The TikTok debate has always been about the balance between national security and free speech.
We found a compromise. TikTok will remain, all of its national security risks will remain. Also, the law that tramples free speech is upheld by the court, but will be blantently ignored and unenforced.
Everybody loses. This outcome is worse than anyone could have conceived.
- "Everybody loses. This outcome is worse than anyone could have conceived."
The outcome is *exactly* as anyone with a modicum of sense expected.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"—often paraphrased (sensibly!) as "deserve neither and *will lose both*." As you say: we've lost both—who could have predicted that? Yeah; well.
Not free speech. Amplification of speech and to an extent freedom of association. Speech is not being criminalized -- you can say the exact same things on a different forum. And the entity being constrained is a foreign actor [edit] with likely state security apparatus ties.
To respond to a comment which has now been deleted:
I don't care about the First Amendment specifically. The US constitution is not magical divinely inspired scripture. I care about the underlying principles of freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and freedom of association, regardless of how well or poorly those are reflected by a specific written law.
I'm a 50+ average Joe who only watches Australian state media (ABC) and I've seen plenty of content that I find shocking from both Israel and Hamas and I came away with sympathy for the Palestinians caught in the middle.
Lol where do you even get something so easily disproven like this? I care for neither Israel nor Palestine, but I see more or less equal coverage of both sides (not so much my side, funnily enough) on every platform.
Reddit is both anti-Israel and anti-Palestine depending on the sub. News channels will be one or the other depending on the slant and there's plenty on both sides. Most of instagram is people from both sides shouting at each other about how the other gets more representation/are more evil. Same with facebook. I don't use Twitter or any Twitter clones, but I assume Mastodon has a Palestinian slant while Twitter probably has a slight Israeli slant (shitposting aside). Even on HackerNews you'll see both stances often. I guess 4chan would have my stance, since they hate Israel because antisemitism but also hate Arabs.
Do people just make shit up like this for a laugh? I really don't get it, yet see it so often espoused.
> No, you can't. TikTok was the only mainstream platform where pro-Palestinian content was allowed to go viral.
Reddit shows pro-palestinian/anti-israel propaganda in the front page on a daily basis.
Also, the fact that Israel's invasion of Palestinian territories was an anti-Biden propaganda point that was boosted pretty hard doesn't exactly prove that the likes of China aren't pushing propaganda to destabilize the US. There was clearly a coordinated effort to force-fed the idea that Biden was pro-genocide and a warmonger, and Trump was the only possible candidate to push peace in Ukraine and Palestine.
The US constitution does not apply to citizens - it applies to the government.
Citizens in the US are implicitly allowed to do whatever they like, subject to laws that the government enacts. The constitution describes those areas where the government is allowed to pass laws. All other areas are off limits to the government, and left for the people to do as they like. To emphasize the point, the amendments specify certain areas that the government is extra-especially-not-allowed to create any laws about, like speech.
The extent to which this is observed today is quite dubious. There are lots of laws that the US government passes which have little to do with anything the constitution allows them to do - but they kinda hand-wave around that and gesture toward something, like the "commerce clause" or whatnot as justification.
But in theory - for any law passed - it is unconstitutional unless you can say exactly where in the constitution it is explicitly allowed.
* Having written all that, I will add that "government" above means the US Federal government, not all the other ones. State, local, have a lot of latitude to make whatever laws they want, unless a federal law specifically prohibits it.
> * Having written all that, I will add that "government" above means the US Federal government, not all the other ones. State, local, have a lot of latitude to make whatever laws they want, unless a federal law specifically prohibits it.
This is not entirely correct. In general many elements of the Constitution are incorporated and apply at all levels of government. It even outranks state constitutions where the two conflict.
No, in other words, states and local governments are also bound by the Constitution in many of the the same ways that the federal government is.
The major difference is the Tenth Amendment, which sets the states apart by specifying that any powers not "delegated to" the federal government are reserved exclusively for the states. (In practice courts have found many "implied powers" that are not explicitly enumerated).
It's not just US citizens, but per the supreme court "foreign organizations operating abroad possess no rights under the U. S. Constitution". In USAID v. Alliance for Open Society International specifically with regards to the first amendment.
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However TikTok US here is a domestic organization operating domestically merely controlled by a foreign organization operating abroad, which complicates matters. It has rights.
Courts and laws don't need to stop their analysis at "is it a corporation registered in the US." It is a foreign-controlled organization, therefore it is treated as a foreign organization. If you have ever dealt with the defense contracting apparatus, you will know this is how it works.
By its wording, no, because it applies to "Congress". Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
A later amendment is held to have "incorporated" this prohibition against the state governments as well, though that amendment doesn't actually specify anything in particular. ("No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.")
It is frequently argued that some act of the government violates the free speech rights of foreigners living abroad, which is to say that whatever it was the government did fell into the class of behaviors prohibited by the first amendment. People tend to find that argument weird; I don't know what its batting average is.
Summing up, nothing extends rights to foreigners, but since the first amendment is a prohibition on the government rather than a grant of rights to certain protected people, foreigners arguably enjoy equal protection.
So, usually in a representative democracy (republic or not), the judiciary power is supposed to check and limit the other two (to avoid a tyranny of the majority). You can have that done in two way: with "case law", the only way in some countries (like the UK): basically if a law is enforced against a minority, it will be enforced against the majority. Other countries added a consitution. Its use is to limit the executive and legislative power of the government: the legislative power is supposed to prevent the law/executive order from existing or being executed, and base that decision on the constitution.
TL:DR: no, it doesn't even apply to US citizen, only to US government.
PS: "tyranny of the majority" for some is a definition fascism, i disagree, to me it isn't even proto-fascism, it lack a weird mythos about internal enemies and a few other mythos. It's closer bonapartism, or cesarism at worst. To be clear i think it is a precondition to have fascism (I.E as long as your case law/consitution is enforced for everybody the same way, you aren't a fascist state).
The 1st Amendment applies to US citizens' freedom to read/receive communications from non-US citizens (or i.e. read books by non-American authors). That's not under dispute: the current SCOTUS ruling both acknowledges, and sidesteps, that.
"Code is speech" is absurdly reductionist in most cases.
Yes, the government censoring Tiktok's source code on Github would be a freedom of speech violation, but that's not what this is about, is it? See also: Tornado Cash. Publishing code facilitating money laundering is fine (you'll find the code still on Github!); running said code to facilitate money laundering isn't.
Or to go with an even more extreme example: Writing code for a self-aiming and firing gun is speech [1], running said code on a gun in your driveway isn't.
The fact that we are still debating such basics of the First Amendment here is baffling. This is almost as trivial as the other well-known limitations in my view (shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater etc.)
[1] At least at the moment, and as far as I know; I think we might see this type of speech being restricted in the same way that some facts about the construction of nuclear weapons are "innate state secrets".
American companies (Google and Apple primarily) have been told by the government that they cannot distribute binaries running certain code to Americans. That seems like the real 1st amendment issue to me and I was quite surprised to learn that ByteDance only claimed that their own 1st amendment rights were being infringed on (which personally I find to be flimsier).
EDIT: Tornado cash was taken down from GitHub though, so you don't have a point here
The code isn’t the main issue here, it’s the online platform. The apps were only banned as a means to access the platform, not fir the code they contain. The code would be largely useless without the platform infrastructure and data storage behind it.
Huh? It's up as a public archive on tornadocash/tornado-core as we speak.
> American companies (Google and Apple primarily) have been told by the government that they cannot distribute binaries running certain code to Americans.
Yes, in the same way that American companies and individuals are routinely prohibited by the government from distributing other binaries to Americans, most notably anything that circumvents DRMs as regulated by the DMCA.
I really don't think the people that drafted the First Amendment had apps in mind when they thought of "speech", and would probably consider them something more like machinery (a printing press, a radio (not a radio station!) etc.) Interpreting Tiktok as a type of newspaper (which are widely protected even in democracies without an equivalent to the First Amendment) is much less of a leap of faith compared to considering an iOS executable speech.
Interesting, I didn't follow the tornado cash case super closely, but I do recall it being taken off GitHub for a short time.
So I would also argue that restricting DRM bypassing software is a violation of the 1st amendment and, more importantly, that it's a bad thing to restrict.
We'll never know what they would have thought, but I'll add that actual plans for machinery are definitely speech. We certainly do restrict these plans, with ITAR most notably, and I think it's reasonable to draw that line somewhere.
Note that I never said banning TikTok was as bad idea, just that it restricted speech by way of limiting distribution (which oddly looks unconsidered in the supreme court case), which it absolutely does. I'm uncomfortable with this level of power being granted to the government, but given that TikTok is obviously a spying/malware delivery tool by a foreign borderline hostile government I think it's probably warranted.
I think not being somewhat disturbed by the United States government restricting distribution of an application is a bit weird TBH. That's a huge power to have and can definitely be abused, especially if it's made easier to do so in the future.
You can no more riase taxes to properly fund government than you can fill a bucket with no bottom.
One only need to look at the Harris campaign to see that the political class in the us is fundamentally innumerate as well as incapable of making a cost benefit analysis.
The only presidential administration that produced a non-deficit budget was Bill Clinton's second term (~97-00).
Probably because Ross Perot mostly self-funded a third party campaign centered around the national debt and had received 8% of the vote (and 19% in the previous election).
I personally picked 40% because I couldn't image a change of this sort being consistent with today's political reality.
That said, the fine print of that prediction can be interpreted that the ban is "in effect" even if it not enforced and has no legal liability. I doubt all the predictors were hanging their hat on that fine print when they predicted, though.
I've never understood that quote. Is it ok to give up essential liberty to gain a large, permanent safety? If so, how large and how permanent does it have to be to qualify?
I'm also a little unclear on which liberties are essential, versus those that are merely nice to have. We all give up the liberty of driving on the wrong side of the road, and nobody seems to mind.
I also find it comical that banning TikTok is the red line for folks when the NSA and other government agencies have been acting with impunity when it comes to harvesting data for decades now.
People don't care about most things because there are a practically infinite number of things one could care about.
But when you ban something 9 figures of people happily use, with some small chunk of that even being people making a living off of it, people will care about that because it directly and visibly affects them.
If I were an US citizen this would be the most worrying aspect to me.
Are the congressmen so incompetent that they didn't see this coming? This backfired horribly for them in multiple ways... unless this was somehow part of a master plan my simple mind can't comprehend?
Did it somehow not backfire and I'm just being led to believe so?
It’s literally pay to play with the new administration which is why it doesn’t feel coherent. He’s being courted by Meta to ban and TikTok to not ban.
The elite have always known the value of media and propaganda. TikTok could easily sway electorate decision making in the same way as Meta, X, and YouTube. The US oligarchs have no control over a sizable social media platform. The data security and privacy concerns are theater. The very same logic we use for TikTok applies to our own apps and social media. The only distinction is the false premise they have our interests in mind.
Are congressmen this incompetent? Yes. Are they bought by adversaries? Yes. Are they just humans who are as equally manipulated as you? Yes.
The assumption (whether right or wrong) is that the NSA and other government agencies are at least doing it to keep Americans safe. And I think there's an assumption (again, whether right or wrong) in the general public that the NSA doesn't harvest the data of Americans themselves – or if they are harvesting the data of Americans, then they're Americans who are up to no good.
The issue isn’t data harvesting, and it’s unclear to me why people getting this wrong.
The issue is a foreign government having access to that data, to installed software on millions of phones, and foreign control of the primary information source for tens of millions of Americans.
The point of the analogy wasn't to say those two things are the same. It was reductio ad absurdum, a totally valid proof technique in math and logic.
If person A says "X implies Y", then person B points out that X would also imply obvious nonsense Z, it doesn't mean that B is saying Y and Z are the same, or even that Y isn't true. They're just pointing out that X is too general to possibly be true.
The context here was Indian raids. Some rich land owner wanted to pay a one time fee. Benjamin Franklin was saying a 1 time fee wasn't enough - and it would only offer temporary safety rather than ongoing safety higher taxes would offer.
This essential liberty was freedom from being killed. Pretty fucking essential.
That's quite interesting. I'd expect a lot of people to say "the freedom to keep my money" is absolutely essential.
We give up that right in exchange for the permanent safety that a government is supposed to grant. Life is presumably more fundamental than money, but if it's the only truly essential liberty, there is a lot of room to give up others.
On the broadest strokes it makes sense. We gave up the liberty of truly owning the land so the government can build houses on them. From there we more or less are rented the land and almost everyone pays a tax for it.
Homeowners have some power. But if the government really needs to (modern example includes building a new railway), They can elect to forcibly pay you and seize it (eminent domain).
>We all give up the liberty of driving on the wrong side of the road, and nobody seems to mind.
Auto transportation was never a right to begin with. As inconvenient as it is, you are free to walk wherever you want without trespassing. Even across a road. But there's a line when you start to simply endanger others by say, walking on a road at 5 mph.
Obviously the transfer of ownership was always about the content, and implicitly the fact that if a Chinese company owns it, the US has no control over it. Opinion making in the US is always implicitly enforced, not explicitly.
There's a great bit of an old interview with Noam Chomsky talking to an American reporter in which the reporter asks Chomsky: "You think I'm lying to you, pushing a US agenda?" and he responds: "No I think you're perfectly honest, but if you held any other beliefs than you do you wouldn't be sitting in that chair talking to me"
You didn't even engage with what I said. You dismiss statements of a US senator because of the paper that reports them?
Please address the actual argument, namely that in the US, when you hand platforms to people like Zuckerberg, you don't need to do any actual censoring because American business leaders change their political opinions in line with the sitting administration the way other people change T-Shirts. That is the point of the sale, anybody who is not utterly gullible can see it from a mile away.
On a Chinese owned TikTok Americans get information presented to them, whether intentionally or authentically, that the US powers that be do not like. There is no other security argument, data was already managed by Oracle in the US, the app was technically separated from its Chinese equivalent Douyin.
>Obviously the transfer of ownership was always about the content
I’m struggling to see why you say I didn’t.
> you don't need to do any actual censoring because American business leaders change their political opinions in line with the sitting administration
I think this is blatantly not true. Instagram, reddit, and others host a TON of anti-current-administration content.
Now, I’d like to discuss your assertion that there is no other security argument with a series of questions. I do not believe even a casual observer can uniformly answer “no” to the following;
Do you think it is likely that CCP has access to the data obtained by Tik Tok on US phones?
Do you think the US government warnings and security audit results were based on real concerns and findings?
Do you think it is a national security risk for millions of Americans to run CCP controlled code on their phones?
Do you think CCP is able to control the Tik Tok recommendation algorithms to promote their interests, possibly at the expense of American interests?
> I do not believe even a casual observer can uniformly answer “no” to the following;
The only one I wouldn't uniformly answer "no" to is the last one as there's no real evidence for the first two and that one is at least in principle possible but what's important is that private American citizens running entertainment apps on their personal phones isn't a "national security issue".
Running TikTok on government phones in Langley probably is so banning an app like this from government devices is fair enough, but the interest of any individual American is that they have free access to services, domestic or foreign, even if it's literal propaganda because they're the ones who are supposed to make that judgement. Hell even if it's Red Star OS from North Korea and they want to run it on their personal computer, they should be able to.
American interest isn't a synonym for interest of the state department, because if that's the case you're living in a security state (ironically like China) and not a free country.
Why stop at two? X seems to just be crazy person x says crazy thing y, so no problem adding that to my dns blacklist, fb and insta are as you say, just as obvious as tiktok. SEO results are dominated by AI vomit blogs, nothing to see there so searech engines are useless. LLMs seem to be mostly ok for finding things right now, I'm sure they will figure out how to mess that up soon enough though. YouTube is really useful for figuring out how to fix my <insert thing broken in my house>. But other than that is just the prototype the other stuff was based on. For news I look at news sources that cost money, wsj, economist etc. because then there is at least a chance that I myself am not the product. For finding music I ask local musicians who they like and follow those referrals a few deep. For seeing funny pet antics I look at my pets. To learn more about tech I come here and follow links.
Unlike TikTok, X is an American social media platform. By default, It is protected under free speech rights. TikTok is Chinese and doesn't get to play that card. End of story.
That doesn't keep them off my dns blacklist though. Seems like whatever card tiktok played was good enough to get tomorrow's administration to change course.
If the Democrats field a candidate that is willing to debase themselves with a stupid dance that goes viral, I feel there may be a change of heart. Assuming Trump doesn't manage to run for a third term.
The EU has the advantage that their politicians don't all own gigantic shares in any social media companies (because the EU doesn't have any), so they are afforded the rare luxury of actually voting for the good of the people. That's why the EU has decent data privacy laws.
The TikTok ban would've been far less problematic if they had created legislation for all companies that curtailed data trading and increased user privacy. But that was never the goal.
1. Banning media based on alleged (or real) foreign interference is a very thin line
2. Banning and "unbanning" media based on vague accusations can be exploited for self-serving economical or political interests, which long-term hurts any kind of credibility of media as a whole. And, like it or not: we depend on media. We're not living in self-sufficient communes, at least most of us don't.
3. What made TikTok an issue in the first place: foreign interference (see 1) and problematic content, the policy causes for this probably include insufficient moderation and lack of court accountability. Then there's the question of algorithmic bias: I think this is not a simple question, e.g. is Instagram Reels technically the same or if not, what are the most important differences between their recommendation algorithms?
Except that no one voted to give up this liberty nor purchase this "safety". The oligarchs determined that they wanted to purchase power and "elected" to take our liberty.
He's making tens of millions of Americans (especially including those who may not have otherwise been political) quite fond of him, bringing back a platform that has definitely been a net positive for him overall, undoing one of his predecessors 'achievements', and so on.
He came out against a ban on TikTok long ago (after initially being in support) and made it clear he'd work to reverse it the second the ban bill started gaining momentum.
So he can make a call and cancel a border security bill, but can't make the same call to cancel the TikTok portion of the spending bill before it passed?
Soldiers were already sharing videos of aircraft carriers on Rednote which hasn't gone through the whole shenanigans of paying Larry Ellison to host it on Oracle Cloud and so on. The national security risk is the US military apparently not being able to convince its own soldiers to be thoughtful about cybersecurity.
This is why Blackberry used to sell phones without cameras and microphone switches, and enterprise-centric OS images. Crazy that regular iOS/Android phones leaking data 24/7 to a million 'partners' are freely allowed at military locations. Pictures and video uploaded to social media include EXIF data with geolocation!
How does it matter where those videos were shared? Material is either classified or unclassified, it doesn't matter if the WarThunder forums (for example) are moderated by US nationals or not.
It's not about where the videos are posted, it's about having apps that collect exact GPS position of smartphones that soldiers carry while the position of the ships they are on is classified. The fact that there's videos is just the "proof" that they have installed such apps that exfiltrate things like their location, for example.
If you want to secure sailors' phones you are going to have to do a lot more, and at the same time much less, than ban or transfer the ownership of one single app that happens to be used by over a hundred million civilians.
GasBuddy (and Life360) just sold that same location data to brokers, which Allstate bought and used to adjust premiums. Practically every app that is given access to location info is selling it, and it's widely available to anyone with the money to buy.
Maybe we should have some sort of General Data Protection Regulation law instead of hand-wringing about social media.
That’s the world we live in today. Under many countries’ privacy laws, it’s not legal to sell PII to a third party that you collected for a specific other purpose (e.g., fulfilling the primary purpose of the app). The problem is that they do it anyways.
If I agree to let FantasyCorp sell my location data, and then they follow through with our agreement and actually sell it, then there's no problem here that I can see.
It’s not top secret deployments, it’s any deployments. All deployments need to maintain a level of operational security. Also if you expect a bunch of people in the 18-29 age range to go without internet for 9 months to 2 years, you’re kidding yourself. The tradeoff is between operational security and morale and if you’re in military leadership, you really don’t want unhappy troops on your hands.
I mean, I do completely expect deployed military personnel to adhere to rules and limitations that are much more rigorous than those they'd experience in civilian life.
I'd be astonished if I learned that soldiers on duty were totally free to do as they please the expense of operational security simply because that's what people in their broad demographic category are accustomed to.
I'd be equally astonished if I found that military recruitment was based on enlisting cross-sectional samples of demographic categories, without regard for the capacities and attitudes of the specific individuals seeking to join. I know for a fact that people are rejected for enlistment for all sorts of reasons.
And I'm sure that the military can find ways of enabling deployed personnel to use the internet without sacrificing security or oversight -- for example by requiring them to use secured military-issue computers and smartphones, or by having an inspection or vetting process for hardware and software when soldiers want to use their own devices.
I hope you also acknowledge the absurdity of suggesting that the government should apply essentially the same restrictions to the whole of society that the military couldn't apply within its own sphere of control.
> And I'm sure that the military can find ways of enabling deployed personnel to use the internet without sacrificing security or oversight -- for example by requiring them to use secured military-issue computers and smartphones, or by having an inspection or vetting process for hardware and software when soldiers want to use their own devices.
Of this we are in 100% agreement. It’s totally doable, but I am observing that today it is not a solved problem in the US military.
> I hope you also acknowledge the absurdity of suggesting that the government should apply essentially the same restrictions to the whole of society that the military couldn't apply within its own sphere of control.
I’m a little confused about the wording of this but I am reading this as saying that the military should be able to apply its own standards that are stricter than what civilians are accustomed to. I agree, and it does. But I’m suggesting that it doesn’t happen in a vacuum and that enforcement is never perfect. A blanket ban on personal devices (I’m positive this has been tried before) would both be unpopular and difficult to enforce. It would be a mistake to discount the cost of poor morale. And it would be a mistake to ignore the outsized effect that poor morale has on middle management — the ones who are responsible for enforcing said rules.
I hope it’s clear that my commentary is entirely descriptive and not prescriptive. Full disclosure: I’m former US military enlisted and also currently working in a space adjacent to improving operational security.
> You're constructing a straw man without being curious about the things you yourself are missing.
Could you point out the straw man in question? I feel like everything I posted above is a direct response to arguments I gleaned from your previous comment, and certainly didn't intentionally attribute any argument to you that I didn't think you were actually making.
> I suggest you read parent comment about balance and tradeoffs inherent in forward deployment again.
I've reread it a couple of times, and I'm afraid I'm not seeing any hidden propositions in it that I missed the first time around. Could you be more explicit about what you're getting at?
My comment about finding ways to enable internet access in a more controlled way was specifically targeting your argument about the security vs. morale tradeoff, and my point about the absurdity of trying to make that tradeoff for society as a whole in a scenario where you imply the military can't make it for its own operations still seems to apply here.
>> I'd be astonished if I learned that soldiers on duty were totally free to do as they please the expense of operational security
The post you were replying to didn't suggest anything about total freedom. You're exaggerating their words to make your argument easier.
>> I'd be equally astonished if I found that military recruitment was based on enlisting cross-sectional samples of demographic categories
Given initial enlistment age ranges between 17 and 30/40 [0], you get cohorts from specific generations.
Kids who are 17 now were born ~2008, which is just starting to be kids with smartphones and mobile devices their entire lives.
No cross-sectioning required: just upper and lower age limits.
>> And I'm sure that the military can find ways of enabling deployed personnel to use the internet without sacrificing security or oversight
I'm going to assume you're honestly ignorant of military networks and field device management at scale.
The military runs segregated networks. Secure networks require approved devices; those devices are extremely locked down. There are often also public internet networks for MWR reasons. Unmanaged devices can be used on those networks. Furthermore, in most non-naval deployments, terrestrial cellular data networks are also accessible.
>> for example by requiring them to use secured military-issue computers and smartphones, or by having an inspection or vetting process for hardware and software when soldiers want to use their own devices.
Military IT is already overloaded managing the vast number of secure devices and networks, so having them manage consumer devices in any way is a non-starter.
For scale context, the DoD PKI includes ~4 million active CAC cards. [1]
Unmanaged consumer devices + CAC are also often used for less-privileged interaction with the military (e.g. HR functions).
> My comment about finding ways to enable internet access in a more controlled way was specifically targeting your argument about the security vs. morale tradeoff
And the responses that you're getting are that these are non-trivial problems for real-world reasons.
Furthermore, you seem to have a lack of understanding about how much it sucks to be stuck in a forward base, and how important maintaining morale is to command authority and force effectiveness.
PS: Also, look at user names. I'm not the author of the original comment you replied to.
I'm sure there are many other cheap and easy ways to improve morale on deployments, but that many of those options are eschewed and/or only offered with oversight because they would otherwise risk operational security.
I'm not sure what to make of the argument that the military is unable to find any alternative to consumer smartphones without even RMM implemented as a means of providing for troop morale, therefore the government should regulate social media for the entirety of society as a means to ensure the security of military maneuvers. This just sounds nuts to me.
This entire conversation is about the TikTok ban. My question about why deployed troops are allowed to use social media apps on consumer devices was in response to preceding comments insinuating that banning TikTok is justifiable in light of its potential to damage operational security if military personnel are using it in the field, and was targeted at understanding the implied premise that the problem couldn't be solved by much more proximate, narrowly tailored approaches.
The crew would be relatively constant, but ships also carry attachments that are based on the types of missions they are going to complete. So the actual number of passengers would vary.
The Onion Router was invented by the Navy to make ship location tracking hard with visibility of some of the network, so it's classified at times. More importantly, just because you have satellites doesn't mean that it's easy to pick all of that out all the time or to be entirely certain of which ship/which mission, etc. Making it harder is better even if it can't be made impossible outside of subs.
Plus these apps track you everywhere so the Chinese have your GPS and you're on the aircraft carrier. No need for fancy satellites they can just have that data and track the military and other government employees 24/7. I guarantee you no American company can track Chinese military or Chinese employees 24/7 wherever they're at this is a one-way deal it's not good for the US.
When I was deployed in 2011 we didn't carry cell phones because:
1. Jammers will render your antenna unusable or potentially damage your device.
2. The country that controls the infrastructure now has the inside scoop on who you are, what you're doing, and where you are. Even if they country is an ally, it only takes a few individuals to start mass exfiltration.
TikTok was turning into infrastructure for social dialogue except that it had a new capability compared to the cell phones of 2011: it could be manipulated at scale, and quickly with the combination of algorithms and outrage culture.
It's hopeless to expect every member of the military to be thoughtful about cybersecurity. If they'll openly share nuclear secrets & base protocols publicly, anything is fair game.
There's something in this argument about national security, that if taken to its logical conclusion, would result in a world most people would consider upside-down:
If social media owned by foreign companies is a national security threat, then wouldn't that essentially make FB, X, YouTube a threat to like every other nation? Why not throw wikipedia in too? So now any nation can legitimately see any other source or collector of information as a national security threat and ban it at will? Taken to the logical conclusion, every nation should be enveloped by its own digital borders.
To me, it's the popular sentiment alone, for example people feeling sad and upset TikTok's gone and feeling happy that it's back, that's preventing this dismal future, otherwise governments would block apps on a whim. And this I'd say is a win.
This isn't about free speech. Tiktok's statement actually provides all of the necessary context. China pays influencers. The tiktok ban is not about what you are allowed to say, but who is allowed to pay you to say it. This is a very different question.
Can someone please explain how the law tramples free speech? Isn’t it completely legal to shut down a stadium or arena?
Additionally, why have we all forgotten that China does not allow any of our social media companies within their borders?
If we’re in the business of free trade, there’s no reason to let them operate a social media company in the US until they’ve opened their market to us.
It's an absolute win for the content creators who relied on TikTok for their livelihoods and the small businesses who relied on it for marketing. And for Gen Z, for whom content creation is one of the few viable ways to earn a good income now that tech grad hiring has completely collapsed.
It’s kind-of not. A ban would have given them all the opportunity to go wherever their audience went. The demand for their content wouldn’t simply disappear, it’d just be displaced to some other platform. And said other platform would almost certainly be less capricious and better for creators than TikTok.
> This outcome is worse than anyone could have conceived.
This is the maximally stupid outcome, so I suppose we should have seen it coming. I guess the conclusion is going to involve Trump taking an ownership stake in TikTok, possibly by swapping it for $TRUMP cryptocurrency or Truth Social shares something.
This despite the brilliant defense argument of “that wasn’t fraud because everyone should have known I was lying”…which was also the Fox News defense…and is presumably how the executive branch officially works as of tomorrow.
> The klept will probably escalate until a fellow billionaire gets hit.
The klept will not spare the billionaires. There’s a reason Meta’s entire public posture has changed since Nov 6, there’s a reason the WaPo didn’t publish an endorsement. This isn’t a class thing - Trump is not a billionaire defending his fellow billionaires, he’s a mob boss in charge of the state.
Nothing unless you’re running for public office. The rules are understandably different when you’re beholden to the people. Personally I’m ok with this distinction. Politicians should have to give up some rights that private citizens have and be held to a higher bar to guard against the tendency towards corruption that comes with greater influence and power.
And maybe we should have a law that punishes politicians for paying money to cover up affairs. But we don't have that. Trump's prosecution was, instead, a triple bank shot combining three different vaguely written laws in a combination that makes the Double Irish with Dutch Sandwich look straightforward.[1]
As CNN's head legal analyst Elie Honig explained: "The charges against Trump are obscure, and nearly entirely unprecedented. In fact, no state prosecutor — in New York, or Wyoming, or anywhere — has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime, against anyone, for anything. None. Ever."
Yes he was. The payment in question happened after he launched his campaign -- in late October of 2016.
[EDIT to respond a bit to the now-expanded parent, which was only a single sentence when I replied]: I do totally agree that the hush money prosecution was a bit of a stretch, and wouldn't have happened if Trump wasn't famous. You're just wrong about it applying to a time when he wasn't running for office.
My recollection is that the prosecution was a combination of the mis-labeling of the payments, and the mis-labeling being in service of concealing a (federal) crime. Said different crime being the original hush money payment, which happened during the campaign. I.e. if he hadn't done something illegal while running for public office, there'd be nothing to charge him with.
Now, it'd be better if he simply got prosecuted for the initial crime. Absolutely agree there. But I'm not sure that "I can avoid prosecution for campaign misdeeds by committing them and then waiting to pay people back until after the campaign" would be a great precedent.
The judge summarized the case for the jury as follows:
> The allegations reflect in substance, that Donald Trump falsified business records to conceal an agreement with others to unlawfully influence the 2016 presidential election. Specifically, it is alleged that Donald Trump made or caused false business records to hide the true nature of payments made to Michael Cohen, by characterizing them as payment for legal services rendered pursuant to a retainer agreement. The People allege that in fact, the payments were intended to reimburse Michael Cohen for money he paid to Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, in the weeks before the presidential election to prevent her from publicly revealing details about a past sexual encounter with Donald Trump.
That summary implies that paying off Stormy Daniels "to prevent her from publicly revealing details" about the affair was the unlawful act. But under what law? And why wasn't he just charged with that law directly?
The judge actually summarized it in vastly more detail than you say there. Take a look at the jury instructions if you want to see exactly what the theory was: https://www.nycourts.gov/LegacyPDFS/press/PDFs/People%20v.%2... (starting around page 29, or again around page 44)
Basically, the crime alleged was violating a NY election law saying that you can't try to influence an election through "unlawful means". They provided a sampling of said unlawful means: violating federal campaign contribution limits, falsifying other business records, and violating state tax laws about how the reimbursement to Cohen was handled. The jurors didn't have to unanimously agree about which of those things they think he actually did.
The reasons to not charge him for those separately would seem to be respectively: 1. that's the feds job, 2. statute of limitations expired for the non-felony falsifications during his presidency when he couldn't be charged with anything, and 3. Cohen directly committed the tax crime so all Trump's guilty of is conspiracy to commit a really niche bit of tax misrepresentation that didn't actually cost anything.
The unambiguous bit is that he definitely falsified business records, and so the squabble is over whether he's guilty of a misdemeanor or a felony. It was apparently persuasive to the jury that he did the felony version.
> Basically, the crime alleged was violating a NY election law saying that you can't try to influence an election through "unlawful means".
That just gets you back to the temporal problem we started with. As you say, the only "unambiguous bit" from the jury's implicit fact-finding "is that he definitely falsified business records." But he did that after he won the election. How can you influence an election through unlawful conduct that happened after the election was resolved?
Insofar as the case was framed as election manipulation, you need some conduct prior to the election. Which is why, as you observe, the prosecutor had to add a third layer of uncharged alleged crimes:
> Basically, the crime alleged was violating a NY election law saying that you can't try to influence an election through "unlawful means". They provided a sampling of said unlawful means... The jurors didn't have to unanimously agree about which of those things they think he actually did.
Putting aside that each of the predicate crimes is deeply flawed (e.g. federal prosecutors investigated and declined to bring the campaign finance charge), you can't rest your triple-layer cake felony theory on a base of uncharged predicate crimes and tell the jury they don't have to agree as to the predicate crimes: https://www.justsecurity.org/96654/trump-unanimous-verdict. This is exactly the sort of thing judges are supposed to keep from being submitted to the jury.
It's personally embarrassing that lawyers at my former firm helped architect this travesty. If this harebrained legal theory had been used to convict a sex trafficker or murderer, lawyers at that firm would be falling over themselves to represent the defendant on appeal pro bono.
I'm not sure how so many people misunderstand the difference between "free speech" and "app controlled by hostile foreign government".
The people speaking on TikTok have not lost their right to free speech, they still are free to use a multitude of other channels that amplify their speech. No speech was blocked, only the app controlled by a hostile foreign government was blocked, and there are no provisions in a any legal framework that says we can't stop a hostile foreign government from controlling what people in this country see.
Everybody loses? The fact that TikTok remains available to millions of users is a significant benefit, especially for those who rely on it for creative expression, community building, and small-business promotion.
I would say yes, everybody. TikTok is very bad for our society. It has had profound negative effects on people's ability to pay attention to things. I don't know that I'd say the solution is legalistic in nature, but the continued existence of that platform is a cancer on humanity.
No-where in their comment did they mention that alternatives were fine. The fact that reasonable suspicions against TT are met with a gish gallop of unrelated arguments EVERY TIME just strengthens my opinion that it just creates zombies.
He means net loss to the status quo in reference to the entire fiasco. I had TikTok before… I still have TikTok… what rights were trampled in the process of bringing about zero change to me using tiktok?
I might not share your views but it is important to defend this side of the debate to get the full picture.
It’s easy to reduce TikTok to its negatives and forget that ton of people do get value from it. Obviously for content makers but even for watchers, entertainment and sense of community do have values.
I strongly dislike vertical video and find channel-flipping physically uncomfortable, and my life would probably be a little bit better if I didn't hear that around me all the time, but I will staunchly defend what I believe to be a violation of the first amendment.
I'm not sure why people seem to have more narrowly defined their idea of freedom of speech to be "the freedom to shout futilely into the void," when it's a two-way street. The government telling booksellers they can't sell a book to people isn't just a violation of the author's rights, but the right of other people to seek and acquire that book. (Hence the clauses in the amendment about anssociation and abridgment of press.)
The whole situation is very Fahrenheit 451. Which is kind of ironic, since Bradbury would have probably hated TikTok and assumed it would be the television-flavored precipice leading to books being destroyed.
Captain Beatty would be proud of all of the would-be firemen itching to torch everything they don't like, oblivious to the simple corollary that someone else doesn't like what they like.
It's interesting how most commenters seem to forget about TikTok users. Every interest is taken into account, China, USA, intelligence services, TikTok "competition". Users somehow never enter the picture for most people in any other way than as gullible idiots getting exploited by the aforementioned parties.
This seems not to be an opinion that other people hold, but I never saw social media as “free speech” given that some third party can decides which parts of what you say get promoted.
If you sent letters to people via a middleman who decided which of those to forward onwards, you’d see that as censorship. I appreciate that that’s an over-simplified example - it’s meant to be a reductio ad absurdum. But control of the algorithm effectively regulates free speech, IMO.
Also (for clarity) the fact that China happens to be involved is not relevant to my point!
This is not an outcome. The legal process is but still well underway. In the United States, we abide by the rule of law.[1] That's really what separates us from China.
No there's going to be some obvious winners.
Trump is going to force a 50% sale to a US based JV.
That JV will be run by / benefit some of his biggest goons.
What also bothers me is there's a simple solution to all this. Just pass comprehensive consumer data protection laws and regulations all companies operating in the US are required to follow. But you don't see anyone proposing that for some reason...
> balance between national security and free speech.
This is an absurd framing. Free speech cannot implicate national security. If a social media platform controlled by a foreign government can manipulate the people so easily then you have a much larger and ignored problem.
> all of its national security risks
Which are zero. What you actually experience a risk from is the shabby way Google, Microsoft and Apple have put their platforms together. Designed to earn them money while utterly destroying your privacy.
> This outcome is worse
You're already in trouble. This outcome is a symptom of a much larger problem. The conversation around this is completely detached from reality.
“National security” is such a bs term for US govt to avoid transparency. It comes from the post 9/11 era of FISA courts, PATRIOT act to justify wide net domestic surveillance and wiretapping.
To me, the whole banning of TT is political theater aimed to divide the US while existing tech oligarchs consolidate power and money.
Just look at the message TT broadcasted. Blatant pandering of incoming administration.
I agree. This is a forced consolidation that will only strengthen American tech oligarchs and the new administration. It's also coup on the culture of the younger generations similar to what happened to Twitter.
It's worse than that. The platform is now beholden to the president for its survival.
If you're wondering how Russia slipped from a flawed democracy into an aurocracy, it was because Yeltsin fixed the 1996 election, by holding an axe over the head of the press. He made it very clear that anybody who wants to keep their broadcast licenses will need to shill for him.
It's how a drunken autocrat with an 8% approval rating, credited for both hyperinflation and mass unemployment, who launched a coup (that killed a few hundred people and caused a constitutional crisis) ended up getting re-elected.
And then at the eleventh hour, after firing his cabinet, again, he declares Putin his successor and resigns over a $10,000 bribery scandal.
He’s now publicly a huge hero for saving TikTok and everyone forgot he was the one that wanted it banned in the first place. Fabricating new problems so he can solve them “heroically” is the basic MO of any narcissist or authoritarian despot- and is worth a lot more to him than any under the table cash.
Expect a lot more “big wins” in the coming weeks- where he solves problems to massive fanfare that never existed or that he created- with empty “solutions” that also didn’t really happen or take no effort.
Changing positions on bills because they're unpopular seems like a good thing no? Nor does it seem like a particularly ideological position to have, Republican or Democrat. I'm actually very surprised that Biden/Harris seemed so positive for the bill. Biden and the Democrats could have easily used this themselves, Biden himself was a lame duck President and could have vetoed the bill with minimal consequences. The fact that people are getting mad at Trump for taking a gamble to placate angry public sentiment makes me think that folks have lost the political plot: democratic politicians need to support initiatives and ideas that are popular among people.
I don't disagree- and think reversing this position is a good thing.
I do however, also believe that good leaders are people with their own principles and ideas- and are willing to do what is right even if it isn't popular, when necessary. However, a huge percentage of our political leaders on both the left and right seem to have a 'dark triad' personality with narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy- and no ideals besides getting more power and admiration, that switch everything they claim to stand for on a dime like a kid trying on play outfits. I'd like to see people notice and not accept that type of 'leadership.'
I participate in some local and state level politics. You're not going to get those kind of people in politics. Every even remotely contentious legislation will get you tarred and feathered by your opponents. Opposition will use any tactic to bring you down, focusing on something silly you said 20 years ago, taking words out of context, etc, etc. The only kinds of people who can deal with that kind of political environment are the kinds of folks you see in politics.
It's the same reason you see certain introverted personality types overselected for in backend engineering teams: only a certain type of person enjoys working on something that is inscrutable to most people even users of the service they help support.
===
> I do however, also believe that good leaders are people with their own principles and ideas- and are willing to do what is right even if it isn't popular, when necessary.
It's a slippery slope from this to oligopolistic rule. Obviously the US democracy is not direct and there's an understanding that politicians balance their principles against popularity but I also think the US is of a mood that Congress is run by disconnected elites right now. Now is the time to err to populism.
I think you're essentially saying that people that have any reasonable level of integrity, ethics, or ideals - basically anyone you could trust to watch your dog when you're out of town (i.e. not the the US representative that stole money from a disabled Veteran's dying service dog)- would never willingly get involved in modern politics... which is a pretty disappointing view, but might be true.
I would say we've certainly had politicians and leaders without 'dark triad' personalities, but the most sincere ones in my lifetime were often also the least successful.
I don't think standing up for your ideals is incompatible with democracy, if you make it clear from the outset what your ideals are, and that you intend to stand by them.
However, I do think people with real ideals and vision do become inspiring leaders, and we could really use that right now. I'll admit this mostly happens at a cultural level, and probably works best outside of a political office- MLK for example.
Narcissists are so consumed with projecting an image or facade, they can’t and don’t want or care about anything else. Real money is certainly a good way of looking rich and powerful- but not always the only way. Faking wealth comes with a lot more stress with the terrifying risk of being found out- but it is clear Trump has still used that strategy a lot, and gone to great lengths to hide the fact that his real wealth (although significant) is less than it appears.
Appearing wealthy is especially attractive with narcissism since it is the most banal, obvious, and universally understood signal of success and greatness- but the money itself isn't the goal, and having wealth in secret - as may be necessary if it is under the table - without adding to the appearance of being wealthy would be uninteresting.
He did and replaced the original executive order from Trump with his own and signed the PAFACA into law last year which effectively supports the TikTok ban.
Biden didn't stop it because he also supported the ban as well, which is even worse.
So TikTok would have been totally banned if either Biden or Harris won the election.
Biden and Harris's arguments against Trump fell flat when they had no explanation for why they continued almost everything awful he started, while also still claiming it was awful. "I was going to send her a Maga hat."
Sorry to disappoint you, but that isn't my style- I won't be doing either. I'm particularly interested in having Americans become generally aware of narcissism and emotional manipulation- so they can spot it and have some 'cultural antibodies' against it, and stop being duped by people like this from all political persuasions. We've never had a better opportunity to finally do this, now having a president that is an almost exaggerated cartoonist caricature of a narcissist, that switches stories and philosophies from hour to hour depending on who is listening at the moment.
Oh, I'm upset and traumatized indeed, and even getting professional help for it, but over someone other than this guy. Anytime one of a dozen narcissistic celebrities comes up I mention the same thing, but I can't think of a single politician or celebrity I care enough about to even dislike.
As Nietzsche said, one must have reverence for their enemies, and none of them make the grade.
Maybe I just need to talk about it, but I'd like to think I learned something that might help someone else.
Next time you read all of my comments, read the context also and you won't miss important stuff like that ;-)
Honest question- whatever you like about whatever this politician says, do you believe it's sincere? If not, do you feel like your views and ideals deserve representation from people that sincerely share them and would actually make some person sacrifices to make them happen?
It's absolutely crazy to me that people like you assume if you question anything on 'their side' you must be 'on the other side' - as if all of human perspectives reduced to a single bit of information. I mean, if they really were even on their own side they'd be more critical of it.
I have no grand opinion about Trump. He is as good as any other politician, though he might be marginally better from the prior that he is not a career politician and from the posterior conditioned by the fact that the bi-partisan establishment and the corporate media hate him. These are too strong a signal to ignore.
What irks me is the cheap virtue signalling by the laptop class which has been told to hate him since 2016. They had no opinion of the man - who is a literal Hitler and who was 70 years old in 2016 - before that. I despise such fakery.
I also despise fakery, but there’s a lot more overall fakery going on here from all sides than you seem to be noticing- and understanding the dynamics of narcissism and emotional manipulation makes it more obvious. People aware of this stuff are impressed by Trumps skill in creating and maintaining false narratives.
They didn't dislike him before 2016 because he was one of them, he went to their parties, donated their favorite people lots of money, and did TV interviews repeating all of their talking points.
Trump is absolutely nothing like Hitler- Hitler was a completely sincere true believer in his cause, solidified his views clearly before he had any fame or power and stuck to them consistently, and was himself willing to die for the cause of blaming all problems on people different than him. Trump switches stories and allegiances like an 8 year old girl trying on princess outfits until one 'clicks' and gets attention- and doesn't care if the one he ends up with is left right or center- he tried them all.
Both your "cheap virtue signalling by the laptop class" and Trump have an identical underlying strategy and postmodern world view that things like integrity, principles, and ideals are for suckers, and the only thing that matters is constructing a narrative that gives you the most power and attention right now: e.g. fakery.
Both are even using the same basic absurd narrative that some evil outgroup that deserves to be dehumanized is causing all of your problems, and supporting authoritarianism with them in power will solve it- just different outgroups but both chosen strategically by the same process.
There hasn't been any president during my lifetime that didn't have narcissistic personality traits and strategies, but I am not 100% sure all of them definitely had full blown NPD, I'm not a psychiatrist. It's a disability than harms the person affected more than anyone else- people with it are very alone as they make no real friendships or connections with people, and are not capable of improving their life through self reflection and self criticism. They can be very successful but won't ever enjoy it- they will still just be terrified and anxious about their facade collapsing. It is a disorder where fakery is the very core of every action.
If you think money is what is on the table here you lack imagination. It's the "Trump knob" in TikTok's ranking algorithm that is the real thing of value here.
No actual deal is necessary here. It's obvious to everyone involved what the deal is: TikTok ensures that its content is friendly to Trump, TikTok stays unbanned.
Despite both ending up with TikTok staying up in the US, having the ban be unconstitutional or not exist at all is different from having the ban in place and a deal to avoid it. What the ACLU was fighting for would have removed leverage from the government/president.
Technically, and unfortunately, yes. They are a single-issue organization, and that single issue takes precedence over any other consideration. I doubt many of them who are involved are happy about him being able to use this to consolidate, but there are always external effects when you have a single major priority (especially if it's a good one).
Every government lawyer in the country was investigating Trump since 2015 and the best they could find was he paid off a pornstar. You can’t accuse someone of being on the take for nearly a decade without eventually putting up or shutting up.
None of the predicate events of those cases had happened yet during the four years during which Trump was called a criminal daily by the media.
And no, I didn’t follow those cases, because I had closely followed all the accusations of tax evasion, receiving payments from Russia, etc., during the prior four years and those has amounted to nothing. As they say, “fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, well you can’t fool me again.”
I haven't read the Mueller Report, but from media reports I had the distinct impression that Trump would have been indicted had he not been the sitting president. But I suppose it says something that Garland and Jack Smith didn't indict either after Trump left office.
A lot of what Trump did was not really a crime, but is behavior that we don't want in a president.
It is apparently not a crime to meet with a Russian spy in your house, and to have a discussion about exchanging relaxed foreign relations for dirt on your political opponent. It's also not a crime for the campaign to share campaign data with a Russian FSB agent as the FSB carried out a psyops campaign against American citizens for which they are now indicted. Totally legal to lie about those activities to the FBI and Congress as well. Completely legal to use the fruits of the FSB hacking campaign to your political advantage, and it's also legal to publicly call for the FSB to continue hacking your opponent.
There just aren't laws against these activities and no one can actually prosecute them (if you break the law to become president and win, you just replace the people who would prosecute you with loyalists, so you can't get prosecuted for breaking the law while campaigning unless you lose), so everything Trump did with Russia in 2016 is now acceptable political activity.
It's now normalized that a candidate for president should, no, must lean on foreign governments to circumvent domestic campaign laws to gain as much leverage over their opponent as possible. For example, the 2028 Democratic candidate could make a deal with North Korea to hack the Trump campaign (he's already said he's running again) in exchange for relaxed sanctions, and that would be fine according to the norms of our time.
That’s my point. He was convicted of labeling a payment to a pornstar the wrong thing in the business records of his family owned company, to hide an affair. It was a nothing-burger compared to everything he’s been accused of.
If I want to run what someone else has determined as "malware" on my computer, as far as I'm concerned, I should have the absolute right to do it. Same for spyware. Why? Because I don't want the government to make the determination for what is right or wrong for me on my own property. If the US government wants to block apps on their property, then they can go ahead and do that. But the moment it extends to my own property, it's quite ridiculous to think people are going to bend over backwards and comply with what's good for you. Especially in the context of some vague national security threat, why am I supposed to be subversive to the CIA?
How can you complain about the CCP banning foreign social media and censoring when you have your own government willing to do the same thing -- in the name of Protecting the Democracy?
It's not about privacy or data or whatever the facade is. The crime that we are committing is none other than allowing ourselves to be fed information that could threaten the United States. So, therefore, even according to the SCOTUS, if Congress plasters the magical words "national security" in their laws, then the Constitution takes a backseat and we too can be like China/Russia/Iran. Will we start banning VPNs next--which circumvent our new found love for censorship? I'd not be surprised.
Can you be more specific about what you mean? The search summary for that page says:
> The Tiananmen Square Tank Man is an iconic image that emerged from the protests and subsequent military crackdown that occurred in Beijing, China, in 1989. The protests, primarily led by students demanding political reforms and greater freedoms, took place in Tiananmen Square, a prominent public space in the heart of the city.
I'm not a TikTok user, it was down earlier but clicking now I see the famous tank man video, an article about Chinese censorship of AI, etc. Do you get something different?
Totally fair point, my results could be different. To me, the salient point of Tiananmen Square is the massacre (and wider spread protests). That aspect has been suppressed. I see video clips talking about how the content is available, but no content. I also see many clips denying that anything happened.
"The law banning TikTok, which was scheduled to go into effect Sunday, allows the president to grant a 90-day extension before the ban is enforced, provided certain criteria are met"
"The Act permits the President to grant a one-time extension of no more than 90 days with respect to the prohibitions’ 270-day effective date if the President makes certain certifications to Congress regarding progress toward a qualified divestiture."
Sounds like he needs to work with Congress on at least a basic level for this to be within the law, not just make his own decision and declare all is good. And there is the small detail that he is not President, at least not today.
TikTok has already received multiple "interest to acquire" letters, including the one from Perplexity that would keep all existing investors fully intact.
Having that along with a republican majority in both the congress and the senate this isn't going to be difficult for Trump to fulfill the requirements of the law.
Do you get the impression that the incoming administration cares about the law?
As long as there is a fig leaf/smokescreen, and TikTok makes the right noises and contributions, they’ll be fine.
If anything, Keeping them technically in violation of the law is the leverage the administration will want to keep so they can squeeze TikTok whenever they want.
The law never required that they shut down, so in a tautological sense they are.
However, with regards to the absurd justification. The president (still Biden) hasn't granted any extensions, nor is the president even able to grant an extension without
> certif[ing] to Congress that-
> "(A) a path to executing a qualified divestiture has been identified with respect to such application;
> "(B) evidence of significant progress toward executing such qualified divestiture has been produced with respect to such application; and
> "(C) there are in place the relevant binding legal agreements to enable execution of such qualified divestiture during the period of such extension.
There is no evidence that Trump will be able to lawfully do any of those, and he has to do all, after he becomes president again.
ByteDance has been rather vocal that they aren't interested in divesting like that. He could be, there is no evidence he will be, and it's not something he can cause to happen.
Isn't selective enforcement in general within any law in the United States? There are plenty of laws that get broken all the time and it's up to police & prosecutors/AGs to decide which cases they actually want to enforce.
We found a compromise. TikTok will remain, all of its national security risks will remain. Also, the law that tramples free speech is upheld by the court, but will be blantently ignored and unenforced.
Everybody loses. This outcome is worse than anyone could have conceived.