TikTok is one step closer to being banned in the USA

[voiture]

Y'all still think this is about data? The US government has shown time and time again it doesn't care about protecting your data from companies American or otherwise.

This is the American government once again working at the behest of capital (so they can buy tik tok) and Nat Sec (So they can spy on your). Aint got shyt to do with your data.

I'm not sure you get my point..As bad as the US government is with our data, we live here and can force change under the right circumstances. Who is going to force a change in communist China?

 

[voiture]

the constitution is a restriction on government powers not citizens. so the government is absolutely restricted to what it can do to anyone no matter their nationality. your interpretation of government powers is very dangerous.

I reject the idea that the constitution is a world document.
The founders certainly were not thinking about the rights of foreigners when they framed it. Heck they didn't even care about the rights of black people in the beginning let alone foreigners who live halfway around the world.

 

[bnew]

I reject the idea that the constitution is a world document.

it's literally a document instructing our government on what inalienable rights it can't infringe upon.

 

[Godless Socialist CEO]

I'm not sure you get my point..As bad as the US government is with our data, we live here and can force change under the right circumstances. Who is going to force a change in communist China?

I’m not entertaining that argument because it’s not a good faith one being posed by the US government and it’s being used for nefarious purposes to fukk up a company that by all indications hasn’t done anything wrong in the first place.

That’s kind of my point here it’s them holding out some kind of carrot as if their doing us favor while holding a fukking axe behind their back

What exactly should I be afraid of the Chinese government doing with my data when we all know they already have our data and would have our data if tik tok didn’t exist. The US government is far more likely to use your data for nefarious reasons then the Chinese and they quite literally have especially in spaces like Facebook, and twitter with people who have used those platforms to voice anti imperialist and anti American sentiments

 

[voiture]

it's literally a document restricting what our government on what inalienable rights it can't infringe upon.

And you are saying that applies to foreign entities? I disagree...I'm not a lawyer so let tiktok sue. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think so.

 

[bnew]

And you are saying that applies to foreign entities? I disagree...I'm not a lawyer so let tiktok sue. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think so.

chatted with an A.I model

Yes, the U.S. Constitution does apply to foreign entities, subsidiaries, and persons operating within the United States, though with some reasonable limitations and exceptions.

The key principles are:

1) The Constitution protects the rights of "persons" on U.S. soil, not just U.S. citizens. This includes foreign nationals legally present in the country.

2) Foreign corporations and subsidiaries doing business in the U.S. are considered "persons" under the Constitution and judicial interpretations. They are entitled to rights like due process, equal protection, etc.

3) However, the government can place reasonable restrictions on foreign entities, like requiring licenses, complying with regulations, paying taxes, etc. as long as similar rules apply to U.S. companies.

4) Certain rights like political speech, voting, holding office may be restricted for foreign nationals and entities based on their alien status.

5) During wartime or national emergencies, foreign nationals' rights can be constrained in the interests of public safety and national security.

So in summary, the Constitution provides a baseline of protections for foreign individuals and businesses operating legally within U.S. borders. But the government retains powers to regulate them more strictly than U.S. citizens/companies when legitimate interests like security, taxation, and business activity regulations apply. The rights afforded are not always absolute.

Based on current interpretations of the Constitution and laws, it would likely be unconstitutional for the U.S. government to force the sale of a foreign-owned subsidiary operating in the U.S. to an American company solely on the basis of its foreign ownership.

A few key points:

1) Foreign companies operating legally in the U.S. are entitled to constitutional protections like due process and equal protection under the law, including protections against uncompensated seizures of private property.

2) Forcing a sale of private property from one private entity to another at the government's directive would be considered a governmental "taking" that typically requires just compensation under the 5th Amendment.

3) While the government can regulate foreign businesses through licensing, taxes, etc., an outright forced sale or ban based solely on foreign ownership could be viewed as an overreach and discriminatory treatment not applied equally to domestic companies.

However, there could potentially be narrow exceptions if the government can demonstrate a compelling national security interest tied to the company's data/technology and lack of alternative means to mitigate the risks.

But in general, legal scholars argue such a forced sale would face significant constitutional hurdles unless the government can provide robust justifications that would pass strict judicial scrutiny applied to infringements on property rights and equal protection principles.

The more likely scenario would be the government attempting to negotiate a voluntary sale, or using its regulatory powers to set strict data/security standards that could make operating the subsidiary unattractive to the foreign owner.

Spoiler: screenshot

 

[Spidey Man]

Tik tok is a foreign company and has no rights under the Constitution. Meta is an American company and can be accused of the same things tik tok is.

If you ban one, you open the other up to issues in Washington. You can't ban Meta because of the first amendment.

That's why they are throwing national security in with tik tok. It doesn't take a genius to see that tik tok would argue 1st amendment, but they can preemptively fix that issue with national security.

I don't think tik tok will get banned because it opens up Meta, alphabet and Microsoft to issues

 

[voiture]

I'm certain there are historical precedents on banning foreign companies in the US. None of us are lawyers. This right here IMO gives the government the right to do it. China has been stealing national secrets for decades...the app can be banned under national security reasons

"But the government retains powers to regulate them more strictly than U.S. citizens/companies when legitimate interests like security, taxation, and business activity regulations apply. The rights afforded are not always absolute."

chatted with an A.I model

Spoiler: screenshot

 

[bnew]

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/03/14...wont-do-shyt-to-deal-with-any-actual-threats/

Once More With Feeling: Banning TikTok Is Unconstitutional & Won’t Do shyt To Deal With Any Actual Threats​

Overhype

from the​

Thu, Mar 14th 2024 09:26am - Mike Masnick

Over the last few days, we’ve had a few posts about the latest attempt to ban TikTok in the US (and to people who say it’s only a divestiture bill: there is a ban in the language of the bill if ByteDance won’t divest).

Yesterday, unsurprisingly, the House voted overwhelmingly, 352 to 65, to pass that bill. The 15 Republicans and 50 Democrats who voted no make up an odd mix. You have some extreme Trump supporters, who probably are voting no because the boss man said so, and then a random assortment of Democrats, including a bunch from California. I thought Rep. Sara Jacobs from the San Diego area put out a particularly good statement on why this bill is so stupid:

As a member of both the House Armed Services and House Foreign Affairs Committees, I am keenly aware of the threat that PRC information operations can pose, especially as they relate to our elections. However, after reviewing the intelligence, I do not believe that this bill is the answer to those threats. Banning TikTok won’t protect Americans from targeted misinformation or misuse of their personal data, which American data brokers routinely sell and share. This is a blunt instrument for serious concerns, and if enacted, would mark a huge expansion of government power to ban apps in the future. Instead, we need comprehensive data privacy legislation, alongside thoughtful guardrails for social media platforms – whether those platforms are funded by companies in the PRC, Russia, Saudi Arabia, or the United States.

Taking this unprecedented step also undermines our reputation around the world. We can’t credibly hold other countries to one set of democratic values while giving ourselves a free pass to restrict freedom of speech. The United States has rightly criticized others for censorship and banning specific social media platforms in the past. Doing so ourselves now would tarnish our credibility when it matters most and trample on the civil liberties of 150 million Americans – a vast majority of whom are young Americans – who use TikTok for their livelihoods, news, communication, and entertainment. Ultimately, all Americans should have the freedom to decide for themselves how and where to express themselves and what information they want to consume.”

I think the second paragraph here is the key one. People keep saying “but they do the same to us.” That’s no excuse. We shouldn’t take a page from the Chinese censorship playbook and basically give them the moral high ground, combined with the ability to point to this move as justification for the shenanigans they’ve pulled in banning US companies from China.

Don’t let the authoritarians set the agenda. We should be better than that.

But also, her first paragraph is important as well. To date no one has shown an actual evidence of TikTok being dangerous. Instead, all that people will tell me is that there was some sort of classified briefing about it. From Rep. Jacobs’ statement we see that she was able to see that classified intel, and did not find it convincing at all.

I even find myself in rare agreement with Rep. Thomas Massie, who once blocked me on Twitter. He did so in response to me calling out his First Amendment violations in blocking people on Twitter (he eventually removed the block after the Knight First Amendment Institute sent him a letter on my behalf). Rep. Massie may have a somewhat conditional take on the First Amendment, but he correctly pointed out just how dangerous this bill would be:

The President will be given the power to ban WEB SITES, not just Apps. The person breaking the new law is deemed to be the U.S. (or offshore) INTERNET HOSTING SERVICE or App Store, not the “foreign adversary.”

Massie also pointed (as we did earlier this week) to the clearly lobbied-for (hi, Yelp lobbyists!) “exclusion” for review websites as proof that people know this law covers websites.

I stand by the point we’ve been making for multiple years now: banning TikTok is a stupid, performative, unconstitutional, authoritarian move that doesn’t do even the slightest bit to stop China from (1) getting data on Americans or (2) using propaganda to try to influence people (which are the two issues most frequently used to justify a ban).

Banning TikTok, rather than passing comprehensive federal privacy legislation, is nothing but xenophobic theater. China can (and does) already buy a ton of data on Americans because we refuse to pass any regulation regarding data brokers who make this data available (contrary to popular opinion, Facebook and Google don’t actually sell your data, but data brokers who collect it from lots of other sources do).

Meanwhile, there’s little to no evidence that China is “manipulating” sentiment with TikTok, and there’s even less evidence that it would be effective if they were trying to do so. Public sentiment in the US regarding China is reaching record lows, with the vast majority of Americans reasonably concerned about China’s role in the world. So if China is using TikTok to propagandize to Americans, it’s doing a shytty job of it.

The US has dealt with foreign propaganda for ages. And we don’t ban it. Part of free speech is that you have to deal with the fact that nonsense propaganda and disinformation exists. There are ways to deal with it and respond to it that don’t involve banning speech. It’s astounding to me how quickly people give up their principles out of a weird, xenophobic fear that somehow China has magic pixie dust hidden within TikTok to turn Americans’ brains to mush.

The Supreme Court has reviewed this kind of thing before and said that, no the US cannot ban foreign propaganda just because it’s scared of what that propaganda says. In that case, the government sought to restrict the delivery of “communist political propaganda” from outside the country. The court struck down the restriction on First Amendment grounds, stating that it was “a limitation on the unfettered exercise of the [recipient’s] First Amendment rights.”

As the court noted in that case, the setup of the law was “at war with the ‘uninhibited, robust, and wide-open’ debate and discussion that are contemplated by the First Amendment.”

In the US, we’re supposed to believe in freedom of speech, even if that freedom of speech comes in the form of “foreign communist propaganda.” If we survived that same foreign communist propaganda for decades in other forms, it seems like we can survive it coming from an app designed to highlight short videos of dance moves.

Again, we can pass data protection laws if we’re afraid of how the data is going to be used, because China doesn’t need TikTok to get that data. And we can counter Chinese propaganda. But part of doing so has to be not hiding it and acting like it’s so powerful that Americans are powerless against it. You counter it by showing how freedom can resist such efforts at manipulation.

I have no idea if the Senate will actually take up this bill, though there’s good reason to believe they will. However, such a ban would be a huge mistake, reflect poorly on American values, and show how quickly we’re willing to ignore the First Amendment on some misguided fear of a successful app from a foreign country.

Filed Under: data protection, privacy, sara jacobs, thomas massie, tiktok ban

Companies: bytedance, tiktok

 

[nyknick]

But I can to vote out a government fukking with my data. Can I vote out the CCP?

 

[Robbie3000]

Classic "both sides" syndrome. When both sides are not equal.

US based social media platforms have a vested interest in the existence of a US society, while the Chinese government has a vested interest in the collapse of a US society.

Absolutely all social media networks should be regulated but again, you can't regulate a foreign company's intellectual property without their agreeance.

Now why would China want the collapse of its biggest customer?

What is it with Americans and the need to create a villain? If it’s not the Soviets, it’s Islam, if it’s not Islam, it’s China. Japanese companies bought a few buildings in America in the 90s and we freaked out about Japan taking over. The paranoia is crazy.

 

[LOST IN THE SAUCE]

There's a difference between bots on a US platform and a foreign company controlling the code base. An ocean of difference.

I really don't understand this distinction you guys are making between US companies and foreign companies. The health of the US is the priority of 0 of the active participants, regardless of where they're based. If the power social media platforms have is the issue, then you regulate all the social media platforms. You don't say "this is so dangerous, let's make sure only insane, right wing, terror funding, society destroying, American sociopaths can wield this power and no one else."

US based social media platforms have a vested interest in the existence of a US society, while the Chinese government has a vested interest in the collapse of a US society.

US corporations have actively been working to collapse US society, so what the fukk are you talking about? What the fukk do you think Cambridge Analytica was all about? Do you guys even hear yourselves??

 

[Macallik86]

Now why would China want the collapse of its biggest customer?

I think this framing kind of gets at the main issues. As Americans, our reference point is often that any actions will be to further capitalistic ideals. Ironically we project those ideals into communist countries who really don't give a fukk.

 

[Hood Critic]

Now why would China want the collapse of its biggest customer?

What is it with Americans and the need to create a villain? If it’s not the Soviets, it’s Islam, if it’s not Islam, it’s China. Japanese companies bought a few buildings in America in the 90s and we freaked out about Japan taking over. The paranoia is crazy.

Economic collapse obviously, so that it can then ascend to super power status. We may be China's biggest trade partner but we're not the only one.

This isn't an imaginary villain story.

China’s Emergence as a Superpower

In this report, the Emeritus Chair compares the key trends in civil and military power in the United States, China, Russia, and other developed democracies.

www.csis.org

 

[Spidey Man]

Now why would China want the collapse of its biggest customer?

There's one undisputed superpower, United States, and one rising power. America collapses and China becomes the only superpower.