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tsimionescu | on: TikTok goes dark in the US
> This doesn't impose on your freedom of speech at all.

By this logic, the US government should be able to ban any newspaper that is publishing articles that they don't like: it doesn't encroach on the freedom of speech of the reporters of that newspaper, they can just speak somewhere else. They don't have the right to say anything at that particular newspaper, just in general.

Of course, in reality, banning a publication (TikToK) because you think they may publish stories that you won't like (propaganda for Chinese interests) is an obvious violation of the first ammendment and a form of government censorship.

EagnaIonat | parent | next
> By this logic, the US government should be able to ban any newspaper that is publishing articles that they don't like:

Freedom of speech is that an American person cannot be blocked by the government saying what they want.

There is nothing in the first amendment that protects you from where you can say what you want, nor is anyone entitled to give you a platform.

That's why the US has "freedom of speech zones" which are basically cages far away from where they should be protesting.

TikTok was banned because it's owned by a foreign government, not freedom of speech. If the Chinese government had removed their connection to it, it would not have been banned.

TulliusCicero | parent | next
No, because the ban is based on TikTok coming from a geopolitical adversary, rather than being based on actual content (which is why the Supreme Court declined to stop the implementation of the law).
tsimionescu | root | parent
Huawei is also controlled, even more directly, by a geopolitical adversary, and is not banned for regular consumers in the USA.

The reason TikTok being owned by China is considered a problem is because it could allow China to control what American citizens see on their timelines - the content.

TulliusCicero | root | parent
The US passes many laws about traffic safety, and yet much of US road design is actually deeply unsafe. Inconsistent sure, but that doesn't mean they were lying about the unsafe things they did ban.

> The reason TikTok being owned by China is considered a problem is because it could allow China to control what American citizens see on their timelines - the content.

It's the PRC control part that's the key here though. There's nothing banning even blatantly pro-PRC content on other platforms. You can find plenty of tankies praising China over the US to high heaven on places like Reddit.

tsimionescu | root | parent
> It's the PRC control part that's the key here though. There's nothing banning even blatantly pro-PRC content on other platforms. You can find plenty of tankies praising China over the US to high heaven on places like Reddit.

Then it's just virtue signaling. If the message is not a problem, then who says that message is irrelevant.

Note: to be clear, I'm neither a tankie nor in any other way supportive of PRC policies. They're a horrible genocidal dictatorial regime with imperialist tendencies who are propping up other similarly horrible regimes like Russia or North Korea.

wilg | parent
tiktok isn't a publication and the ease with which people can post on other platforms as well as their relationship to the platform is relevant
tsimionescu | root | parent
I agree that there are differences between a publication and a platform, but they are relatively subtle. And as long as the argument is "China through TikTok can influence which content is popular or allowed to be published at all", then that is leaning into the publisher-like aspects of TikTok, not the platform-like ones: and it is precisely these rights that are protected.

Just to give an example of what would be concerns of the platform aspect of TikTok, that would be concerns about the ability for the app to deploy malicious code to users' phones, or the amount of data that it siphons off legally. But those are de-emphasised in favor of their control on content, which is precisely what's supposed to be protected by the Constitution.