Supreme Court Upholds Law Banning TikTok If It's Not Sold By Its Chinese Parent Company (apnews.com) 106
An anonymous reader shares a report: The Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld the federal law banning TikTok beginning Sunday unless it's sold by its China-based parent company, holding that the risk to national security posed by its ties to China overcomes concerns about limiting speech by the app or its 170 million users in the United States.
A sale does not appear imminent and, although experts have said the app will not disappear from existing users' phones once the law takes effect on Jan. 19, new users won't be able to download it and updates won't be available. That will eventually render the app unworkable, the Justice Department has said in court filings.
A sale does not appear imminent and, although experts have said the app will not disappear from existing users' phones once the law takes effect on Jan. 19, new users won't be able to download it and updates won't be available. That will eventually render the app unworkable, the Justice Department has said in court filings.
Doesn’t matter (Score:1)
The court gave Trump carte blanche with official acts. You think it’s going to get banned with the CEO attending the inauguration? https://www.nytimes.com/2025/0... [nytimes.com]
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Tough to see Apple, Google, Oracle, etc., continuing to permit TikTok to operate on their platforms just on the implied commitment that Trump's DoJ won't enforce the law. It's a huge liability for them, because Trump is known to change his mind, renege on deals, and act capriciously all the time. If nothing else, just the potential for future enforcement gives Trump lev
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Yes, because I'm sure that Apple and Google are just going to trust Trump to not enforce the law that they would be clearly violating, should they anger him over something else.
No, they're going to wink that app out of existence on their app stores at exactly the time the law says, until the Congress or a federal judge says they don't have to any more.
Don't tell them about web browsers (Score:2)
>> the app will not disappear from existing users' phones once the law takes effect on Jan. 19, new users won't be able to download it and updates won't be available. That will eventually render the app unworkable, the Justice Department has said in court filings.
So they are not blocking the servers, just delisting the app from the app stores? Do they know about these old-fashioned things called web browsers that display web sites without a dedicated app? For that matter, do they know that Android c
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We don't know how it will be implemented yet. The law also targets ISPs and CDNs, so all traffic of the service may eventually get banned. There's no precedent for this sort of law, so implementation is a big question.
I read it some time ago in another discussion on this topic, and pretty much the only people law doesn't target that are relevant to the discussion is advertisers. Everyone who provides technical means of delivering TikTok's services, be they application or website are under threat of penaltie
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TikTok doesn't matter and nobody cares if people still use it. The value in this is that now we have our foot in the door, such that we can have government dictate what is not allowed in a software repository. (Apple and Google were technically the victims here, and we all hate those companies, right? Fuck them!!)
That is the new law, to which SCOTUS gave their stamp of approval. Finally, Congress can keep unwanted writing out of your neighborhood public library without worrying about SCOTUS overturning the
Will US ISPs have to block it? (Score:2)
If so, how would they do it?
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China banned American companies long ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Gentle reminder that Google, Meta, LinkedIn and X (among others) do not operate in China at all. The CCP was so concerned about these American apps that they were banned in China long ago. Must be odd for the CCP to witness all of the handwringing about TikTok here in the United States.
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How about this - if you don't like TikTok, just not use it?
I believe I am correctly capturing your argument with the following rephrase, and I apologize if I am inadvertently about to create a strawman to argue against. It seems to me you are saying: "Why not just leave this up to the individual to decide for themselves?" A very reasonable question.
My answer is this: If the actions of the individual only impacted the individual, I would agree with you. One person using TikTok is hardly a national security concern. 500 people using TikTok is hardly a national securi
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This is a lot bigger than social media. The bill prohibits distributing a “foreign adversary controlled application” within U.S. borders. That includes IOT software, EVs, operating systems, software running on network infrastructure, farm equipment, possibly even Temu and Chinese fast fashion apps.
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Regardless of the merits... (Score:5, Interesting)
The opinion [supremecourt.gov] doesn't even mention this issue.
I also question whether this was done in good faith - the entire "Ban TikTok" stuff has a history:
- Youth used it to organize, in particular targeting Trump rallies and making them overbook
- Trump, who wasn't interested, suddenly announces TikTok is a national security risk and wants it banned.
- Both Republicans and Democrats buy the "national security risk" argument, largely out of fear of what it might be abused for, not what it is
- (Trump eventually withdraws and announces support for TikTok - after money has changed hands, of course, but by then the train has left the station)
- Increasingly exaggerated or context free claims are made ("TikTok might be tracking government employees!" (note, might, not is), "TikTok has a DIFFERENT ALGORITHM in the US than in China!" (isn't TikTok banned in China? Why yes! Yes it is! [nytimes.com] And wouldn't you actually customize algorithms to match the culture of the target audience anyway?)
- Congress passes this bill but makes sure to include the bill of attainder just so everyone knows what it's targeting, rather than the principle of "foreign owned" social media outlets
And... we know and have always known that you don't have to own a social network to abuse it. China just needs one employee-spy in the right team at Facebook or X to ensure it knows exactly how to push propaganda into people's streams for those social networks. Assuming it needs to work it out in the first place. Short of both networks moving back to chronological views and basing recommendations purely on those you follow, no US-owned social network is safe from Chinese propaganda.
This is a bad day. Not because I like TikTok (I hate the very concept! What have we all got against reading FFS?) or because I want or don't want "foreign owned" social networks (I'm a Mastodon user myself, I'd rather they not be owned at all by anyone) but because paranoia and corruption have conspired to undermine a key plank of justice. We need to do better.
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This is interesting and on-topic but I seriously doubt it's true given the obsession with corporate personhood and the fact it's easy to target a person by targetting a corporate entity linked to them.
I made neither claim and never mentioned "free speech" once, and only indirectly covered civil r
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While the Supreme Court has not decided on whether corporations or other entities are protected under the Bill of Attainder Clause, lower federal courts have held that it does (see HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES USA, INC. and Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. v. UNITED STATES of America, et al.).
Re: Regardless of the merits... (Score:2)
There's several pretty thorough arguments you can google detailing why most lawyers (and now all levels of the US judiciary) don't believe this is a bill of attainder. Probably the simplest and most compelling argument is the law actually broadly targets foreign ownership of companies that control software with national security implications. Bytedance is named as a specific case. It's a little like they wrote a law banning leaving food in the work fridge over the weekend, an in it said "like Bill from sale
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It's not a bill of attainder because a divesture is not a taking. ByteDance would still have the value of what they divested.
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I have read this three times now and I literally can't figure it out. Did you reply to the wrong person? Or did you just look for the first anti-ban comment to reply to to cut and paste you already wrote.
The more I think about it, the more I suspect it's the latter, given your accusation of botting against... me? Well against the person your fake reply is anyway. That looks heavily like projection to me.
In the unlikely event you're not a {insert nation-state here} troll, feel free to reply with a polite, on
USDOJ UNWORKABLE (Score:1)
> ...updates won't be available. That will eventually render the app unworkable, the Justice Department has said in court filings.
The DOJ hasn't received any updates, regularly does stupid shit (see e.g. Backpage, Snowden, failure to prosecute Trump, etc.) and it's unworkable.
When will the DOJ be going away?
Oh and Pam Condi. Seriously. Do all Flordia politicians just plain out suck or it just her and Rubio and desantis or are there others? It used to be the inbred self-dealing pols were in the south..
Sotomayor's concurrence worth noting (Score:2)
(I acknowledge I missed this when I read it, but an article on CNN mentioned it.)
https://www.supremecourt.gov/o... [supremecourt.gov]
The Act, moreover, effectively prohibits TikTok from collab-
orating with certain entities regarding its “content recom-
mendation algorithm” even following a qualified divesti-
ture. 2(g)(6)(B), 138 Stat. 959. And the Act implicates con-
tent creators’ “right to associate” with their preferred
publisher “for the purpose of speaking.” Rumsfeld v. Forum
for Aca
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Re:So much for free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not exactly a secret. https://www.nbcnews.com/politi... [nbcnews.com]
Elmo is reported to be getting his own office in the Whitehouse.
I don't why that isn't setting off alarms everywhere. The worlds richest man has an ear to the president. For years I kept hearing about Soros this and Soros that. Well now this is literally George Soros.
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Elmo just doesn't have his ear, he owns him, along with all the other rich jerks who are in league with him. el Bunko was always for sale and the other rich jerks know a gullible mark when they see one. So do the Saudis as well as his minder in the Kremlin.
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Also Rudy Guliani finally was able to pay the court-ordered compensation to the two Georgia election workers that he continuously defamed for years. Guliani's net worth is about $10 million, and the judgement was $148m. He was ordered to hand over his holdings including his two homes (poor man) among other assets. Yet he's now able to keep everything yet somehow still pay off the judgement. Someone just gave him a pile of money. I don't know what Musk expects to be able to do with Guliani now that he's
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One might wonder why anyone would bother to spend the money to pay off Giuliani's debt. What can he do for anyone? His benefactor would be right to ask, "What's in it for me?"
But I do remember him long-ago (late 2020?) saying he had "insurance," though we never found out what that means. Maybe it's about what Giuliani won't do to someone?
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He's a lawyer, who was in the business of shady lawyering for a convicted criminal who turns into the President of the United States on monday at noon.
If you don't think he has a safety deposit box filled with documented dirt, you're crazy. Trump has arranged for him to be made whole, so he doesn't put Trump's shit in the street.
Everything is transactional with these guys. I just hope he declares it as income for tax purposes, or he might end up with another court date.
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Even Trump didn't lift a pinky to help out Giuliani, his biggest fan. Why would someone else help Giuliani?
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I sure hope he files a proper tax return on all that money if that's what happened. Would be a real shame if he got audited over a 9-figure mystery windfall, eh?
Oh wait, no chance of that happening with the incoming crowd.
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Great video from Adam Something on How Elon Musk Became President [youtube.com].
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You don't own Trump. At best you rent him. The moment Trump stops getting what he wants, he will turn on Elon in an instant. Of course Elon can afford the next 4 years as long as he can keep his ego in check enough that Trump feels he is in charge.
Re:So much for free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't why that isn't setting off alarms everywhere. The worlds richest man has an ear to the president. For years I kept hearing about Soros this and Soros that. Well now this is literally George Soros.
It is, but here's the problem. A little more than half of the USA doesn't care - at all. Some of them are Cult of Donald Trump members. They will always vote for him, even to their own harm. Some are Gen Z white males who got sick and tired of some loud mouths saying that every problem non-white males have is their fault. I get that, I really do. Some are dumbasses who think that the very second Trump is inaugurated prices will plummet to the point that food and gasoline are like 1/3 of what they cost now. Basically all it took to decide the election for Trump was a potentially empty promise that maybe they will get to take home more money and all it would cost them is the end of democracy. That was a trade many were willing to make. I'm a Gen Zer and I'm exhausted from dealing with all this bs of my moronic fellow citizens who don't care if we never have free elections again. Gen Z is pretty nihilistic because of how we were raised and if everything collapses and goes to crap, I'm just going to shrug.
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You sound like you fell on your head, listening to CNN in your AirPod, during a drag queen story hour, while wearing a diaper in the middle of an elementary school library.
We had free elections. The side of the demented liars playing mind control games on weak willed brainwashed minds, like yours, lost. Lost badly.
Now, get your head out of your weak ass and read a book (Broken Money - Lyn Alden) would be a start, touch grass, lift weights and eat steak, bacon and eggs. LOTS of steak, bacon and eggs. Cut all
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What I'm getting at, is I think this very common and completely negative view of why people vote for Trump is v
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If you think the richest assholes out there didn't always have the President's ear, you just haven't been paying attention.
It's plausible that the current richest asshole in the world didn't have the President's ear for the last 4 years, because our outgoing President doesn't brook union-busting billionaires, but there is undoubtedly other billionaires he was listening to and taking meetings with.
Re: So much for free speech (Score:2)
Literally Soros would involve being a specific race that they like to blame for everyone.
This is literally worse than Soros.
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Ah, the rule is simple: This guy is really rich so he must know what he's doing, whereas that guy is really rich so he's an untrustworthy elitist.
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When Elon actively dictates policy choices to a major institution like that vs complaining about it on X; then I'll start worrying.
He was already barking orders not to pass the budget. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/t... [nbcnews.com]
The tech billionaire posted about the funding bill more than 100 times Wednesday, helping lead a charge that appears to have increased the likelihood of a shutdown.
Good thing they didn't listen to him, yet.
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Musk is smarter than that. He gets his way by making donations out of the goodness of his heart to extremist candidates who will be very grateful to him down the line. He plays the long game, in a way that gives him influence, then authority, then effects changes at a slow enough pace they feel organic rather than imposed.
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That doesn't work in the current political climate. When both parties are pretty close and it makes little difference who wins, someone donating to two or more of them is making friends. When party lines are so intensely divisive as they are currently, donating to both gains the person a tiny bit of influence, but a LOT of side glances from the winning side, who sees such a person as a mercenary.
Having a strong belief one side has a high likelihood of winning long term and for a long time, coupled with bett
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It may be a matter of thirst for power. Tech bros in particular, and Musk seems to me to be a particularly intense case, have a messiah complex, believing they know better than anyone, know what's best for everyone, and that governments, rules, and democracy are roadblocks in the path to techno-nirvana, which they, and they alone, know how to traverse. To quote C. S. Lewis:
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live unde
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You realize this ban is a Biden Administration effort, which they timed to January 19th in order to try and prevent Trump from having a say, right? Trump is on record as not wanting to ban tiktok, so it will potentially be reversed after the changeover.
Who is the tiktok competitor you believe influenced the Democrats into this action?
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Re: So much for free speech (Score:2)
Trump is also on the record wanting to ban TikTok, and set the ball in motion during his furst term. He also didn't exert any of his sizable influence to tank the bill that easily passed the Republican controlled house.
Frankly this is one of the things Trump had right. The only reason he "changed his mind" was he thought it might pull some gen z addict votes to him, and now thinks maybe he can look like a "hero" to kids about to run out of digital meth. My guess is he'll delay enforcement for a few months t
Reading (Score:5, Informative)
Did you read the decision?
" And it directly regulates ByteDance Ltd. and TikTok Inc. only through the divestiture requirement."
The court is *only* are deciding that Congress can mandate a media company owned by a foreign company has to be divested. There is no mention of any other situation when Congress can shut down a media company.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/o... [supremecourt.gov]
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Re: Reading (Score:2)
I'm sure you understand what a bill of attainder is better than a plethora of legal scholars, all nine sitting supreme court justices (across the political spectrum), many lower court justices, and the entire US congress. It can't possibly be that all those numerous and extensive legal opinions explaining why this wasn't a bill of attainder (including that this establishes a broad authority, even though it names a specific example) were correct, and your wikipedia understanding of law is wrong. Nope, must b
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Specificity is not the only requirement of a bill of attainder. It also requires punishment (see Selective Service Sys. v. MPIRG, 468 U.S. 841), the punishment is burdensome, and that punishment needs to be retrospective.
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The courts obviously disagree, dear AC. Care to offer any evidence what-so-ever that would support the notion that the courts made the wrong ruling based on how the government classes ByteDance? Or is your arbitrary opinion as to what does or does not constitute a "media company" (assuming that media company is a term that even entered into the decision) all we're supposed to go on?
Honestly I'm surprised you even got beyond the lameness filter.
The modern Internet has gotten really weird. We hear of bots and
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Would we be having this conversation if Truth Social was owned by a foreign company?
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ByteDance is not a media company. They are an app producer that funnels in other creators media [...]
That's actually an interesting point.
ByteDance does not create the media--it merely distributes it. In the same way a film distributor distributes certain films.
Sony is a foreign company that distributes movies in America. Must they now divest their interest? Can this be solved by creating a "ByteDance USA" subsidiary which is owned by Americans?
Re:So much for free speech (Score:4, Insightful)
You might disagree with the law but this particular law is definitely constitutional. It's probably going to end badly because it looks like one of the billionaire ghouls is going to buy it up and turn it into another Nazi bar like what Twitter became and what Facebook is rapidly becoming.
If you don't recognize the phrase Nazi bar Google it.
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It applies to foreign companies owned by foreign governments. You know, like the government that has thoroughly pwned the US telephone system.
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if you're not an American citizen you aren't covered by our laws except for our treaties
That's simply not true and is in fact backwards. Unless a treaty specifically exempts you, e.g. you are a diplomat, you are always subject to the laws of the sovereign nation you are currently in or operating in, regardless of your citizenship, treaties or no. If this weren't true then a citizen of a country we had no diplomatic relations with could just come here and go on a crime spree, and they'd be able to get off scott free as they "aren't covered by our laws except for our treaties".
Furthermore, mos
So I'm massively oversimplifying (Score:1)
You're right about the specific details as far as how treaties actually get enforced but from practical standpoint you can use a treaty to constrain what a local government can do with regards to the actions of citizens from a foreign government in their borders.
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if you're not an American citizen you aren't covered by our laws
Ah, so *THAT'S* why illegal immigrants are free to murder/rape/pillage/steal whenever they want. Always wondered.
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That statement is completely incorrect. The constitution of the USA protects the *people*. Not the citizens. Non-American citizens absolutely have rights under the constitution, but there's a bit of nuance. Obviously if you're not in America as a non-citizen you're not protected.
TikTok isn't even actually foreign. It is American, it's incorporated in America, it's main global headoffice is in California, and is as such covered by the First Amendment the same way as any other citizen.
This ruling is basically
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Only the ones owned by foreign governments.
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The law does not ban the speech, it bans the distribution of the software.
Re:So much for free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
This actually has nothing to do with free speech. It has to do with who owns what. Ever since the 1930s, the law has restricted foreign ownership of media companies. The fact that scotus was unanimous should tell you something.
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They've already pried TikTok out of my cold dead.. (Score:2)
...cold dead smartphone.
Regarding the FP, you say that like it's something new? And the moderators seem to think it's insightful? Really, Slashdot.
Oh wait. Slashdot has become part of the problem these years...
So my Subject is about the low-hanging joke I expect to find somewhere around here. I only looked at TikTok for a few minutes before deciding it was not worth any time. I uninstalled it, but one of the apps I use everyday has added its own internal version of TikTok. I think it's a kind of mental pois
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As others have said, this is not about free speech. This is about foreign ownership of a company operating in the U.S. The company was given an option, either China gives up control of the U.S. portion of TT and stop sending data back to China, or get shut down. Every excuse why giving up control wasn't possible was given, but nowhere did the company even make an attempt.
There's no reason we can't give the rest of the
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"As others have said, this is not about free speech. This is about foreign ownership of a company operating in the U.S."
Sure, and the 2002 Iraq invasion was about WMDs..
Read up and find out why even the EFF says that's wrong.
https://www.commondreams.org/n... [commondreams.org]
https://matzko.substack.com/p/... [substack.com]
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Looks like Congress was just given the power to abridge the freedom of speech.
Does it even count as "speech" if it influences people but no one other than you knows you're making it?
It's one thing for someone to buy ads to influence people. Everyone can see what ads are put out, they know who did it, they know what the speech is. But when you control "the algorithm" and you decide to rank things slightly differently, you can still influence people, but no one -- not your viewers, not society, not journalists, not the law-courts -- can ever tell whether you've done it or not. You coul
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I am seeing lots of people talk about it this way, and it's making me think people haven't read the text of the law [congress.gov].
TikTok is not the entity whose 1A rights are being infringed. They may or may not even have 1A rights, at least in the mainstream view, since they are a foreign company.
Whose rights are being infringed are the repository owners: Apple and Google. And this law, exactly as currently written, w
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So the sock puppets with censor mod points want to prove your point?
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Great idea, and I'm sorry I didn't see the ramifications of a civil war earlier.
All we have to do is keep the civil war in a state of existence, even if not much is happening. If it's technically never a time of peace, then there's never a time when soldiers can't be quartered in your house. "Didn't you hear there's war on? Now feed my brave Magamen!"
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Have fun with the imminent civil war.
There isn't going to be a civil war. At most, being very generous and nihilistic, a handful of skirmishes and, maybe, terrorist attacks.
See, a civil war is typically understood as a set of military conflicts between different factions within a country leading to the direct and indirect death of about 1% of the entire population per year the conflict lasts. In the US that'd mean about 3.4 million deaths per year, or 9,300 deaths per day.
Yes, over three Trade World Centers. Per day. For years.
Can anyone envis
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Have fun with the imminent civil war.
There isn't going to be a civil war. At most, being very generous and nihilistic, a handful of skirmishes and, maybe, terrorist attacks.
See, a civil war is typically understood as a set of military conflicts between different factions within a country leading to the direct and indirect death of about 1% of the entire population per year the conflict lasts. In the US that'd mean about 3.4 million deaths per year, or 9,300 deaths per day.
Yes, over three Trade World Centers. Per day. For years.
Can anyone envision the mood for that in the current US?
Well, I guess there are a few thousand lunatics who do, and who may become the ones going for the aforementioned terrorist attacks and skirmishes, but that's about it. Other than that, nah.
I don't think that definition is broadly accepted:
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Either of those definitions could easily happen in the U.S.
Indeed. Although, those seem to me to be the kind of redefinition used to make things fit within a stronger word that shouldn't. Kind of like happened with the words "rape", "terrorism", "racism", "violence", and so many others. Be as it may, yeah, under those weak definitions, a civil "war" in the US is indeed possible.