
Let's say you don't like TikTok, maybe you don't like that people can freely post Israel's atrocities in Gaza there. So maybe you support this bill. But you also don't like Trump. Do you think Trump should have the power to decide what apps are 'controlled by foreign adversaries' and should be banned? Or, if you happen to like Trump AND Biden, do you trust all future presidents not to abuse this power?
I forsee a big uptick(tok) (Score:2)
The kids will have their toys.
F*&^NG CCP (Score:2)
"TikTok said that the law violated the First Amendment" - A CCP controlled company using the 1st amendment to sue us. Stop this suit cold in its tracks now to send a message to those communist asshats.
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Does China have a Constitution that bars the government from certain things, like censoring speech?
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What the H*** does your answer has to do with what I wrote.
I was simply stating THE OBVIOUS: in the USA there are the personal data of all those companies INSTEAD on MY country.
The USA Government can access MY DATA without MY COUNTRY knowing. Thus SPYING.
So, I'll keep it saying: follow the US law: YOU sell the companies to my country or face a BAN.
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Geopolitics is in fact a thing.
This is wresting on a national security argument. If Spain wants to make that argument in their courts about a national security concern about data in US servers, by all means, they should.
In the US though if TikTok was owned by a Spain based company the government would not have gotten anywhere likely since Spain is not an antagonist to the United States. There's a whole other discussion about why and how that antagonism exists with China but it exists, you can't just handw