dadchats - a lawyer on tiktok - is leading toward the opposite conclusion
this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2025
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A sensible approach would have been to regulate data collection and misinformation on social media in general, instead of writing a law that bans one specific platform. But oh well, what do I know.
That sounds great... But then how would hegemony maintain its false narratives about the genocide in palestine, etc?
I'm curious if ByteDance could just create a new legal entity and call it TikTak or something.
Because the government wants the data collection. They just want it to be an american company so they get a copy of it all.
I know, I know. I was just dreaming of a world where they didn't suck.
Money on Zuck been making his own version of TikTok on Facebook. My wife been using it and after seeing my brother use TikTok I could see Zuck and Google both wanting the app banned. So they can push their own short shit clip apps.
Money on Zuck been making his own version of TikTok on Facebook.
That’s just Reels, already on Facebook and Instagram.
It has already happened. Every social media has their own version, they just need TikTok to die.
Just make all social media 18+ and be done with it.
that would be terrible for queer kids, a lot of who find their first communities in social media
It would also affect kids in general who only really get social interaction in places like video games. People seem to think video game platforms won't be affected (or don't think about them at all), but I got a lot of social interaction that way as a teen.
So they'll overturn their own Citizen's United decision which pretty much explicitly allows TikTok to do what is being banned?
...right?
The law in question bans social media (of a sufficient size) being owned by an entity in a geopolitical rival nation.
Its relation to Citizens' United is pretty thin, really only sharing the concept of a corporation's First Amendment rights. But there's a lot of reason to doubt Bytedance's First Amendment argument holds legal water here, as the law is regulating business operation — not speech.
They're being named for their speech as a business operation, the exact think Cit Un dealt with
The only freedom restricted in the law is that of Bytedance to own a social media platform in the US. I find it difficult to define that freedom as "speech". Citizens' United dealt with a company's freedom to fund political campaigns — which is at least easier to define as "speech".
... the reasoning why they're taking away that freedom is the important part you're purposely ignoring.
You can handwave away any right the same way you're doing by ignoring how this is government singling out a company for a behavior based on perceived political messaging
It's not perceived political messaging that's at issue, but the potential for sensitive national security data collection by an adversary. That's what made TikTok an explicit target of the law.
For the record, I don't have a strong opinion either way on whether the law is good or bad (if you think it's bad, vote against your congresspeople that supported it). I just don't see TikTok's legal argument against it as very strong, constitutionally speaking.