this post was submitted on 08 May 2024
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At this point, I'd like to ask: If a foreign company threatens democracy in a country, is it legal for the executive to ban business with that company?
No? Then that doesn't make sense. It's a FOREIGN company, the government should have the right to do whatever it needs to protect its citizens in that regard.
This is the real question. Is there a loophole that allows foreign governments to freely exercise mass surveillance and psyops if they allow US citizens to post on a blackboard outside their offices?
Especially since it was a bonified Military Operation.
If tiktok were a serious threat, the executive branch would have already banned it by now via an executive order.
That's not what happend, instead a whole bill went through congress and got passed with the explanation being "foreign influence" as if American social media platforms don't already do the same thing
This is more about removing foreign competition and not about saving democracy or ensuring security.
DoD already banned it 4 years ago for military because of the actual security threat of data collection.
TikTok pushed a notifications to all US users with the phone numbers of their local congressmen to oppose the bill. So many calls came in that the phone lines were jammed.
Let me distill that for you: China attempted to directly influence legislation with a mass propaganda campaign targeted at its US user base.
Please explain to me why that isn't a threat and why the US should allow hostile foreign powers to directly influence internal politics?
We've already established that Tiktok Tok is not the CCP. That's what the whole first "gonna ban TikTok" fiasco was over. It's why they don't store US data in China but continue to do business in the US.
That would be a business using the 1st amendment right (which everyone gets, not just citizens) to free speech to use it's platform to ask it's users to do something directly beneficial to them. Nothing illegal about it unless you want to reevaluate that "TikTok is the CCP" claim again.
The government certainly does have the right to protect citizens and make whatever laws are necessary. In this case, the government can do so by amending the constitution. Until then, the 1st Amendment applies to all citizens, non-citizens, and business entities operating in the United States.
This is just blatantly false, if an organization is committing crimes or doing something the government dislikes then the government will sanction it, like it has done with almost every Russian Oligarch's business, or front businesses for terrorist groups.
I'm pretty sure the whole point of banning TikTok is that the government is alleging that TikTok has engaged/can be forced to engage in abusive or illegal practices.
Mitt Romney actually said the main reason everyone was on board for the ban was due to the sheer amount of Palestinian support on the app
I allege that our government engages in abusive or illegal practices.
While that is true, it is also a whataboutism. What does your comment have to do with the conversation? What did it contribute to the conversation?
There are already exceptions to the First Amendment that did not require updating the US Constitution, such as the Supreme Court ruling in Brandenburg v. Ohio 1969 which excludes Incitement as protected speech, Incitement being the advocacy of or in any way leading to the breaking of US laws which *checks notes includes sending personal data to adversarial nations including China and therefor TikTok's operations are not protected.