Comment on On Friday SCOTUS Will Decide Whether TikTok Can Be Banned; We Told It The First Amendment Says No

• Umbrias@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  i think you need to do more to justify that this is viewpoint discrimination, “tiktok” does not appear to me to be a viewpoint. i think you have a stronger argument with saying it is the broader content based discrimination, though. however id still question if that’s true with respect to corporations hosting eachothers services. id say you have a stronger argument than viewpoint discrimination by saying it violates the first ammendment of the users of tiktok, personally, though the courts might disagree. i dont really care about apple and google’s right to free speech at anywhere near the level of individual humans.

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  • spit_evil_olive_tips@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    “tiktok” does not appear to me to be a viewpoint

    seriously? have you not paid attention to any of the arguments in favor of the ban that boil down to “it’s pushing evil Chinese Communist propaganda into the minds of our precious children”?

    here’s the original bill - H.R.7521 - Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.

    it was introduced by Mike Gallagher (R-Wisconsin).

    here’s a tweet of his from March:

    “This is my message to TikTok: break up with the Chinese Communist Party or lose access to your American users. America’s foremost adversary has no business controlling a dominant media platform in the United States.” - Rep. Gallagher

    and from November 2023, in a Fox News appearance:

    Rep. Gallagher on why it’s critical to ban or force a sale of TikTok:

    “It would be national self-suicide to allow the dominant media platform in America to be controlled, or at least be influenced by, the Chinese Communist Party.”

    the advocates for the ban have been very clear, from the start, that they believe TikTok has a viewpoint - specifically that it’s controlled or influenced by the Chinese Communist Party. and they want to discriminate against that viewpoint.

    id say you have a stronger argument than viewpoint discrimination by saying it violates the first ammendment of the users of tiktok, personally, though the courts might disagree.

    have you read the bill? the actual law, not news articles or summaries of it?

    I linked it in this comment. go read it, it’s short, and not terrible as far as legalese goes.

    the gist of it is that the law makes it illegal to run an app store (or anything that looks like an app store) that offers downloads of the TikTok app.

    so the two big obvious targets of the law are Apple and Google…but it applies equally to everyone. F-Droid could violate it, in theory, by hosting the APK for download through their servers.

    or for example, say the ban took effect, and TikTok gets removed from app stores. some tech-savvy high school kid knows how to copy the APK from their Android phone before it gets deleted, and shows their friends how to sideload it onto their phones.

    then a bunch of other people ask for it too, so this kid uploads it to some filesharing service, passes around the link, and eventually it gets around to 100 other classmates.

    that high school kid has violated the TikTok ban. the federal government can levy a fine against them of half a million dollars ($5,000 per user who downloaded it)

    does that satisfy your desire to have the ban infringe on the free speech of “real” people, and not just Apple and Google?

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    • Umbrias@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      this is a much better response to the arguments in general, yes, good.

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