I haven't examined the specific assertions and supporting evidence (if any) the government has cited but I'm glad SCOTUS is taking a look at this. My sense is the allegations so far are pretty vague and masked behind a curtain of 'national security' secrecy.
The government targeting a company like this is extraordinary and should require due process with supporting evidence. Unfortunately, details of allegations remaining secret due to claims of 'national security' has a poor historical track record of abuse.
they aren't masked behind national security, that IS the issue. China was asked to host data on US servers, so it garunteed they couldn't access the data, yet there's evidence Chinese employees were accessing the data. That's strike one. Now they have an app that can sway the public opinion of ages 8-30, by feeding them content that presents a certain perspective example: during the tiktok hearings in the past, on tiktok there were memes (probably boosted) that purposefully made lawmakers look stupid, even if they had reasonable questions. This swayed public opinion in itself. Also bonus, it gives access to some user data too. That's not to mention China doesn't allow a US based app like tiktok to exist in their version of the internet.
> That's not to mention China doesn't allow a US based app like tiktok to exist in their version of the internet.
I feel like this should be more central to the argument than it has been, on equal footing to the national security issues. If they don't want non-Chinese social media running in China lets not let Chinese social media run here, tit-for-tat.
Not to digress off-topic but as a long-time SCOTUS watcher and reader of opinions and dissents, I think it's worth highlighting that "the spirit of the law" and "for the good of the people" are highly subjective things on which reasonable people often disagree. Those broad concepts have in earlier eras been cited by supreme court justices to extend or limit laws instead of strictly interpreting what's written, including supporting slavery, denying civil rights and blocking women voting.
SCOTUS was created to interpret the wording of the laws the legislative branch passes and to ensure those laws do not violate the rights of citizens as written in the constitution. Changing the purpose of the court to include concepts like justices choosing what is in "the spirit of the law" or "for the good of the people" as opposed to what the people's elected representatives actually wrote and voted for is a slippery slope. It might sound good but only if the majority of justices will always make subjective judgements you agree with. Those of us who disagree with some justices' opinions should want to hard limit SCOTUS to strict interpretation of laws as written and not including their personal beliefs on what might be "for the good of the people."
I haven't looked into those allegations myself but, if they're true, it strongly supports my belief the role of supreme court justices should be limited to strict interpretation of legislation as passed by our elected representatives and the constitution as written. While it's impossible to eliminate all subjective interpretation from the role of SCOTUS justices, the last thing we should want is any more latitude for injecting personal opinion or broad construction based on vague ideals like "the spirit of the law" or "for the good of the people".
What exists to stop SCOTUS from being as subjective as they like? They could theoretically being impeached by congress, but how could that happen if the majority of the congress share and supports the subjective interpretations of those judges? And what if those interpretations, like rulings on gerrymandering and rules around voting, then further ensure congress maintains that majority?
Your belief of limiting SCOTUS is good, but the reality is they have no limits. They could literally make any interpretation as wild as they want and as long as the interpretation aligns with even the slimmest majority of the house, it stands as the law of the land.
The court isn't tasked with doing what right. Who defines what's "right"?
The court is tasked with judging based on the laws at hand. If those laws are flawed or wrong but legal, it's upon congress to change the laws rather than the courts to decide right or wrong.
The court should be focused on legal or illegal. This is how the separation of powers work in the US.
When laws are "broken" we should be looking at congress.
Fun fact: no. You're thinking of the regular courts.
Unlike the regular courts, the supreme court specifically has the power to just go "nope, this law is now void" if they deem it unconstitutional, and fun fact: that constitution sure is open to interpretation, hoo boy. Imagine if a corrupt justice was allowed to just keep on ruling, that sure would make for a fair and just system. Like say someone who had to rule on cases involving their friends who bought them millions of dollars in gifts and instead of recusing themselves, take the case and rule in their friends' favor.
I think we can forgive anyone who expresses skepticism about the current court's adherence to the spirit and even the letter of the law after it created presidential immunity out of thin air in Trump v. United States, both because it ran afoul of the Supreme Court's tradition of issuing narrow rulings but also because there's literally nothing in the constitution about executive immunity. As there exists a grant of immunity for legislators (Article I, Section 6), it's clear the framers understood the concept but chose to exclude it for the president.
It's like the current court took a look at all the vitriol over Citizens United being one of the worst decisions in history and went "hold my beer".
That said, the present issue of TikTok seems like an open-and-shut first amendment case, regardless whether it is ultimately a tool for influence operations by a hostile foreign power. The price we pay for freedom of speech is that it enables bad faith actors as well.
It doesn't though: one can fully argue that tik tok is one of several platforms through which people can express themselves, which means no one's rights are being taken away by shutting down tik-tok. It would be an incredibly bad-faith decision, but watch them make it anyway.
Similarly, tik tok can't argue that they're press, even if some of their users might use the platform as a news and news commentary outlet. Again, shutting down the platform doesn't prevent those folks from continuing to do so on another platform.
There's, unfortunately, nothing open-and-shut about this case. Especially with a supreme court that seems quite keen on backing up the establishment.
The hysteria is reaching HUAC levels. You can read the statements from the congresspersons in support of the bill [0] and they all read like one variant or another of General Jack D Ripper in Dr. Strangelove quavering about how the communists want to sully our precious bodily fluids. Won’t someone think of the helplessly feeble median voter who cannot be entrusted to not let something dissenting from the Washington consensus not stymie my chance to harvest their vote.. woe is me.. /s
If they believed Americans shouldn’t be surveilled then they should pass a law enshrining our right to freedom from surveillance with teeth to match. But they would never do that because that’s not really what this is about.
Nor would they encourage smartphone manufacturers to better sandbox users from profiling by apps, nor would they pass laws placing restrictions on the seedy data broker industry, nor would they pass laws preventing telcos from selling your data to the data brokers.
Nor would they pass laws that publicly refer to the USA’s own public influence campaigns in non-adversary countries (remember the SinoVax scandal [1] ? Where we seeded antivax sentiment on Facebook in the Philippines etc so that nobody would want to get the Chinese covid vaccine? Which probably actually led to people dying? I guess this type of story only has legs if it’s hypothetically plausible that our adversaries are doing it - not when we actually did it, smoking gun and everything)
The additional irony now that there is a serious likelihood this incoming administration is going to be against the fluoridation of water too is not lost upon me..
The issue isn't surveillance, it's the ability for China to 'put their thumb on the scale' of the black box algorithm responsible for populating every user's feed to emphasize or de-emphasize topics/ideas that are strategically beneficial to China, and bad for us. This is not hypothetical, this is happening, and has been happening.
Ok, I can accept that that kind of downweighting or delisting of inconvenient posts is definitely suboptimal, sure.
Does that mean we’re all going to sleepwalk into quoting from The Governance of China? Unless our congress sees us all as dangerously impressionable morons - which I actually seem to think is their opinion of us more and more.. - who lack critical thinking skills to such an extent that we basically shouldn’t even have the option to make up our own opinions in response to feed recommendations… well excuse me for thinking that that is more than a little patronizing.
Ultimately, who is the one most overtly putting their thumb on the scale here…?
- China, if for every 100 Hong Kong related posts on Instagram there are only 0.7 posts on TikTok, or
- USA: delete every single post about every topic.
Do you really actually have the opinion that China is the most censorious here? Really? The possibility that, just maybe, you might be served a video that would embarrass the CCP once in every 500 videos instead of every 100 videos… therefore you are not allowed to view the 499 other videos - no matter what they may have meant to you, or what value you might have derived from them, or what new connections or community you may have been building… well gee, thanks, I guess.
I have to say that when I came across this bit from that article:
“The move resembled a classic strategy of authoritarian governments: burying inconvenient information.”
the sheer lack of awareness of the irony had my eyes just about nearly rolling out of their sockets. If that’s the case then I can’t think of a single more authoritarian move Congress could make than just nuking TikTok outright since it poses an inconvenience for congress? Am I just taking crazy pills here??
Note: whether or not this all ends up being the right or wise move on the state, is not even the place I am really coming from here. It’s just that I haven’t heard a single justification for this ban that actually didn’t either just immediately fall apart under its own internal logical inconsistencies or otherwise just give the impression of a lazy half measure, or possibly blatant corruption, by being such a selective application of law.
In other words, yet more bad law by lawmakers who don’t care about getting it right. Nor will they be the ones to clean up their mess, if it ever does get cleaned up, by setting this precedent.
> who lack critical thinking skills to such an extent that we basically shouldn’t even have the option to make up our own opinions in response to feed recommendations
I think it's easy to be insulted by this perspective if you spend too much of your time surrounded by people who fall more than one standard deviation to the right on the intelligence bell curve. 84% of people are to the left of that, and can vote.
> Ultimately, who is the one most overtly putting their thumb on the scale here
The expression "putting their thumb on the scale" means influencing subtly and deceitfully, so China. I chose this expression intentionally.
> Do you really actually have the opinion that China is the most censorious here
Nowhere did I mention censorship. Its not merely about suppressing perspectives, it's about influencing them. Hong Kong is too obvious-- what about amplifying anti-AI sentiment to increase regulation and hobble AI progress in the US, giving a decisive advantage to China in the AI arms race? Amplifying anti-nuclear energy sentiment, to erode US energy security and create economic advantages for the Chinese solar industry?
I do agree w.r.t. the messiness of precedent, though.
> Nor would they encourage smartphone manufacturers to better sandbox users from profiling by apps, nor would they pass laws placing restrictions on the seedy data broker industry, nor would they pass laws preventing telcos from selling your data to the data brokers.
Even with this legislation, the Chinese government can just buy similar data from data brokers who aggregate it from Facebook, Google, Snapchat, Twitter and other social media outlets. Hell, they can probably just buy TikTok's data from data brokers too - the law doesn't block TikTok selling their data anymore than it blocks Facebook et al.
So... it's pretty clear this isn't really about surveilling U.S. citizens. That's just a convenient excuse. Per the WSJ's article today:
> "Lawmakers received classified briefings in which intelligence officials warned that China could use the app to spread Chinese propaganda and surveil Americans."
The other cited reason is "Chinese propaganda". But foreign governments already massively plant and promote propaganda across U.S. owned social networks - both overtly with paid ads and covertly with highly sophisticated astroturfing campaigns which manipulate social media recommendation algorithms. I'm not really sure the Chinese government theoretically having direct control of TikTok's algorithm vs indirectly manipulating the same algorithm from the outside is that big of a strategic advantage. Any manipulation has to be subtle because the TikTok algorithm has to remain highly optimized for retaining viewers as the highest priority. Pushing government favored propaganda has to be strictly limited so it doesn't nerf retention or become obvious.
Also, despite the massive resources foreign (and domestic) governments have dedicated to propagandizing social media, most experts think it hasn't been all that effective. It can occasionally shift broad public opinion a tiny bit but, like overt political advertising, more meaningful movement tends to be limited to partisans who already agreed anyway. The overall predictability, repeatability and ROI are falling while the costs of adapting to game the system and avoid detection continue to increase.
So, let me try to 'steel man' the government's case here... if the Chinese government actually does control TikTok's algorithm and data in a meaningful way, and assuming this actually gives them a significant effectiveness advantage and/or cost discount, maybe the true purpose of the U.S. legislation is to force the Chinese government to pay the same costs the U.S. government, U.S. political parties and foreign governments have to pay when trying to manipulate social media? Even assuming all that to be true, it doesn't sound important enough to be worth trying to tiptoe around the first amendment. Maybe the primary driver really is just political grandstanding and appearing to "do something" on an issue that naively appears 'important' to most voters. (As usual, it doesn't matter that the "something" being done won't change much. The important thing is appearing to do it.)
General reciprocity is a bad idea, because many laws suck and are a net bad for the country implementing them. Reciprocal tariffs are common, but harmful to the countries that implement them — if you're in a boat and the other guy shoots a hole in it, you don't get back at him by shooting another hold in the boat, and the threat of reciprocal tariffs usually doesn't work to get the original tariffs rescinded.
I think it's more about the game theory of (MAD) than actual impact. The ideal state is reputation of reciprocity without actually having to do it. But because the US has a policy of openness / rich people in the US want to sell stuff made cheaply... it's fairly one way.
In the 1970s, the USSR would literally just buy the latest US chips. No need for much crazy subterfuge and honeypots - go to conference, find someone with chips who likes cash, and buy them. That's what led to the crypto bans in the 1990s, where software that implemented cryptographic technology couldn't be exported - as if bits cared much about crossing borders and clickwraps!
They're noting that digital services have come to look more like traditional goods, and reasonably warrant analogous trade policies. If a foreign market bans or regulates some good on import, reciprocity just suggests applying an equivalent measure on their exports.
Here, China restricts many US social media products, which a free market advocate would call an unfair distortion of the market, that deserves to be balanced by reciprocal restrictions on their social media products. (perhaps in the hopes of pressuring China to stand down their restricitions and "play fair")
And to legislate any of that, there's no need for something fundamentally misguided like "a law that automatically copies legislation of another country without control".
US Government can legislate those restrictions, it's what its there for. This isn't software.
Sounds like this could be the premise for a chapter in the book "Invisible Cities":
I shall now explain to the city of Fransisca, the blue city upon who's golden shores the azure waves drift over, and above which a sapphire sky is rent asunder by the golden sun, bringing an ever so grand glistening upon its ember shores. But above Fransisca, beyond it's beaches and waters, lies another city, marked by furling banners of red, whoe jealousy of Fransisca has caused it to erect a barrier so as to not see its flourishing. Fransisca with her petulance at seeing the barrier erect, so too constructed a barrier upon her shores. Concrete slabs covering her beaches, costal grasslands made way to fences. In this way Fransisca became a mirror image of her overseas counterpart. And the crimson city, unable to see Fransisca eventual forgot why the barriers were build. One by one each stone brick was removed. Parking lots were raised in who's place grasslands grew. And in such a manner the crimson city became Fransisca. Actually, Fransisca has always been the crimson city and what we know today as Fransisca is actually the city of red banners of old. Time will tell if the true Fransisca will be remembered.
Note that china blocks all foreign companies while this bill blocks only foreign adversaries of the US (china, Russia, Iran, NK) while maintaining free trade with all the other places in the world.
They're also available for purchase by bribing the justices, as seen with Clarence Thomas. https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-un... I don't see any reason to regards the court's verdicts as legitimate, especially since they invented the immunity ruling out of whole cloth.
The NPR podcast series More Perfect is quite interesting, about this, they should have an episode called 'The Political Thicket' or something like that.
In addition to politics is how they interpret the job of being a judge. Is it to judge a case on the laws that are written given the context they were written in? Is it to interpret laws based on a different context? This leads to different outcomes.
Courts have their own politics which usually exist on a different spectrum than cable news politics.
Recently the courts have gained more power through congressional dysfunction. If congress doesn't like how the court interprets a law they can just amend it.
Eh, it was. The Lochner era was about the same as it is today. It was also arguably the same during the Warren court.
The main thing that has changed is this court has decided that past rulings do not matter. That's what is going to really cause a lot of chaos in the courts as time goes on.
Prior to this court, the last time the court overturned precedent was Brown v Board of education. Historically the court has pretty much never overturned precedent. That's new with this court.
To provide just one counterexample to this obviously false claim, South Dakota v. Wayfair (2018)[1] directly overturned https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quill_Corp._v._North_Dakota (1992)[2], which had ruled that mail order (including online) purchases were not subject to sales tax unless the seller had a physical presence in the state. South Dakota v. Wayfair was a 5-4 decision, but not on partisan lines.
And further, the 5 in favor was the conservative wing of the supreme court +Ginsberg -Roberts. The reason Roberts dissented was Stare decisis.
Notice that from your chatgpt query, the majority of the cases were from 201X and beyond.
We are now at the point where nearly yearly we are seeing prior precedent overturned. Prior to that it was something that happened maybe once per decade.
Something isn't always good or always wrong. Overturning precedent may be the right thing to do, it isn't always right. This court's excessive overturning of precedent is Judicial activism that isn't going to be good and in particular is attacking individual liberties.
One major issue with making everything a jump ball is lower courts can no longer rely on precedent to make rulings. It means all lower courts get to make decisions based on politics and, who knows, the supreme court might uphold their whims in the best case. It means that when you go to court or anyone else, you cannot have a reasonable guess at what outcome can be achieved which bloats the entire Judicial system for everyone.
I'd argue its even less blatant today it just appears more blatant because you can see the happenings on the other side of the country in an instant on your personal cell phone. As can anyone else.
What is the difference with Reddit? Tencent/Jack Ma is still a major shareholder, and listed as a director, giving him special access to Reddit's internals.
Congress plus the President's signing authority have massive power and broad latitude to make decisions. I don't think TikTok stands a chance really. I wonder if there is a place I could bet on it.
> 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.
Show me in the text where Congress has the power to make that distinction.
I think there’s a good free trade argument to block a service from a country that blocks all other similar services from our country and the world generally, but I don’t see an a speech argument for doing so.
If there’s a speech argument to be made, I think Facebook, YouTube, Twitter et al. should have blocked accounts from the PRC to prevent CCP officials from using it to spread their own propaganda in the West whilst not being able to freely and legally operate and do business in the PRC’s jurisdiction, but I don’t think Congress actually has the power to compel them to stop being gutless on this issue.
It has everything to do with CU. They haven't fixed the loopholes because of CU.
The association thing is a red herring. Pretty much every other country in the world has a reasonable solution to the problem. If the limit is $2000 you can spend $2000 on your own or an organization can spend $2000 on behalf of you, or some mix.
TikTok isn't 'foreign', it's a Delaware corporation. Its parent company is foreign.
If you think having a foreign parent company is somehow a magic loophole in the 1st Amendment, do you think the US government can force say Politico to take down anything critical they write? After all, their parent company is in Germany
I haven't examined the specific assertions and supporting evidence (if any) the government has cited but I'm glad SCOTUS is taking a look at this. My sense is the allegations so far are pretty vague and masked behind a curtain of 'national security' secrecy.
The government targeting a company like this is extraordinary and should require due process with supporting evidence. Unfortunately, details of allegations remaining secret due to claims of 'national security' has a poor historical track record of abuse.
they aren't masked behind national security, that IS the issue. China was asked to host data on US servers, so it garunteed they couldn't access the data, yet there's evidence Chinese employees were accessing the data. That's strike one. Now they have an app that can sway the public opinion of ages 8-30, by feeding them content that presents a certain perspective example: during the tiktok hearings in the past, on tiktok there were memes (probably boosted) that purposefully made lawmakers look stupid, even if they had reasonable questions. This swayed public opinion in itself. Also bonus, it gives access to some user data too. That's not to mention China doesn't allow a US based app like tiktok to exist in their version of the internet.
> That's not to mention China doesn't allow a US based app like tiktok to exist in their version of the internet.
I feel like this should be more central to the argument than it has been, on equal footing to the national security issues. If they don't want non-Chinese social media running in China lets not let Chinese social media run here, tit-for-tat.
> on tiktok there were memes (probably boosted) that purposefully made lawmakers look stupid
the text version of the same memes can be found here, on HN.
Now if only SCOTUS could still be trusted to actually do what's right by the spirit of the law for the good of the people.
Not to digress off-topic but as a long-time SCOTUS watcher and reader of opinions and dissents, I think it's worth highlighting that "the spirit of the law" and "for the good of the people" are highly subjective things on which reasonable people often disagree. Those broad concepts have in earlier eras been cited by supreme court justices to extend or limit laws instead of strictly interpreting what's written, including supporting slavery, denying civil rights and blocking women voting.
SCOTUS was created to interpret the wording of the laws the legislative branch passes and to ensure those laws do not violate the rights of citizens as written in the constitution. Changing the purpose of the court to include concepts like justices choosing what is in "the spirit of the law" or "for the good of the people" as opposed to what the people's elected representatives actually wrote and voted for is a slippery slope. It might sound good but only if the majority of justices will always make subjective judgements you agree with. Those of us who disagree with some justices' opinions should want to hard limit SCOTUS to strict interpretation of laws as written and not including their personal beliefs on what might be "for the good of the people."
Except some members of the SCOTUS are quite blatantly corrupt: https://gijn.org/stories/propublica-exposed-ethics-scandals-...
I haven't looked into those allegations myself but, if they're true, it strongly supports my belief the role of supreme court justices should be limited to strict interpretation of legislation as passed by our elected representatives and the constitution as written. While it's impossible to eliminate all subjective interpretation from the role of SCOTUS justices, the last thing we should want is any more latitude for injecting personal opinion or broad construction based on vague ideals like "the spirit of the law" or "for the good of the people".
What exists to stop SCOTUS from being as subjective as they like? They could theoretically being impeached by congress, but how could that happen if the majority of the congress share and supports the subjective interpretations of those judges? And what if those interpretations, like rulings on gerrymandering and rules around voting, then further ensure congress maintains that majority?
Your belief of limiting SCOTUS is good, but the reality is they have no limits. They could literally make any interpretation as wild as they want and as long as the interpretation aligns with even the slimmest majority of the house, it stands as the law of the land.
"I haven't looked into those allegations" when it's been all over the news somewhat undermines the whole claim of authority.
The court isn't tasked with doing what right. Who defines what's "right"?
The court is tasked with judging based on the laws at hand. If those laws are flawed or wrong but legal, it's upon congress to change the laws rather than the courts to decide right or wrong.
The court should be focused on legal or illegal. This is how the separation of powers work in the US.
When laws are "broken" we should be looking at congress.
Fun fact: no. You're thinking of the regular courts.
Unlike the regular courts, the supreme court specifically has the power to just go "nope, this law is now void" if they deem it unconstitutional, and fun fact: that constitution sure is open to interpretation, hoo boy. Imagine if a corrupt justice was allowed to just keep on ruling, that sure would make for a fair and just system. Like say someone who had to rule on cases involving their friends who bought them millions of dollars in gifts and instead of recusing themselves, take the case and rule in their friends' favor.
And no way for the people to intervene.
SCOTUS has serious problems.
I think we can forgive anyone who expresses skepticism about the current court's adherence to the spirit and even the letter of the law after it created presidential immunity out of thin air in Trump v. United States, both because it ran afoul of the Supreme Court's tradition of issuing narrow rulings but also because there's literally nothing in the constitution about executive immunity. As there exists a grant of immunity for legislators (Article I, Section 6), it's clear the framers understood the concept but chose to exclude it for the president.
It's like the current court took a look at all the vitriol over Citizens United being one of the worst decisions in history and went "hold my beer".
That said, the present issue of TikTok seems like an open-and-shut first amendment case, regardless whether it is ultimately a tool for influence operations by a hostile foreign power. The price we pay for freedom of speech is that it enables bad faith actors as well.
It doesn't though: one can fully argue that tik tok is one of several platforms through which people can express themselves, which means no one's rights are being taken away by shutting down tik-tok. It would be an incredibly bad-faith decision, but watch them make it anyway.
Similarly, tik tok can't argue that they're press, even if some of their users might use the platform as a news and news commentary outlet. Again, shutting down the platform doesn't prevent those folks from continuing to do so on another platform.
There's, unfortunately, nothing open-and-shut about this case. Especially with a supreme court that seems quite keen on backing up the establishment.
They've been doing a great job for the last few years, so I don't expect them to stop now.
The hysteria is reaching HUAC levels. You can read the statements from the congresspersons in support of the bill [0] and they all read like one variant or another of General Jack D Ripper in Dr. Strangelove quavering about how the communists want to sully our precious bodily fluids. Won’t someone think of the helplessly feeble median voter who cannot be entrusted to not let something dissenting from the Washington consensus not stymie my chance to harvest their vote.. woe is me.. /s
If they believed Americans shouldn’t be surveilled then they should pass a law enshrining our right to freedom from surveillance with teeth to match. But they would never do that because that’s not really what this is about.
Nor would they encourage smartphone manufacturers to better sandbox users from profiling by apps, nor would they pass laws placing restrictions on the seedy data broker industry, nor would they pass laws preventing telcos from selling your data to the data brokers.
Nor would they pass laws that publicly refer to the USA’s own public influence campaigns in non-adversary countries (remember the SinoVax scandal [1] ? Where we seeded antivax sentiment on Facebook in the Philippines etc so that nobody would want to get the Chinese covid vaccine? Which probably actually led to people dying? I guess this type of story only has legs if it’s hypothetically plausible that our adversaries are doing it - not when we actually did it, smoking gun and everything)
The additional irony now that there is a serious likelihood this incoming administration is going to be against the fluoridation of water too is not lost upon me..
[0] https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/media/bills/bill-p...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covi...
The issue isn't surveillance, it's the ability for China to 'put their thumb on the scale' of the black box algorithm responsible for populating every user's feed to emphasize or de-emphasize topics/ideas that are strategically beneficial to China, and bad for us. This is not hypothetical, this is happening, and has been happening.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/24/briefing/tiktok-ban-bill-...
Ok, I can accept that that kind of downweighting or delisting of inconvenient posts is definitely suboptimal, sure.
Does that mean we’re all going to sleepwalk into quoting from The Governance of China? Unless our congress sees us all as dangerously impressionable morons - which I actually seem to think is their opinion of us more and more.. - who lack critical thinking skills to such an extent that we basically shouldn’t even have the option to make up our own opinions in response to feed recommendations… well excuse me for thinking that that is more than a little patronizing.
Ultimately, who is the one most overtly putting their thumb on the scale here…?
- China, if for every 100 Hong Kong related posts on Instagram there are only 0.7 posts on TikTok, or
- USA: delete every single post about every topic.
Do you really actually have the opinion that China is the most censorious here? Really? The possibility that, just maybe, you might be served a video that would embarrass the CCP once in every 500 videos instead of every 100 videos… therefore you are not allowed to view the 499 other videos - no matter what they may have meant to you, or what value you might have derived from them, or what new connections or community you may have been building… well gee, thanks, I guess.
I have to say that when I came across this bit from that article:
“The move resembled a classic strategy of authoritarian governments: burying inconvenient information.”
the sheer lack of awareness of the irony had my eyes just about nearly rolling out of their sockets. If that’s the case then I can’t think of a single more authoritarian move Congress could make than just nuking TikTok outright since it poses an inconvenience for congress? Am I just taking crazy pills here??
Note: whether or not this all ends up being the right or wise move on the state, is not even the place I am really coming from here. It’s just that I haven’t heard a single justification for this ban that actually didn’t either just immediately fall apart under its own internal logical inconsistencies or otherwise just give the impression of a lazy half measure, or possibly blatant corruption, by being such a selective application of law.
In other words, yet more bad law by lawmakers who don’t care about getting it right. Nor will they be the ones to clean up their mess, if it ever does get cleaned up, by setting this precedent.
> who lack critical thinking skills to such an extent that we basically shouldn’t even have the option to make up our own opinions in response to feed recommendations
I think it's easy to be insulted by this perspective if you spend too much of your time surrounded by people who fall more than one standard deviation to the right on the intelligence bell curve. 84% of people are to the left of that, and can vote.
> Ultimately, who is the one most overtly putting their thumb on the scale here
The expression "putting their thumb on the scale" means influencing subtly and deceitfully, so China. I chose this expression intentionally.
> Do you really actually have the opinion that China is the most censorious here
Nowhere did I mention censorship. Its not merely about suppressing perspectives, it's about influencing them. Hong Kong is too obvious-- what about amplifying anti-AI sentiment to increase regulation and hobble AI progress in the US, giving a decisive advantage to China in the AI arms race? Amplifying anti-nuclear energy sentiment, to erode US energy security and create economic advantages for the Chinese solar industry?
I do agree w.r.t. the messiness of precedent, though.
> Nor would they encourage smartphone manufacturers to better sandbox users from profiling by apps, nor would they pass laws placing restrictions on the seedy data broker industry, nor would they pass laws preventing telcos from selling your data to the data brokers.
Even with this legislation, the Chinese government can just buy similar data from data brokers who aggregate it from Facebook, Google, Snapchat, Twitter and other social media outlets. Hell, they can probably just buy TikTok's data from data brokers too - the law doesn't block TikTok selling their data anymore than it blocks Facebook et al.
So... it's pretty clear this isn't really about surveilling U.S. citizens. That's just a convenient excuse. Per the WSJ's article today:
> "Lawmakers received classified briefings in which intelligence officials warned that China could use the app to spread Chinese propaganda and surveil Americans."
The other cited reason is "Chinese propaganda". But foreign governments already massively plant and promote propaganda across U.S. owned social networks - both overtly with paid ads and covertly with highly sophisticated astroturfing campaigns which manipulate social media recommendation algorithms. I'm not really sure the Chinese government theoretically having direct control of TikTok's algorithm vs indirectly manipulating the same algorithm from the outside is that big of a strategic advantage. Any manipulation has to be subtle because the TikTok algorithm has to remain highly optimized for retaining viewers as the highest priority. Pushing government favored propaganda has to be strictly limited so it doesn't nerf retention or become obvious.
Also, despite the massive resources foreign (and domestic) governments have dedicated to propagandizing social media, most experts think it hasn't been all that effective. It can occasionally shift broad public opinion a tiny bit but, like overt political advertising, more meaningful movement tends to be limited to partisans who already agreed anyway. The overall predictability, repeatability and ROI are falling while the costs of adapting to game the system and avoid detection continue to increase.
So, let me try to 'steel man' the government's case here... if the Chinese government actually does control TikTok's algorithm and data in a meaningful way, and assuming this actually gives them a significant effectiveness advantage and/or cost discount, maybe the true purpose of the U.S. legislation is to force the Chinese government to pay the same costs the U.S. government, U.S. political parties and foreign governments have to pay when trying to manipulate social media? Even assuming all that to be true, it doesn't sound important enough to be worth trying to tiptoe around the first amendment. Maybe the primary driver really is just political grandstanding and appearing to "do something" on an issue that naively appears 'important' to most voters. (As usual, it doesn't matter that the "something" being done won't change much. The important thing is appearing to do it.)
I'm surprised the US doesn't have 'reciprocity' laws that target the Chinese practices.
General reciprocity is a bad idea, because many laws suck and are a net bad for the country implementing them. Reciprocal tariffs are common, but harmful to the countries that implement them — if you're in a boat and the other guy shoots a hole in it, you don't get back at him by shooting another hold in the boat, and the threat of reciprocal tariffs usually doesn't work to get the original tariffs rescinded.
I think it's more about the game theory of (MAD) than actual impact. The ideal state is reputation of reciprocity without actually having to do it. But because the US has a policy of openness / rich people in the US want to sell stuff made cheaply... it's fairly one way.
In the 1970s, the USSR would literally just buy the latest US chips. No need for much crazy subterfuge and honeypots - go to conference, find someone with chips who likes cash, and buy them. That's what led to the crypto bans in the 1990s, where software that implemented cryptographic technology couldn't be exported - as if bits cared much about crossing borders and clickwraps!
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Why would US have a law that says "We'll enact every Chinese law, therefore changing US into China itself"?!
That's not what they're suggesting.
They're noting that digital services have come to look more like traditional goods, and reasonably warrant analogous trade policies. If a foreign market bans or regulates some good on import, reciprocity just suggests applying an equivalent measure on their exports.
Here, China restricts many US social media products, which a free market advocate would call an unfair distortion of the market, that deserves to be balanced by reciprocal restrictions on their social media products. (perhaps in the hopes of pressuring China to stand down their restricitions and "play fair")
And to legislate any of that, there's no need for something fundamentally misguided like "a law that automatically copies legislation of another country without control".
US Government can legislate those restrictions, it's what its there for. This isn't software.
Sounds like this could be the premise for a chapter in the book "Invisible Cities":
I shall now explain to the city of Fransisca, the blue city upon who's golden shores the azure waves drift over, and above which a sapphire sky is rent asunder by the golden sun, bringing an ever so grand glistening upon its ember shores. But above Fransisca, beyond it's beaches and waters, lies another city, marked by furling banners of red, whoe jealousy of Fransisca has caused it to erect a barrier so as to not see its flourishing. Fransisca with her petulance at seeing the barrier erect, so too constructed a barrier upon her shores. Concrete slabs covering her beaches, costal grasslands made way to fences. In this way Fransisca became a mirror image of her overseas counterpart. And the crimson city, unable to see Fransisca eventual forgot why the barriers were build. One by one each stone brick was removed. Parking lots were raised in who's place grasslands grew. And in such a manner the crimson city became Fransisca. Actually, Fransisca has always been the crimson city and what we know today as Fransisca is actually the city of red banners of old. Time will tell if the true Fransisca will be remembered.
Note that china blocks all foreign companies while this bill blocks only foreign adversaries of the US (china, Russia, Iran, NK) while maintaining free trade with all the other places in the world.
It would only apply to Chinese companies, thus the reciprocity.
You can only take the ideology olympics so far in geopolitical warfare
Tik for tat exists, but only when you can have a clear communication about it. Veritasium did a piece about it for explaining for layman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScpHTIi-kM
If the US attempted to pass reciprocal laws for every Chinese policy, America would go bankrupt within the month.
before when I was naive - I thoughts courts were impartial or I believed they were.
but now court rulings lean politically depending on who appointed the judge or the judge's personal beliefs.
They're also available for purchase by bribing the justices, as seen with Clarence Thomas. https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-un... I don't see any reason to regards the court's verdicts as legitimate, especially since they invented the immunity ruling out of whole cloth.
The NPR podcast series More Perfect is quite interesting, about this, they should have an episode called 'The Political Thicket' or something like that.
In addition to politics is how they interpret the job of being a judge. Is it to judge a case on the laws that are written given the context they were written in? Is it to interpret laws based on a different context? This leads to different outcomes.
Yes it does.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Originalism
Originalism is a school of judicial philosophy. It is not the only one, and has fallen in and out of favor over time.
Courts have their own politics which usually exist on a different spectrum than cable news politics.
Recently the courts have gained more power through congressional dysfunction. If congress doesn't like how the court interprets a law they can just amend it.
That's pretty much always been the case, but it has never been more blatant than now.
Eh, it was. The Lochner era was about the same as it is today. It was also arguably the same during the Warren court.
The main thing that has changed is this court has decided that past rulings do not matter. That's what is going to really cause a lot of chaos in the courts as time goes on.
I suspect there are other cases where you would think the court overturning precedent was a good thing.
Prior to this court, the last time the court overturned precedent was Brown v Board of education. Historically the court has pretty much never overturned precedent. That's new with this court.
To provide just one counterexample to this obviously false claim, South Dakota v. Wayfair (2018)[1] directly overturned https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quill_Corp._v._North_Dakota (1992)[2], which had ruled that mail order (including online) purchases were not subject to sales tax unless the seller had a physical presence in the state. South Dakota v. Wayfair was a 5-4 decision, but not on partisan lines.
You can see several more cases here: https://chatgpt.com/share/676316b1-9be0-8008-9586-6181324b11...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Wayfair,_Inc.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quill_Corp._v._North_Dakota
That was this court, the Roberts Court.
And further, the 5 in favor was the conservative wing of the supreme court +Ginsberg -Roberts. The reason Roberts dissented was Stare decisis.
Notice that from your chatgpt query, the majority of the cases were from 201X and beyond.
We are now at the point where nearly yearly we are seeing prior precedent overturned. Prior to that it was something that happened maybe once per decade.
Either overturning precedent is acceptable or it isn't. It can't be acceptable but only when I agree with it.
That's binary thinking which I reject.
Something isn't always good or always wrong. Overturning precedent may be the right thing to do, it isn't always right. This court's excessive overturning of precedent is Judicial activism that isn't going to be good and in particular is attacking individual liberties.
One major issue with making everything a jump ball is lower courts can no longer rely on precedent to make rulings. It means all lower courts get to make decisions based on politics and, who knows, the supreme court might uphold their whims in the best case. It means that when you go to court or anyone else, you cannot have a reasonable guess at what outcome can be achieved which bloats the entire Judicial system for everyone.
https://www.txst.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definition...
You can learn more about binary thinking in a logic course.
I'd argue its even less blatant today it just appears more blatant because you can see the happenings on the other side of the country in an instant on your personal cell phone. As can anyone else.
Related:
TikTok divestment law upheld by federal appeals court
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42340959
TikTok Asks Supreme Court to Block Law Banning Its U.S. Operations
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42436587
US lawmakers tell Apple, Google to be ready to remove TikTok from stores Jan. 19
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42427132
What is the difference with Reddit? Tencent/Jack Ma is still a major shareholder, and listed as a director, giving him special access to Reddit's internals.
Congress plus the President's signing authority have massive power and broad latitude to make decisions. I don't think TikTok stands a chance really. I wonder if there is a place I could bet on it.
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Trump said he'd save tik tok and if he does, he should be allowed to run for a 3rd term because he'd win easily.
They need to squash the idea that corporations, foreign ones no less, have speech that's protected.
If internet platforms do have speech then they should be liable for it.
> 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.
Show me in the text where Congress has the power to make that distinction.
I think there’s a good free trade argument to block a service from a country that blocks all other similar services from our country and the world generally, but I don’t see an a speech argument for doing so.
If there’s a speech argument to be made, I think Facebook, YouTube, Twitter et al. should have blocked accounts from the PRC to prevent CCP officials from using it to spread their own propaganda in the West whilst not being able to freely and legally operate and do business in the PRC’s jurisdiction, but I don’t think Congress actually has the power to compel them to stop being gutless on this issue.
Overturning Citizen's United would be sweet.
The point of Citizens United was that American citizens don't lose their rights to speech if they organize together.
What limits do you think are appropriate to individual speech when people get organized?
I reject the notion that money is protected speech. Individuals can spend unlimited amounts of time and words on a campaign.
Unlimited time and unlimited words seem to have little utility if you can't get them in front of others.
You can write a book or pamphlet, but it is little use if you cant pay to publish it.
I'm not saying that the limit should be $0. The Canadian limit of $2000 per voter seems reasonable to me. You can print a lot of pamphlets for $2000.
Do you think two people should be able to split a $4000 printing cost?
Citizens United was a ruling about pooling resources, opposed to a ruling against financial limits.
There are several constitutionally upheld limitations on campaign contributions.
> There are several constitutionally upheld limitations on campaign contributions.
With loopholes big enough to drive a bus through.
sure, but that has nothing to do with CU, which is my point.
It has everything to do with CU. They haven't fixed the loopholes because of CU.
The association thing is a red herring. Pretty much every other country in the world has a reasonable solution to the problem. If the limit is $2000 you can spend $2000 on your own or an organization can spend $2000 on behalf of you, or some mix.
Sure, and citizens united doesn't prevent that. It says that your ability to send $2,000 doesn't go away when you are part of an organization.
If a corporation has a million shareholders that can each spend $2000, that is a hell of a lot of political donation.
> If a corporation has a million shareholders that can each spend $2000, that is a hell of a lot of political donation.
That corporation is not going to get permission from all million shareholders to completely use up their entire contribution limit.
Election finance laws that the state is the one that bankrolls the campaigns would go a long way to it.
Would it? Where would you place the limit on individual political speech?
Section 230 as well
TikTok isn't 'foreign', it's a Delaware corporation. Its parent company is foreign.
If you think having a foreign parent company is somehow a magic loophole in the 1st Amendment, do you think the US government can force say Politico to take down anything critical they write? After all, their parent company is in Germany
Politico is liable for what they write
The current bar under the 1st Amendment is very high
I have a hard time believing that this supreme court, congress, or presidency, will have any interest in taking away corporate speech rights.