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EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

207 points by HAL3000 2y ago

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
[flagged]
- ajross 2y ago
  ISP immunity has absolutely nothing to do with this case, which is a regulatory law having to do with foreign ownership of media corporations. In point of fact TikTok, like all ISPs, relies on section 230 safe harbor to serve their user-generated content without repercussion.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
    Section 230 has nothing to do with ISPs
    - beschizza 2y ago
      Presumably "provider of service" rather than "service provider" ie "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by an other information content provider."
lolinder 2y ago
> Shutting down communications platforms or forcing their reorganization based on concerns of foreign propaganda and anti-national manipulation is an eminently anti-democratic tactic, one that the US has previously condemned globally. These platforms are fundamentally anti-democratic in their very nature, increasingly so in the age of LLMs. They're places where people buy a voice and the illusion of support by astroturfing the platform and/or manipulating the algorithm (either through paid advertisements or by owning a platform and controlling the algorithm outright). They're places where a small minority of people can become an unstoppable movement that seems to have real support, sucking gullible voters in to join the growing "consensus". In short, these platforms are places for manufacturing consent. The only sense in which banning one is anti-democratic is that it's selectively applied to tiktok instead of to all such platforms.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  > These platforms are fundamentally anti-democratic in their very nature The US Gov has a mandate to preserve and uphold democracy. Shuttering communication is prior restraint - an anti-democratic action. Platforms have no mandate to preserve and uphold democracy.
  - EarlKing 2y ago
    The state is under no obligation to allow known foreign propagandists attached to a known communist party to engage in activities well outside the protections of the first amendment. Of course, they don't HAVE to shutter. They can sell their interest in Tiktok and stay open. They have chosen not to do that thus far, and hence they have chosen to shutter.
  - sylware 2y ago
    "Forcing" people to be "free". If you want peace, you better prepare for war. It is forbidden to forbid. The necessary evil. All that to say, we live in a complicated world, and beautiful ideals are only a direction to keep, never to be reached.
  - spokaneplumb 2y ago
    Restricting who can own what, however… that’s long been fair game. In my dream world we’d get something like the rules we had, until fairly recently, restricting max broadcast media audience control in a given market for a single owner, but for Web platforms. Don’t like being limited to five million users or whatever? Then use a standard that puts control over curation and presentation in the hands of the user. Want to control all that, like all these awful platforms do? Then live with the limit.
    - jazzyjackson 2y ago
      Creative + precedence, I like it. How can we get the fediverse enough funding to lobby Congress?
  - lolinder 2y ago
delichon 2y ago
Given that the decision is unanimous just maybe it is in alignment with the constitution. If Clarence Thomas and Ketanji Jackson agree on something, that's some kind of signal.
- gjsman-1000 2y ago
  > “which would’ve led to the inescapable conclusion … had to be rejected as infringing … free speech” When the EFF sounds about as sane as a sovereign citizen… With friends like these, who needs enemies…
  - schoen 2y ago
    I worked at EFF for twenty years, and every iteration or incarnation of EFF would have said that it should be extraordinarily difficult for the government to prevent Americans from using foreign web sites or software. And that it should be extraordinarily difficult for the government to compel tech intermediaries to help block foreign sites or software. This would have been a bog-standard EFF position for the organization's entire existence. (I would say something even stronger than "extraordinarily difficult", but then I'd be on thinner ice.)
    - munchler 2y ago
      It required specific legislation to ban TikTok. I would say that's pretty extraordinary. I think even the EFF should admit that allowing the Chinese government to control a major American social media app is an unacceptable security risk.
      - hedora 2y ago
        The second paragraph of the EFF statement says the ban provides insufficient protection of US security.
        munchler 2y ago
        > The United States’ foreign foes easily can steal, scrape, or buy Americans’ data by countless other means. True, but that's not the point. > Shutting down communications platforms or forcing their reorganization based on concerns of foreign propaganda and anti-national manipulation is an eminently anti-democratic tactic, one that the US has previously condemned globally. Sorry, that might've been true for old media, but social media is way more insidious.
arlattimore 2y ago
I’m not sure what order things go in, but I’d have thought national security concerns trump the need of its’ citizens to freely watch cat videos Those people publishing to TikTok were probably on Instagram and if they weren’t, they will be now if they want to reach the same American audience.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  > I’d have thought national security concerns trump the need of its’ citizens to freely watch cat videos You'd be wrong. What value would a concept like the First Amendment have if it were voidable as easily as "we have national security concerns" or "the information on there isn't valuable." Given that those are pretty much the immediate go-to excuses for any autocrats clamp down on speech, such a right would be totally meaningless.
  - ipython 2y ago
    However forcing TikTok to divest of foreign ownership is not restricting the rights of Americans to express their opinions. Americans are free to widely exercise their first amendment rights- the TikTok order to divest foreign ownership doesn’t affect those users ability to speak. The first amendment does not guarantee you access to a specific platform- it means that the bar for the government to imprison you for speech is very high (you can be held in contempt for lying under oath, for example) I would argue that in this case the platform itself is expressing speech by ranking, recommending and promoting certain content. A foreign entity has no such first amendment right- we have had restrictions on foreign ownership of news media for decades now. I think it’s an interesting issue especially now that you have TikTok users who think they’re being treated unfairly moving to a pure Chinese platform RedNote and encountering actual censorship. https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/01/16/tech/tiktok-refugees-rednote-china-censorship-intl-hnk https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/01/16/tech/tiktok-refugees-redn.... And now unconfirmed reports that RedNote is considering segregating the new American users from the Chinese users, ironically so Americans couldn’t influence Chinese users - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/rednote-may-wall-off-tiktok-refugees-to-prevent-us-influence-on-chinese-users/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/rednote-may-wall...
tehjoker 2y ago
[flagged]
x3n0ph3n3 2y ago
I don't often disagree with the EFF. Strange times.
- ipython 2y ago
  I disagree with the EFF here too but I am so happy that there is a good faith well reasoned argument on the other side. This struggle is what makes democracy work.
- parkaboy 2y ago
  Yeah this is a weird one where their m.o. on privacy/security are at odds with their first amendment side of things...sounds like the latter won out. I also disagree with them on this. This isn't something like net neutrality. It's one of many privately-owned social media platforms and one such with deeply privacy-invasive software that has adversarial foreign ties against the US.
  - parkaboy 2y ago
    Adding: commenter @schoen's above comment is making me second guess myself on this. I'm pretty torn.
  - hedora 2y ago
    There’s a simple, obvious and overwhelmingly popular solution to this problem that respects free speech and privacy. Unlike the current law, it wouldn’t blatantly violate the constitution by targeting a specific group: Apply reasonable privacy and transparency rules to all social media platforms, regardless of ownership. I’m not sure the EFF really needs to spell it out at this point.
    - loeg 2y ago
      Yeah the reasonable privacy and transparency rule here is "don't be an arm of the PRC." It applies to all social media platforms.
  - whatshisface 2y ago
gorgoiler 2y ago
It is hard to love the notion that banning a third party’s app is infringing upon my own right to free speech. If it were a ban on the Internet then that seems to make more sense. It’s analogous to a ban on paper, pens, or bullhorns. I can be sympathetic to the idea that, for some people, one particular proprietary app is their main tool for expression, even if that’s hardly ideal. A ban on routers made by a specific foreign company — when the government knows full well the Internet can’t work without them — feels like a more likely scenario. When Huawei equipment bans were in the news, were there similar First Amendment arguments about that, too?
- ranger_danger 2y ago
  if youtube was being banned instead for the same reason (pretend it was owned by ByteDance), would you feel the same way? what about any other website/platform that you like? what if this was YOUR business getting banned?
  - ipython 2y ago
    What’s interesting about this argument is that the playing field is highly asymmetric between the us and china. China explicitly firewalls out large amounts of the internet from its population. If you want to do business via an e-commerce in china, you cannot do so without explicit permission, license and partial Chinese equity share - for example https://developers.cloudflare.com/china-network/concepts/icp/ https://developers.cloudflare.com/china-network/concepts/icp... On the other hand, we have much more relaxed restrictions going the other way. Why not consider “fairness” from that perspective as well?
    - anramon 2y ago
      China doesn't pretend to be a democracy, so as they don't are nor pretend to be a democracy the rest of us should abandon democracy? Should be stop begin democratic because China isn't?
      - ipython 2y ago
whoitwas 2y ago
I agree with the ban on security basis, but could this be abused by countries to sabotage companies? China could buy majority shares of a company and force them out of business.
- lolinder 2y ago
  The company would have to be specifically added by the President to a list which currently is just ByteDance, it doesn't kick in automatically.
- loeg 2y ago
  We've just seen an example of the US blocking a sale on national security grounds -- we can block sales to China, too: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/us/politics/us-steel-nippon-biden.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/us/politics/us-steel-nipp...
  - whoitwas 2y ago
    Right, but an entity or a number of entities could buy shares in a small cap company to own a majority stake without scrutiny. Seems like a good way to do espionage since corporations are global and have protected status.
    - loeg 2y ago
      Mechanically, how are a number of small <10% shareholders actually going to exert their influence? I guess they can coordinate to get their chosen board members elected, but won't it be pretty obvious that there is a huge coalition of foreign shareholders coordinating on votes? I think they'd be in violation of SEC reporting requirements in an unsubtle way.
nialv7 2y ago
Never expected to see the EFF siding with a big tech company, and fighting for its right to profit from its users. Never expected to see the EFF dismiss an argument for user's data privacy as "shaky". Quite disappointed honestly.
- error_logic 2y ago
  There's a bigger picture in the question of precedent and risks created by the infrastructure to ban a platform like this. Unfortunately it seems the powers that be are dead set on pursuing destruction of not just specific competitors but, eventually, the entire notion of constructive competition and its win-win outcomes provided the right safety nets.
- nceqs3 2y ago
  >Never expected to see the EFF siding with a big tech company, and fighting for its right to profit from its users. The EFF routinely sides with big tech companies. See their work on copyrights, patents, etc. Tech figures fund them. See https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine
jmyeet 2y ago
So we know the real reason why the government banned Tiktok [1]: > [Manufacturing Consent] argues that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion", by means of the propaganda model of communication. Tiktok doesn't push government propaganda to the same degree as Meta and Google. But whoever pushed for this was smart enough to avoid making it about speech ("content-neutral" in legal parlance). It's strictly commerce-based and there's lots of precedent for denying access to the US market based on ownership. For a long time, possibly still to this day, foreign ownership of media outlets (particularly TV stations and newspapers) was heavily restricted. And that's a good analogy for what happened here. What I hope happens is people wake up to the manipulation of what you see by US companies. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
- fastball 2y ago
  > Tiktok doesn't push government propaganda to the same degree as Meta and Google. Do you have a source for this claim?
isodev 2y ago
It’s funny how they’re shutting down TikTok because it’s “manipulative and anti-democratic” while that’s a core trait of every algorithmic/engagement social media. Twitter and Threads should be banned as well then.
- monero-xmr 2y ago
  If the government can’t ban a business entity then doesn’t that say something about control? We have an app controlled by a communist dictatorship. They can keep the app running by selling it, but they won’t. What’s perplexing to me is leftists love how companies in America can be forced to sell and broken if they are declared monopolies. But if an app is declared an agent of foreign powers suddenly forcing a sale is wrong? It makes me feel even more certain that HN is astroturfed by Chinese bots because who cares
  - cbg0 2y ago
    Your last statement is a pretty silly generalization, and I don't think you need to bring in left/right extremes into this. For a lot of folks this is more about precedent on being able to ban anything the current establishment disagrees with, which has its own merits, even if you want to say that it's strictly being done because China controls it, which is not 100% of the reason why. I despise communism myself, as my country went through 45 years of it. I agree with TikTok being forced to sell, and I'd like to see all social media sites offer more transparency mechanisms to NGOs and government agencies to show how their algorithms really work to have some watchdog be able to check if what we're seeing is heavily manipulated, especially during election years.
  - _t9ow 2y ago
    > if an app is declared an agent of foreign powers I suspect that people pattern-match this declaration to McCarthyism. Additionally, the US has been invoking national security for a series of extremely dubious moves recently as well -- e.g. Biden's latest decision to block the sale of US Steel to Nippon on shaky grounds of national security, and his administration's recent policy to introduce export limits on GPUs to all countries except 18 (most US allies, NATO or otherwise, are now unjustly being restricted in how many GPUs they can import). Coupled with the incoming Trump administration's threats of trade war and expansionist designs on Greenland, people -- especially non-Americans, also in countries that have historically been friends of the US -- are very quickly running out of goodwill for the US, and in light of these events naturally the TikTok ban is seen as just another draconian attempt by the US to practise (economic) imperialism.
deleted 2y ago
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aaron695 2y ago
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baobun 2y ago
Huge creds to the EFF for speaking truth even when it is politically inconvenient (see comments here...) This ban is infringing of IMO fundamental rights of individuals in US to share and use the TikTok app freely. That China is doing similar things to their citizens can't be an excuse. Yeah I hate TikTok and its effect on society too and good riddance etc but this is a first for something very bad. We have to look at the larger picture.
Animats 2y ago
> The United States’ foreign foes easily can steal, scrape, or buy Americans’ data by countless other means. Yes, all they have to do is sign up for the usual services advertisers use.
dzogchen 2y ago
Extremely weak argument. Just because one platform is shut down does not mean the right to free speech is affected. A platform, mind you, under full control by the Chinese Communist Party, who do not allow ANY form of free speech to exist in the country they have under their thumb.
- loopdoend 2y ago
  Not to mention the app is already banned in China, along with many others.
- herbst 2y ago
  Building your own great Firewall definitely is a thread to your free speech. I don't know how this can't be extremely obvious.
  - mshroyer 2y ago
    It's because this isn't a content restriction. Anything that was speakable on TikTok remains speakable on platforms that aren't owned by U.S. adversaries. The distinction between this and China's "great firewall" and speech restrictions should be obvious.
    - herbst 2y ago
      The distinction between an US firewall and a Chinese firewall?
      - sampullman 2y ago
        Yes, there's currently a very clear distinction.
        herbst 2y ago
        Definitly. We need to find more things to block, otherwise it won't be the greatest firewall ever made.
throwaway984393 2y ago
[dead]
ripped_britches 2y ago
I was saying the same thing when they decided to take down Silk Road /s
quanto 2y ago
A former sausage maker here. I (used to) design these engagement/recommendation engines for a large corp, did academic research in the field, went to conferences, etc. In general, I wholehearted support the freedom of speech, and if it were any other case, I would agree with the EFF statement here. However, knowing how the sausages are made, I am reluctantly agreeing with the ban, at least for now. People underestimate how powerful these tools can be. Based on simple, readily available "anonymous" data, we can already impute your demographics data -- age, gender, family relations, occupation, income, etc -- using a decade-old ML techniques. In some cases, we can detect which stage of your emotional journey you are in and nudge you towards our target state. What surprised me about Cambridge Analytica was its ineffectiveness, at least as reported. There are plenty of teams out there that use these techniques to greatly further their gains, whatever those may be. In Primakov doctrine, information warfare through sowing discontent and/or eroding psychological well-being is very much real and actualizable. I am not claiming that a foreign government is currently single-handedly controlling TikTok to brainwash the American youth; we do not have conclusive proof of that. However, the fact that such a tool is in a foreign country's arsenal is itself a massive danger to America's national security.
- fulafel 2y ago
  > the fact that such a tool is in a foreign country's arsenal is itself a massive danger to America's national security This implies people outside the US should relate the same way to Meta, X, etc. (Which seems fine to me, just pointing it out)
  - quanto 2y ago
    yes, and they do. Even the US allies in Europe don't completely trust the US with their citizens data, hence the on-shore data requirements. This is despite the US is footing the bill for Ukraine and, by extension, defending Europe right now.
    - fulafel 2y ago
      Facebook and X blocking mostly happens in authoritarian nations, most places are more hands-off so far. A lot of climate change inaction propaganda for example comes from these platforms and is aligned with the new US presidency and Musk agenda, which is a bigger national security threat than anything in China-US relations or the Ukraine events.
arminiusreturns 2y ago
Damn the servile simp responses here are revealing. They are setting precedence and will use this on other things. Yes TikTok and many apps are used by many hostile foreign governments (Israel/Unit 8200 for example) (btw, RedNote got it's big boost when backed by Israeli investor Yuri Milner and his firm DST) for many psyop types... That doesn't mean you get to control what Americans can do on their devices. Boiling the frog...
deleted 2y ago
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blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
There are many good reasons to ban TikTok. For example, reciprocity on free trade. Why should Chinese companies get access to the American market when no western social media apps are allowed in China?
- herbst 2y ago
  Isn't that pure whataboutism?
- tzs 2y ago
  Reciprocity would be that American companies can access the Chinese market if they obey the same rules in the Chinese market that Chinese companies have to obey in the Chinese market, and Chinese companies can access the American market if they obey the same rules in the American market that American companies have to obey in the American market. Facebook and others were in the Chinese market but they got blocked because they would not censor things that the Chinese government wanted censored and would not turn over user information that the government asked for. Chinese social media companies also are subject to those same censorship and user disclosure requirements, and will be banned (or worse) if they do not comply. Would Facebook be allowed back in if they agreed to the censoring and to turning over user information? As far as I know none of the major American social media companies have been willing to do so, and so we don't know.
- latentcall 2y ago
  Why would China let American social media companies in? If they did, their people might start only caring about themselves and not their communities, might want to drive F150’s and eat hamburgers and take Ozempic.
gazchop 2y ago
Urgh sorry EFF but you’ve lost me on this one. There is actual harm done to democracy on these platforms. A democracy requires informed voters to function and the platform does the diametric opposite by misinforming them. Any attempt to regulate this or promote or moderate has failed simply because an actual structured funding source is misinformation. The only option to keep democracy standing is to kill it. I’d expect the EFF to have some well read social or political staff. Apparently they don’t and are quite happy to spout absolutes.
- BeFlatXIII 2y ago
  Democracy is when people are only allowed to speak truths.
  - EasyMark 2y ago
    bots and CCP trolls aren't really people doing good faith "truths" on the internet. Most of it is purely made up fiction
    - BeFlatXIII 2y ago
      Everyone who disagrees with bipartisan consensus is a bot, true.
benrutter 2y ago
Curious to hear from other people here. I'm UK citizen, and on the whole, my perception is that I'm much more concerned about the effect on democracy from US led fake news and social media (specifically Twitter, Facebook and Truth Social) than TikTok. I'm not making a case that that is justified, but I'm interested to know if other people in or outside the US share that perception?
glimshe 2y ago
I can no longer send money to the EFF due to their obvious misreading of the situation. They will lose $100s/year from me, I hope it was worth it. Clearly, a naive take that doesn't understand the nuances related to Tiktok's situation. Tiktok can still exist and keep showing their garbage to Americans, but it can't do so while being owned by a foreign adversary that attacks us almost continuously. Sure, they can still buy our information elsewhere, but this is like saying I shouldn't put a lock on my door because thieves can break in through other means. Just check the looting happening in Los Angeles as a result of the reduction in the barriers for theft. Cost matters and if we increase the costs for China's data theft, their ability to steal from us will be reduced.
- cromka 2y ago
  Yet when Europeans feel the same way about American manipulative social media and the US sees it as targeting its tech industry, you don’t see a bias? Are you OK with EU banning Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, too, because it goes against its own citizens rights and safety? Or, following your logic, should we demand they are sold to European owners? Why do you think it’s YOU who decides to be the gatekeeper on all that data and no one else? You see the double standards here? The hypocrisy?
  - EasyMark 2y ago
    I feel that Europe has exactly that very right, as I support our right to exorcise control of the CCP from TikTok and/or shut it down. I completely understand why they would.
  - glimshe 2y ago
    You can demand whatever you desire from your government. It's your country.
    - pastage 2y ago
      Can you expand and on this? Do you think EU should force every successful US company to divest their EU branches. I do not know where I stand on this but you seem to have a clear idea on this..
whycome 2y ago
I think TikTok gets special status because its algorithm is just SO GOOD. If instagram was Chinese owned/influenced, we wouldn’t see this kind of potential control. TikTok is probably building models from all possible data: what angle is the user sitting or lying down and how does that correlate to mood or desire.
pbiggar 2y ago
The shutdown is entirely because TikTok wouldn't suppress content about Palestine.
- latentcall 2y ago
  Yes pro-Palestinian content proliferated there.
  - bdangubic 2y ago
    [flagged]
russli1993 2y ago
All countries in the world, USA just showed it is perfectly fine to steal a foreign companies' asset. Let's do that to all USA companies, Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, Tesla, Boeing, Qualcomn, Intel, all of them. U know how rich you will be if you just got a piece of them? U know you could end homelessness, poverty, balance trade, stabilize your currency, elevate tax revenues, get free education and health care for your citizens, provide great jobs if you just got a piece of USA companies? Now you can! All of them can be Indian, Germany, France, UK, Poland, Brazilian, Mexican, Canadian, Kenyan, Egyptian companies. Everyone gets a piece, everyone gets them equally, everyone will benefit and be happy!
tracker1 2y ago
In the end, it's a security and sovereignty issue. A country can restrict foreign business, full stop. That said, I don't think banning tiktok will have the desired results.

207 points by HAL3000 2y ago

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

[flagged]

ajross 2y ago
ISP immunity has absolutely nothing to do with this case, which is a regulatory law having to do with foreign ownership of media corporations. In point of fact TikTok, like all ISPs, relies on section 230 safe harbor to serve their user-generated content without repercussion.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
  Section 230 has nothing to do with ISPs
  - beschizza 2y ago
    Presumably "provider of service" rather than "service provider" ie "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by an other information content provider."

lolinder 2y ago

> Shutting down communications platforms or forcing their reorganization based on concerns of foreign propaganda and anti-national manipulation is an eminently anti-democratic tactic, one that the US has previously condemned globally. These platforms are fundamentally anti-democratic in their very nature, increasingly so in the age of LLMs. They're places where people buy a voice and the illusion of support by astroturfing the platform and/or manipulating the algorithm (either through paid advertisements or by owning a platform and controlling the algorithm outright). They're places where a small minority of people can become an unstoppable movement that seems to have real support, sucking gullible voters in to join the growing "consensus". In short, these platforms are places for manufacturing consent. The only sense in which banning one is anti-democratic is that it's selectively applied to tiktok instead of to all such platforms.

WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
> These platforms are fundamentally anti-democratic in their very nature The US Gov has a mandate to preserve and uphold democracy. Shuttering communication is prior restraint - an anti-democratic action. Platforms have no mandate to preserve and uphold democracy.
- EarlKing 2y ago
  The state is under no obligation to allow known foreign propagandists attached to a known communist party to engage in activities well outside the protections of the first amendment. Of course, they don't HAVE to shutter. They can sell their interest in Tiktok and stay open. They have chosen not to do that thus far, and hence they have chosen to shutter.
- sylware 2y ago
  "Forcing" people to be "free". If you want peace, you better prepare for war. It is forbidden to forbid. The necessary evil. All that to say, we live in a complicated world, and beautiful ideals are only a direction to keep, never to be reached.
- spokaneplumb 2y ago
  Restricting who can own what, however… that’s long been fair game. In my dream world we’d get something like the rules we had, until fairly recently, restricting max broadcast media audience control in a given market for a single owner, but for Web platforms. Don’t like being limited to five million users or whatever? Then use a standard that puts control over curation and presentation in the hands of the user. Want to control all that, like all these awful platforms do? Then live with the limit.
  - jazzyjackson 2y ago
    Creative + precedence, I like it. How can we get the fediverse enough funding to lobby Congress?
- lolinder 2y ago

delichon 2y ago

Given that the decision is unanimous just maybe it is in alignment with the constitution. If Clarence Thomas and Ketanji Jackson agree on something, that's some kind of signal.

gjsman-1000 2y ago
> “which would’ve led to the inescapable conclusion … had to be rejected as infringing … free speech” When the EFF sounds about as sane as a sovereign citizen… With friends like these, who needs enemies…
- schoen 2y ago
  I worked at EFF for twenty years, and every iteration or incarnation of EFF would have said that it should be extraordinarily difficult for the government to prevent Americans from using foreign web sites or software. And that it should be extraordinarily difficult for the government to compel tech intermediaries to help block foreign sites or software. This would have been a bog-standard EFF position for the organization's entire existence. (I would say something even stronger than "extraordinarily difficult", but then I'd be on thinner ice.)
  - munchler 2y ago
    It required specific legislation to ban TikTok. I would say that's pretty extraordinary. I think even the EFF should admit that allowing the Chinese government to control a major American social media app is an unacceptable security risk.
    - hedora 2y ago
      The second paragraph of the EFF statement says the ban provides insufficient protection of US security.
      - munchler 2y ago
        > The United States’ foreign foes easily can steal, scrape, or buy Americans’ data by countless other means. True, but that's not the point. > Shutting down communications platforms or forcing their reorganization based on concerns of foreign propaganda and anti-national manipulation is an eminently anti-democratic tactic, one that the US has previously condemned globally. Sorry, that might've been true for old media, but social media is way more insidious.

arlattimore 2y ago

I’m not sure what order things go in, but I’d have thought national security concerns trump the need of its’ citizens to freely watch cat videos Those people publishing to TikTok were probably on Instagram and if they weren’t, they will be now if they want to reach the same American audience.

llamaimperative 2y ago
> I’d have thought national security concerns trump the need of its’ citizens to freely watch cat videos You'd be wrong. What value would a concept like the First Amendment have if it were voidable as easily as "we have national security concerns" or "the information on there isn't valuable." Given that those are pretty much the immediate go-to excuses for any autocrats clamp down on speech, such a right would be totally meaningless.
- ipython 2y ago
  However forcing TikTok to divest of foreign ownership is not restricting the rights of Americans to express their opinions. Americans are free to widely exercise their first amendment rights- the TikTok order to divest foreign ownership doesn’t affect those users ability to speak. The first amendment does not guarantee you access to a specific platform- it means that the bar for the government to imprison you for speech is very high (you can be held in contempt for lying under oath, for example) I would argue that in this case the platform itself is expressing speech by ranking, recommending and promoting certain content. A foreign entity has no such first amendment right- we have had restrictions on foreign ownership of news media for decades now. I think it’s an interesting issue especially now that you have TikTok users who think they’re being treated unfairly moving to a pure Chinese platform RedNote and encountering actual censorship. https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/01/16/tech/tiktok-refugees-rednote-china-censorship-intl-hnk https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/01/16/tech/tiktok-refugees-redn.... And now unconfirmed reports that RedNote is considering segregating the new American users from the Chinese users, ironically so Americans couldn’t influence Chinese users - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/rednote-may-wall-off-tiktok-refugees-to-prevent-us-influence-on-chinese-users/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/rednote-may-wall...

tehjoker 2y ago

[flagged]

x3n0ph3n3 2y ago

I don't often disagree with the EFF. Strange times.

ipython 2y ago
I disagree with the EFF here too but I am so happy that there is a good faith well reasoned argument on the other side. This struggle is what makes democracy work.
parkaboy 2y ago
Yeah this is a weird one where their m.o. on privacy/security are at odds with their first amendment side of things...sounds like the latter won out. I also disagree with them on this. This isn't something like net neutrality. It's one of many privately-owned social media platforms and one such with deeply privacy-invasive software that has adversarial foreign ties against the US.
- parkaboy 2y ago
  Adding: commenter @schoen's above comment is making me second guess myself on this. I'm pretty torn.
- hedora 2y ago
  There’s a simple, obvious and overwhelmingly popular solution to this problem that respects free speech and privacy. Unlike the current law, it wouldn’t blatantly violate the constitution by targeting a specific group: Apply reasonable privacy and transparency rules to all social media platforms, regardless of ownership. I’m not sure the EFF really needs to spell it out at this point.
  - loeg 2y ago
    Yeah the reasonable privacy and transparency rule here is "don't be an arm of the PRC." It applies to all social media platforms.
- whatshisface 2y ago

gorgoiler 2y ago

It is hard to love the notion that banning a third party’s app is infringing upon my own right to free speech. If it were a ban on the Internet then that seems to make more sense. It’s analogous to a ban on paper, pens, or bullhorns. I can be sympathetic to the idea that, for some people, one particular proprietary app is their main tool for expression, even if that’s hardly ideal. A ban on routers made by a specific foreign company — when the government knows full well the Internet can’t work without them — feels like a more likely scenario. When Huawei equipment bans were in the news, were there similar First Amendment arguments about that, too?

ranger_danger 2y ago
if youtube was being banned instead for the same reason (pretend it was owned by ByteDance), would you feel the same way? what about any other website/platform that you like? what if this was YOUR business getting banned?
- ipython 2y ago
  What’s interesting about this argument is that the playing field is highly asymmetric between the us and china. China explicitly firewalls out large amounts of the internet from its population. If you want to do business via an e-commerce in china, you cannot do so without explicit permission, license and partial Chinese equity share - for example https://developers.cloudflare.com/china-network/concepts/icp/ https://developers.cloudflare.com/china-network/concepts/icp... On the other hand, we have much more relaxed restrictions going the other way. Why not consider “fairness” from that perspective as well?
  - anramon 2y ago
    China doesn't pretend to be a democracy, so as they don't are nor pretend to be a democracy the rest of us should abandon democracy? Should be stop begin democratic because China isn't?
    - ipython 2y ago

whoitwas 2y ago

I agree with the ban on security basis, but could this be abused by countries to sabotage companies? China could buy majority shares of a company and force them out of business.

lolinder 2y ago
The company would have to be specifically added by the President to a list which currently is just ByteDance, it doesn't kick in automatically.
loeg 2y ago
We've just seen an example of the US blocking a sale on national security grounds -- we can block sales to China, too: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/us/politics/us-steel-nippon-biden.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/us/politics/us-steel-nipp...
- whoitwas 2y ago
  Right, but an entity or a number of entities could buy shares in a small cap company to own a majority stake without scrutiny. Seems like a good way to do espionage since corporations are global and have protected status.
  - loeg 2y ago
    Mechanically, how are a number of small <10% shareholders actually going to exert their influence? I guess they can coordinate to get their chosen board members elected, but won't it be pretty obvious that there is a huge coalition of foreign shareholders coordinating on votes? I think they'd be in violation of SEC reporting requirements in an unsubtle way.

nialv7 2y ago

Never expected to see the EFF siding with a big tech company, and fighting for its right to profit from its users. Never expected to see the EFF dismiss an argument for user's data privacy as "shaky". Quite disappointed honestly.

error_logic 2y ago
There's a bigger picture in the question of precedent and risks created by the infrastructure to ban a platform like this. Unfortunately it seems the powers that be are dead set on pursuing destruction of not just specific competitors but, eventually, the entire notion of constructive competition and its win-win outcomes provided the right safety nets.
nceqs3 2y ago
>Never expected to see the EFF siding with a big tech company, and fighting for its right to profit from its users. The EFF routinely sides with big tech companies. See their work on copyrights, patents, etc. Tech figures fund them. See https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine

jmyeet 2y ago

So we know the real reason why the government banned Tiktok [1]: > [Manufacturing Consent] argues that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion", by means of the propaganda model of communication. Tiktok doesn't push government propaganda to the same degree as Meta and Google. But whoever pushed for this was smart enough to avoid making it about speech ("content-neutral" in legal parlance). It's strictly commerce-based and there's lots of precedent for denying access to the US market based on ownership. For a long time, possibly still to this day, foreign ownership of media outlets (particularly TV stations and newspapers) was heavily restricted. And that's a good analogy for what happened here. What I hope happens is people wake up to the manipulation of what you see by US companies. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

fastball 2y ago
> Tiktok doesn't push government propaganda to the same degree as Meta and Google. Do you have a source for this claim?

isodev 2y ago

It’s funny how they’re shutting down TikTok because it’s “manipulative and anti-democratic” while that’s a core trait of every algorithmic/engagement social media. Twitter and Threads should be banned as well then.

monero-xmr 2y ago
If the government can’t ban a business entity then doesn’t that say something about control? We have an app controlled by a communist dictatorship. They can keep the app running by selling it, but they won’t. What’s perplexing to me is leftists love how companies in America can be forced to sell and broken if they are declared monopolies. But if an app is declared an agent of foreign powers suddenly forcing a sale is wrong? It makes me feel even more certain that HN is astroturfed by Chinese bots because who cares
- cbg0 2y ago
  Your last statement is a pretty silly generalization, and I don't think you need to bring in left/right extremes into this. For a lot of folks this is more about precedent on being able to ban anything the current establishment disagrees with, which has its own merits, even if you want to say that it's strictly being done because China controls it, which is not 100% of the reason why. I despise communism myself, as my country went through 45 years of it. I agree with TikTok being forced to sell, and I'd like to see all social media sites offer more transparency mechanisms to NGOs and government agencies to show how their algorithms really work to have some watchdog be able to check if what we're seeing is heavily manipulated, especially during election years.
- _t9ow 2y ago
  > if an app is declared an agent of foreign powers I suspect that people pattern-match this declaration to McCarthyism. Additionally, the US has been invoking national security for a series of extremely dubious moves recently as well -- e.g. Biden's latest decision to block the sale of US Steel to Nippon on shaky grounds of national security, and his administration's recent policy to introduce export limits on GPUs to all countries except 18 (most US allies, NATO or otherwise, are now unjustly being restricted in how many GPUs they can import). Coupled with the incoming Trump administration's threats of trade war and expansionist designs on Greenland, people -- especially non-Americans, also in countries that have historically been friends of the US -- are very quickly running out of goodwill for the US, and in light of these events naturally the TikTok ban is seen as just another draconian attempt by the US to practise (economic) imperialism.

deleted 2y ago

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aaron695 2y ago

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baobun 2y ago

Huge creds to the EFF for speaking truth even when it is politically inconvenient (see comments here...) This ban is infringing of IMO fundamental rights of individuals in US to share and use the TikTok app freely. That China is doing similar things to their citizens can't be an excuse. Yeah I hate TikTok and its effect on society too and good riddance etc but this is a first for something very bad. We have to look at the larger picture.

Animats 2y ago

> The United States’ foreign foes easily can steal, scrape, or buy Americans’ data by countless other means. Yes, all they have to do is sign up for the usual services advertisers use.

dzogchen 2y ago

Extremely weak argument. Just because one platform is shut down does not mean the right to free speech is affected. A platform, mind you, under full control by the Chinese Communist Party, who do not allow ANY form of free speech to exist in the country they have under their thumb.

loopdoend 2y ago
Not to mention the app is already banned in China, along with many others.
herbst 2y ago
Building your own great Firewall definitely is a thread to your free speech. I don't know how this can't be extremely obvious.
- mshroyer 2y ago
  It's because this isn't a content restriction. Anything that was speakable on TikTok remains speakable on platforms that aren't owned by U.S. adversaries. The distinction between this and China's "great firewall" and speech restrictions should be obvious.
  - herbst 2y ago
    The distinction between an US firewall and a Chinese firewall?
    - sampullman 2y ago
      Yes, there's currently a very clear distinction.
      - herbst 2y ago
        Definitly. We need to find more things to block, otherwise it won't be the greatest firewall ever made.

throwaway984393 2y ago

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ripped_britches 2y ago

I was saying the same thing when they decided to take down Silk Road /s

quanto 2y ago

A former sausage maker here. I (used to) design these engagement/recommendation engines for a large corp, did academic research in the field, went to conferences, etc. In general, I wholehearted support the freedom of speech, and if it were any other case, I would agree with the EFF statement here. However, knowing how the sausages are made, I am reluctantly agreeing with the ban, at least for now. People underestimate how powerful these tools can be. Based on simple, readily available "anonymous" data, we can already impute your demographics data -- age, gender, family relations, occupation, income, etc -- using a decade-old ML techniques. In some cases, we can detect which stage of your emotional journey you are in and nudge you towards our target state. What surprised me about Cambridge Analytica was its ineffectiveness, at least as reported. There are plenty of teams out there that use these techniques to greatly further their gains, whatever those may be. In Primakov doctrine, information warfare through sowing discontent and/or eroding psychological well-being is very much real and actualizable. I am not claiming that a foreign government is currently single-handedly controlling TikTok to brainwash the American youth; we do not have conclusive proof of that. However, the fact that such a tool is in a foreign country's arsenal is itself a massive danger to America's national security.

fulafel 2y ago
> the fact that such a tool is in a foreign country's arsenal is itself a massive danger to America's national security This implies people outside the US should relate the same way to Meta, X, etc. (Which seems fine to me, just pointing it out)
- quanto 2y ago
  yes, and they do. Even the US allies in Europe don't completely trust the US with their citizens data, hence the on-shore data requirements. This is despite the US is footing the bill for Ukraine and, by extension, defending Europe right now.
  - fulafel 2y ago
    Facebook and X blocking mostly happens in authoritarian nations, most places are more hands-off so far. A lot of climate change inaction propaganda for example comes from these platforms and is aligned with the new US presidency and Musk agenda, which is a bigger national security threat than anything in China-US relations or the Ukraine events.

arminiusreturns 2y ago

Damn the servile simp responses here are revealing. They are setting precedence and will use this on other things. Yes TikTok and many apps are used by many hostile foreign governments (Israel/Unit 8200 for example) (btw, RedNote got it's big boost when backed by Israeli investor Yuri Milner and his firm DST) for many psyop types... That doesn't mean you get to control what Americans can do on their devices. Boiling the frog...

deleted 2y ago

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blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

There are many good reasons to ban TikTok. For example, reciprocity on free trade. Why should Chinese companies get access to the American market when no western social media apps are allowed in China?

herbst 2y ago
Isn't that pure whataboutism?
tzs 2y ago
Reciprocity would be that American companies can access the Chinese market if they obey the same rules in the Chinese market that Chinese companies have to obey in the Chinese market, and Chinese companies can access the American market if they obey the same rules in the American market that American companies have to obey in the American market. Facebook and others were in the Chinese market but they got blocked because they would not censor things that the Chinese government wanted censored and would not turn over user information that the government asked for. Chinese social media companies also are subject to those same censorship and user disclosure requirements, and will be banned (or worse) if they do not comply. Would Facebook be allowed back in if they agreed to the censoring and to turning over user information? As far as I know none of the major American social media companies have been willing to do so, and so we don't know.
latentcall 2y ago
Why would China let American social media companies in? If they did, their people might start only caring about themselves and not their communities, might want to drive F150’s and eat hamburgers and take Ozempic.

gazchop 2y ago

Urgh sorry EFF but you’ve lost me on this one. There is actual harm done to democracy on these platforms. A democracy requires informed voters to function and the platform does the diametric opposite by misinforming them. Any attempt to regulate this or promote or moderate has failed simply because an actual structured funding source is misinformation. The only option to keep democracy standing is to kill it. I’d expect the EFF to have some well read social or political staff. Apparently they don’t and are quite happy to spout absolutes.

BeFlatXIII 2y ago
Democracy is when people are only allowed to speak truths.
- EasyMark 2y ago
  bots and CCP trolls aren't really people doing good faith "truths" on the internet. Most of it is purely made up fiction
  - BeFlatXIII 2y ago
    Everyone who disagrees with bipartisan consensus is a bot, true.

benrutter 2y ago

Curious to hear from other people here. I'm UK citizen, and on the whole, my perception is that I'm much more concerned about the effect on democracy from US led fake news and social media (specifically Twitter, Facebook and Truth Social) than TikTok. I'm not making a case that that is justified, but I'm interested to know if other people in or outside the US share that perception?

glimshe 2y ago

I can no longer send money to the EFF due to their obvious misreading of the situation. They will lose $100s/year from me, I hope it was worth it. Clearly, a naive take that doesn't understand the nuances related to Tiktok's situation. Tiktok can still exist and keep showing their garbage to Americans, but it can't do so while being owned by a foreign adversary that attacks us almost continuously. Sure, they can still buy our information elsewhere, but this is like saying I shouldn't put a lock on my door because thieves can break in through other means. Just check the looting happening in Los Angeles as a result of the reduction in the barriers for theft. Cost matters and if we increase the costs for China's data theft, their ability to steal from us will be reduced.

cromka 2y ago
Yet when Europeans feel the same way about American manipulative social media and the US sees it as targeting its tech industry, you don’t see a bias? Are you OK with EU banning Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, too, because it goes against its own citizens rights and safety? Or, following your logic, should we demand they are sold to European owners? Why do you think it’s YOU who decides to be the gatekeeper on all that data and no one else? You see the double standards here? The hypocrisy?
- EasyMark 2y ago
  I feel that Europe has exactly that very right, as I support our right to exorcise control of the CCP from TikTok and/or shut it down. I completely understand why they would.
- glimshe 2y ago
  You can demand whatever you desire from your government. It's your country.
  - pastage 2y ago
    Can you expand and on this? Do you think EU should force every successful US company to divest their EU branches. I do not know where I stand on this but you seem to have a clear idea on this..

whycome 2y ago

I think TikTok gets special status because its algorithm is just SO GOOD. If instagram was Chinese owned/influenced, we wouldn’t see this kind of potential control. TikTok is probably building models from all possible data: what angle is the user sitting or lying down and how does that correlate to mood or desire.

pbiggar 2y ago

The shutdown is entirely because TikTok wouldn't suppress content about Palestine.

latentcall 2y ago
Yes pro-Palestinian content proliferated there.
- bdangubic 2y ago
  [flagged]

russli1993 2y ago

All countries in the world, USA just showed it is perfectly fine to steal a foreign companies' asset. Let's do that to all USA companies, Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, Tesla, Boeing, Qualcomn, Intel, all of them. U know how rich you will be if you just got a piece of them? U know you could end homelessness, poverty, balance trade, stabilize your currency, elevate tax revenues, get free education and health care for your citizens, provide great jobs if you just got a piece of USA companies? Now you can! All of them can be Indian, Germany, France, UK, Poland, Brazilian, Mexican, Canadian, Kenyan, Egyptian companies. Everyone gets a piece, everyone gets them equally, everyone will benefit and be happy!

tracker1 2y ago

In the end, it's a security and sovereignty issue. A country can restrict foreign business, full stop. That said, I don't think banning tiktok will have the desired results.