11 ms·

But why didn't Supreme Court find the first ammendment arguments compelling? As per first ammendment it is legal and protected to print/distribute/disseminate e

• blindriver 2y ago
  First amendment rights is the only argument that I agree with keeping TikTok alive. However if there is proof that China is manipulating the algorithm to feed the worst manipulative content to Americans then I do think there’s a national security concern here.
  • p_j_w 2y ago
    There are no carve outs for national security in the First Amendment.
    • nickelpro 2y ago
      The SCOTUS opinion does not rely on a national security interest to justify itself, merely that the ban is content neutral and thus is subject to intermediate scrutiny.
      • throwaway199956 2y ago
        What does intermediate scrutiny mean?
        • nickelpro 2y ago
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate_scrutiny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate_scrutiny
    • smt88 2y ago
      Yes there are. The First Amendment is limited by compelling government interest, which (in practice) means it can be fairly arbitrarily by SCOTUS. https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/post/what-the-first-amendment-really-says-4-basic-principles-of-free-speech-in-the-u-s/ https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/post/what-the-first-amendmen...
    • Spunkie 2y ago
      This is an especially superficial take, sure the Constitution says nothing about national security but reality sure does... Any person that has ever gotten a security clearance has given up some of their first amendment rights to do it and if they talk about the wrong thing to the wrong person they will absolutely go to jail. And as always the classic example of free speech being limited still stands. Go yell FIRE in a crowded movie and see how your dumbass 1st amendment argument keeps you out of jail.
      • xigency 2y ago
        Bit of a non-sequitor here but the classic example of yelling 'Fire' in a theater has me thinking about public safety. Obviously there have been many crowd-crush related injuries and fatalities throughout history. But we've also come a long way since the 1800's or 1900's with fire drills, emergency exits, etc. It almost seems like any hazard or danger from a false alarm (intentional or otherwise) should be the liability of the owners or operators of a property for unsafe infrastructure or improper safety briefing. Anyway, I don't expect that to appear as a major legal issue, given this is primarily used as a rhetorical example.
  • throwaway199956 2y ago
    "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech". First ammendment protections have no National security caveats.
    • kube-system 2y ago
      That is completely false. There are many exceptions to the first amendment which the court has decided don't abridge the freedom of speech. A classic example of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threatening_the_president_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threatening_the_president_of_t...
      • CamperBob2 2y ago
        The courts can say anything they want, and they did... but then, so could the authors of the First Amendment, and they didn't.
        • kube-system 2y ago
          I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make, but the law is whatever congress has passed, whatever the courts have interpreted, and whatever the executive executes. People who read the Constitution and make up their own interpretation clearly missed the part about the separation of powers and the role of the judiciary.
          • CamperBob2 2y ago
            I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make, but the law is whatever congress has passed, whatever the courts have interpreted, and whatever the executive executes. My point is, the First Amendment tells Congress not to do that. What exactly does "shall make no law" mean to you? Be specific.
            • deleted 2y ago
              [deleted]
  • croes 2y ago
    Lets face the truth, the user get what they want, no need to manipulate. Just look at US social media sites. It’s not like they push MINT content, do they?
  • parineum 2y ago
    Bytedance was trying to make your argument. The ruling is that the first ammendment doesn't apply and that was always a stretch for Bytedance as illustrated by the unanimous decision.
  • insane_dreamer 2y ago
    > However if there is proof that China is manipulating the algorithm it doesn't matter whether they have manipulated the algorithm so far; the issue is that they have the _ability_ to manipulate the algorithm if they choose to. It's not hard to imagine how big of a problem this would be if China and the US indirectly went to war over Taiwan, for example.
• stefan_ 2y ago
  Because this is not about the first amendment? This just happens to be a company that runs a social network. Congress regulates commerce with foreign nations and made the decision, as it has in many other cases, that a foreign nation can not be the beneficial owner of TikTok. TikTok then made no effort to divest, giving away the game if you want, and predictably lost this challenge.
  • nickelpro 2y ago
    The arguments presented to the SCOTUS and the opinion itself are totally contained within the context of the First Amendment. No one is even arguing about anything other than the First Amendment and the exceptions permitted to that amendment.
    • stefan_ 2y ago
      Well, yes, because that is the only hope TikTok had - to claim it was targeted because of the speech on TikTok, and not because this is a very boring case of regulating commerce, which as said is well established and has lots of precedent. And their expensive lawyers made it happen, when they should have been looking for buyers. And then SCOTUS unanimously said nah.
      • nickelpro 2y ago
        SCOTUS fully agreed that the law violates the First Amendment as written, it wasn't even a question at any level from the district court on up. The decision was balanced on strict or intermediate scrutiny. At the distict court level it was observed that the case should probably be decided via intermediate scrutiny, but they upheld the ban under strict scrutiny due to "national security concerns". The SCOTUS didn't bother with strict scrutiny or national security, and decided that the correct analysis was intermediate scrutiny and that the ban merely needed to serve a compelling government interest (which regulation of applications controlled by foreign adversaries meets). It's entirely about speech, the only question in the entire case as decided at the district and SCOTUS level was speech. Whether the government should be allowed to violate the 1st Amendment due to compelling interest is everything the case turns on. Personally, I think using intermediate scrutiny here is wild.
• iLoveOncall 2y ago
  TikTok doesn't do speech. Users on TikTok do speech. Banning TikTok doesn't prevent any users from printing / distributing / disseminating their speech. The first amendment doesn't have any provision regarding the potential reach or enablement of distribution of the speech of the people.
  • cududa 2y ago
    That last sentence needs to be taught in every civics class. They could have a week of the teacher repeating that single sentence for the entire period
  • gmd63 2y ago
    Agreed. TikTok allows people to speak into the app, and to receive speech, but the act of organizing and strategically disseminating the speech is not speech -- it's societal scale hormone regulation and should be controlled for the health of the national body. It's wild that so many people are up in arms about TikTok when it is a Chinese app that is banned in China, where apps are heavily restricted. For anyone who does consider these algorithms speech, I challenge you to share a single person at any social media company who has taken direct responsibility over a single content feed of an individual user. How can speech exist if nobody is willing to take ownership of it?
    • Cookingboy 2y ago
      >the act of organizing and strategically disseminating the speech is not speech It is, and the court acknowledged that editorial control is protected speech. The ruling was made based on data privacy ground, not First Amendment Speech ground.
      • joshfee 2y ago
        The case law around editorial control is at odds with most platforms' section 230 protection, which makes the fact that TikTok argued that its algorithm _is_ speech pretty different from how most platforms have argued to date (in order to preserve their section 230 protections)
• nickelpro 2y ago
  There weren't any laws passed banning Soviet associated agencies from publishing based on chain of ownership. Nothing to do with SCOTUS. Read the opinion, the law was upheld on intermediate scrutiny. It doesn't ban based on content, it bans based on the designation of the foreign parent as an adversary. Since it's not a content ban, or rather because it's a content-neutral ban, strict scrutiny does not apply. Without strict scrutiny, the law merely needs to fulfill a compelling government interest.
  • DangitBobby 2y ago
    The motivation was based on content, so the actual text of the law shouldn't matter. Such acts have been overturned before (see the Muslim ban) based on motivation.
    • nickelpro 2y ago
      Speech and immigration are completely different areas of the law, there's no useful legal point of comparison in this context. The motivation is largely irrelevant to the analysis of this case. What matters is what effects the law has and what services it provides the government. So for example, the law technically doesn't ban TikTok at all, but rather mandates divestiture. However, the timeline wasn't realistic to manage such a divestiture, so the court recognized that the law is effectively a ban. The effect is what matters. Similarly, the law provides a mechanism for the President to designate any application meeting a set of criteria a "foreign adversary controlled application". The court recognizes that the government has a compelling interest in restricting foreign adversaries from unregulated access to the data of US citizens, and the law services that interest. The law represents a restriction on freedom of expression, TikTok is banned, but the law also represents a compelling government interest. To determine the winner of these two motivations, the court has established various thresholds a law must overcome. The relevant threshold in this case was determined to be Intermediate Scrutiny, and a compelling government interest is sufficient to overcome intermediate scrutiny.
      • DangitBobby 2y ago
• _2d30 2y ago
  Because there is no "TikTok" ban and never has been. There is a "TikTok cannot be controlled by the CCP" law. TikTok is completely legal under the law as long as they divest it. However, in a great act of self-incrimination, Bytedance (de facto controlled by CCP) has decided to not divest and would rather shutdown instead.
  • pradn 2y ago
    > "de facto controlled by CCP" Where is the evidence for this?
    • gWPVhyxPHqvk 2y ago
      As evidenced that TikTok would rather shut down than continue to print money in the US
    • derektank 2y ago
      Committees representing the interests of the Chinese Communist Party exist inside of most major corporations in China. It would not be possible to operate a company like ByteDance without acquiescing to government interference https://www.seafarerfunds.com/prevailing-winds/party-committees-in-chinese-companies/ https://www.seafarerfunds.com/prevailing-winds/party-committ...
    • sadeshmukh 2y ago
      https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/18/tech/tiktok-bytedance-china-ownership-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/18/tech/tiktok-bytedance-china-o... > However, like most other Chinese companies, ByteDance is legally compelled to establish an in-house Communist Party committee composed of employees who are party members. > In 2018, China amended its National Intelligence Law, which requires any organization or citizen to support, assist and cooperate with national intelligence work. > That means ByteDance is legally bound to help with gathering intelligence. I would say yes.
    • barbazoo 2y ago
      https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/03/12/5-things-to-know-about-bytedance-tiktoks-parent-company/ https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/03/12/5-things-to-know-abo... I found the first three alone quite compelling: > ByteDance is Closely Connected to China’s Military-Industrial Complex > ByteDance is Bound by Chinese State Surveillance Laws > ByteDance’s Board is Beholden to Beijing
• beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
  > But why didn't Supreme Court find the first ammendment arguments compelling? As per first ammendment it is legal and protected to print/distribute/disseminate even enemy propaganda in the USA. > Even at the height of cold war for example Soviet Publications were legal to publish, print and distribute in the USA. That was explicitly brought up in oral arguments by the court, and the response by the US Gov was: "The act is written to be content neutral." The court's opinion explains that they agree the law is "appropriately tailored" to remain content neutral. Whether it's "enemy propaganda" or not is, in their view, irrelevant to the application of the law. TikTok can exist in America, using TikTok is not banned, the owner just can't be a deemed "foreign adversary", which there is a history of enforcement (to some degree).
  • throwaway199956 2y ago
    Like such cannot be enforced for example against foreign radio stations or print publications. Then how do court justify that it stands in the case of an app.
    • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
      As I understand, a print publication can't have a business entity in the US if it's owned by a foreign adversary. Given that, an American could still travel to the foreign country themselves and bring an issue back. That would be similar to side loading apps. In order to comply with the law, Apple and Google cannot distribute the app because it is deemed to be unlawfully owned by a foreign adversary; that's the ban. But anyone who wants to get it through other means can still do so. Presuming that's how it works, it doesn't seem to be logically different from radio/print media.
      • throwaway199956 2y ago
        Soviet Life Magazine for example was printed and sold in the US by the Soviet Embassy.
        • deleted 2y ago
• psunavy03 2y ago
  This case was not about speech. It was about a vehicle for speech having a high risk of being used for espionage and PSYOPS. If TikTok was the only vehicle available for people to post on the internet, then maybe the First Amendment argument would hold water. This decision doesn't tell people they can't speak any more than, say, shutting down a specific TV station or newspaper which has been used for money laundering or which is broadcasting obscene content.
  • nickelpro 2y ago
    The case is entirely about speech, and the various levels of scrutiny that apply to laws that violate the First Amendment. You should read the decision before commenting on what was argued and decided in said decision.
• paxys 2y ago
  Creating and distributing in the USA, sure. That is allowed. This is why the government isn't regulating Chinese content on Instagram, for example. The issue here is that TikTok "content" (aka the algorithm that decides what content you get to see) is created abroad and controlled from abroad. The data collected by the app goes abroad. So then it becomes an import/export issue, and the government can and does regulate that. This is why the government has already agreed to letting TikTik be run by a US entity. You can have the same content and same algorithm, just kept within the borders of the USA.
• thinkingtoilet 2y ago
  The first amendment doesn't apply here. You can say whatever you want anywhere else on the internet. You can print what you want anywhere you want. You can distribute what you want anywhere you want. Bytedance refused to sell TikTok so it's being shut down. They could divest, but they didn't.
  • throwaway199956 2y ago
    That is not the point of the First Ammendment, it is that Government cannot stop anyone from saying/printing/dissemination of content. So question if government has power to do so. Can they ban RT? Or even the BBC, if the government found it wise to do so?
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > first amendment doesn't apply here It absolutely does. (It’s in the opinion.) It just isn’t the Wild Draw 4 some people imagine it to be. You can’t commit fraud or libel or false advertising and claim First Amendment protection. Similarly, there are levels of scrutiny when the government claims national security to shut down a media platform.
    • kopecs 2y ago
      > It absolutely does. (It’s in the opinion.) The opinion actually assumes without deciding that First Amendment scrutiny applies, so I don't think it "absolutely" does. (But yes, it probably does and Sotomayor and Gorsuch would decide as much)
• tw18328 2y ago
  Print media is different. It is much more exhausting to read a newspaper because critical thinking circuits are automatically engaged. You are more removed from the content because everything is in the physical world. And even within a single newspaper there are so many different topics that it is hard to be in a bubble. The Internet automatically leads to bubble creation, 200 character messages and indoctrination. It is more like loudspeakers they had in villages during Mao's tenure blaring politically correct messages. Or like the Volksempfänger (radio) during the Nazi era. Interestingly, many of the most destructive revolutions happened after the widespread use of radio. Of course the Internet isn't nearly as bad, but most people are completely unable to even consider a view outside of their indoctrination bubble.
  • throwaway199956 2y ago
    As far as first ammendment it does make no difference if it is print or voice or online service.
• DoneWithAllThat 2y ago
  Like you can just go read the opinion. It goes into detail on exactly this question and is easy to understand.
• ruilov 2y ago
  The replies here seem slightly off base. The Court acknowledges that 1s amm. free speech issues are at play. A law can regulate non-expressive activity (corporate ownership) while still burdening expressive activity, which is the case here. In such instances, the Court grants Congress more leeway compared to laws explicitly targeting speech. It checks that (1) the govt has an important interest unrelated to speech (it does), and (2) the law burdens no more speech than necessary (arguable, but not obviously wrong)
  • DangitBobby 2y ago
    My reading of it is they didn't bother to take the motivation of the law into account (suppression of speech), and only took the law "as written" to decide. > We need not decide whether that exclusion is content based. The question be- fore the Court is whether the Act violates the First Amend- ment as applied to petitioners. To answer that question, we look to the provisions of the Act that give rise to the effective TikTok ban that petitioners argue burdens their First Amendment rights...
    • kopecs 2y ago
      The quote you posted is about if the exclusion of platforms "whose primary purpose is to allow users to post product reviews, business reviews, or travel information and reviews" means the law is content-based, but the Court is saying that provision is irrelevant because TikTok brought an "as-applied" challenge (and not a facial one) [0] and that provision doesn't change how it applies to them. So they are looking at the parts of the law (and the congressional record supporting them) which actually cause TikTok to be subject to the qualified divestiture. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_challenge
      • DangitBobby 2y ago
        Right, I'm saying they based it on on the "text" of the law, instead of the motivation. At what point in the ruling did they wonder what motivated the effective ban? "5 why's" it, so to speak. Did they ever say, "because X, Y, and Z, it is clear the intent of the law is not to prevent speech of certain parties"?
• nashashmi 2y ago
  The justices said this was not about first amendment. It was about security and securing the users in the country
  • DangitBobby 2y ago
    And what specifically is causing the security issue. Is it speech?
    • wyre 2y ago
      Privacy
      • DangitBobby 2y ago
        I'm not buying it. They don't care about privacy violations for any American companies.
        • accrual 2y ago
          It's about controlling the narrative. A broad group of US citizens use TikTok to discuss social inequality, class warfare, and other topics that would give people, individually and collectively, more power and US billionaires have no say in it.
          • nashashmi 2y ago
            Correct
      • nashashmi 2y ago
        That was the implication that the DOJ lawyer proposed. But privacy was not the actual security issue that made this law. The security issue that made this law was the US could not stop the media narrative propagated by an adversary. The bin laden letter got popular on TikTok as well before it was taken down. And lawmakers feared this was the start.
• gwbas1c 2y ago
  To oversimplify: You can say whatever you want on a telephone call. BUT: The telephone network is regulated. Your cell phone must comply with FCC regulations. You personally may have a restraining order that prohibits you from calling certain people. IE, if a phone is found to violate FCC rules, pulling it from the market has little to do with the first amendment.
  • DangitBobby 2y ago
    If these FCC rules were designed specifically with the intent to suppress speech of certain parties, they could be found in violation of your first amendment rights if challenged. IMO the ruling does not bother to examine whether the motivation of drafting the Act was to suppress speech.
  • pantalaimon 2y ago
    The FCC doesn't make rules based on who owns the telephone though.
    • SkyPuncher 2y ago
      Actually, they kind of do. > US bans sale of Huawei, ZTE tech amid security fears https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63764450 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63764450 This was an FCC rule
    • insane_dreamer 2y ago
      A better analogy are TV stations, which cannot be owned by a foreign entity, and why Murdoch became a US citizen (or he would not have been able to own Fox).
• fuzzfactor 2y ago
  >But why didn't Supreme Court find the first ammendment arguments compelling? Apparently the owners of the operation are not US citizens operating in the USA and don't have any first amendment rights because that's part of the US Constitution and doesn't apply to other countries.
• adrr 2y ago
  US has banned foreign ownership of TV/Radio stations for over a 100 years.
• sophacles 2y ago
  The entire notion that there's a free speech angle here is a disingenuous red herring by Tik Tok to muddy the waters. Speech is in no way being limited or compelled - you can say the exact same thing on dozens of other platforms without consequence. You can even say it on tik tok without consequence. You can even publish videos from tik tok in the US just fine. This law is about what types of foreign corporation can do business in the US, and what sorts of corporate governance structures are allowed.
  • joejohnson 2y ago
    This is false. There is absolutely content on TikTok critical of the US, Israel, western businesses, etc that is boosted by TikTok’s algorithm and effectively censored or hidden on many American-owned social networks,
• yieldcrv 2y ago
  Because it has the option for selling If the option wasnt there, it would have stricter first amendment scrutiny They could have still banned it other ways though and the first amendment aspect is also torn apart in other ways in the court ruling
• cryptonector 2y ago
  > But why didn't Supreme Court find the first ammendment arguments compelling? Read the decision. They thought the act was content-neutral, and they thought that the espionage concerns were sufficient to reach a decision w/o having to involve the First Amendment. Gorsuch and Sotomayor weren't quite so sure as to the First Amendment issues, but in any case all nine justices found that they could avoid reaching the First Amendment issues, so they did just that.
• geuis 2y ago
  Text publications don't run software that reports to adversarial countries.
• HamsterDan 2y ago
  [flagged]
• eviks 2y ago
  Because the 1a protections are not very strong despite the foundational myths, and neither do the judges value this right highly, it is often trumped by "security", so this isn't a major erosion.
• insane_dreamer 2y ago
  > why didn't Supreme Court find the first ammendment arguments compelling because it's not about whether TikTok can operate, nor is about content on TikTok it's about ownership and control of the platform
• herbst 2y ago
  Because America, obviously, needs their own great Firewall. I don't see any other reason. Also no idea what you are talking about, a country that has values like this doesn't ban random social media sites and propagates them as bad propaganda without evidence.