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Why we are suing the Administration

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Re: Why we are suing the Administration

#121

Post by badRNG »

threeseed wrote: post #87
badRNG wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and the concerns about 1st Amendment precedence weren't referring to China either. I imagine China disallows end-to-end encrypted messaging apps as well, which is largely the basis of my concern.

Not sure why you are bringing up the 1st Amendment. Operating a social network app is not a protected form of free speech.

My concerns are largely over the precedent that might allow banning end-to-end encrypted apps over "national security," but there is an argument to be made on 1st Amendment grounds.

There are two 1A considerations here: whether an "app" is speech, and the speech of TikTok's users. If courts decide that TikTok is a "public forum," then there would be precedence to prevent the privation of this public forum in the interests of free speech. [1] On the other consideration, one of the landmark cases regarding software, Bernstein v. Department of Justice, ruled that code is speech, and this directly lead to the end of export control on encryption. [2] This has been further affirmed by a ruling in favor of the video game industry against a law banning the sale of games to minors in CA. [3]

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/482/569

[2] https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2008/04/21-40

[3] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-1448.ZS.html

Re: Why we are suing the Administration

#122

Post by learc83 »

francesca wrote: post #77
darawk wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China bans plenty of US apps and services. Facebook, for instance. They are exactly comparable.

If you comply with China's laws you can operate there. These US companies just don't want to deal with that.

1. China has many industries that outright ban participation by foreign companies.

2. Following Chinese law includes following whatever arbitrary whims the party decides to enforce—including forced IP transfer.

Re: Why we are suing the Administration

#123

Post by Igelau »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #107
badRNG wrote: post #28

Regardless of what you think about TikTok, the banning of an app in the interest of "national security" is largely unprecedented. The jump from banning Huawei from building critical public infrastructure to banning an app that hasn't even conclusively been proven to behave in any uniquely dangerous ways seems to be an intense, unjustified escalation of this conflict. [1] You may disagree with me on the strict securit…

> the banning of an app in the interest of "national security" is largely unprecedented. What kind of myopic fucking nonsense is this? Hsvd you not even heard of the Cold War ?

Unless they got banned so hard that they were erased from history and memory, mobile phone apps were not a thing during the Cold War.

Re: Why we are suing the Administration

#124

Post by rvz »

disgu wrote: post #46
rvz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There you go. While they're at it, try critiquing the CCP on TikTok. Watch it get removed instantaneously. In the US, at least you can sue the administration and criticize them over their actions. The CCP on the other hand...

> There you go. While they're at it, try critiquing the CCP on TikTok. Watch it get removed instantaneously. It doesn't get removed. Neither does LGBT content or Hong Kong protest content for that matter. Just because people repeat it again and again doesn't make it true and it takes literally three seconds to check if it's true or not.

> It doesn't get removed.

Are you sure? Only after they were called out publicly for it. [0][1] Explain why they had to own up for their actions on multiple counts of censorship to content that doesn't please the CCP.

> Just because people repeat it again and again doesn't make it true and it takes literally three seconds to check if it's true or not.

Took literally 3 seconds to find this: [2][3]

Since there is clear evidence that have done it before, they can definitely do it again (and have done), especially at sensitive content that the CCP dislikes.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/26/tiktok-says-it-doesnt-censor...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/28/tiktok-sa...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/15/tiktoks...

[3] https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-us...

Re: Why we are suing the Administration

#125

Post by Igelau »

christophilus wrote: post #105

It’s hard for me to imagine the US allowing the USSR to distribute apps like this (or any kind, really) back in the Cold War. This action is not as unprecedented as some think. It is misguided, though. The US needs a systematic policy, not a bunch of arbitrary one-offs.

IANAL, but I doubt that imagined alternate histories constitute a legal precedent.

Re: Why we are suing the Administration

#126

Post by mmmmmbop »

badRNG wrote: post #28

Regardless of what you think about TikTok, the banning of an app in the interest of "national security" is largely unprecedented. The jump from banning Huawei from building critical public infrastructure to banning an app that hasn't even conclusively been proven to behave in any uniquely dangerous ways seems to be an intense, unjustified escalation of this conflict. [1] You may disagree with me on the strict securit…

> Regardless of what you think about TikTok, the banning of an app in the interest of "national security" is largely unprecedented.

Every legal action was unprecedented at some point, until a precedent was set. That alone is not a strong argument against the TikTok ban being just.

In addition to that, note that the EFF post you linked to mentions Lawfare's primer [1] which explains the legal case for the divesting order. In short, Congress delegated some of its constitutional authority over foreign commerce to the President in 1988, explicitly empowering the President to prohibit mergers, acquisitions, or takeovers that threaten national security. TikTok's acquisition by ByteDance falls under that authority.

[1] https://www.lawfareblog.com/tiktok-and-law-primer-case-you-n....

Re: Why we are suing the Administration

#127

Post by rvz »

yorwba wrote: post #38
rvz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There you go. While they're at it, try critiquing the CCP on TikTok. Watch it get removed instantaneously. In the US, at least you can sue the administration and criticize them over their actions. The CCP on the other hand...

> try critiquing the CCP on TikTok. Watch it get removed instantaneously. You can even call them nazis without it getting removed: https://www.tiktok.com/tag/chinazi Now if you tried that on Douyin, the results would be different, but Douyin is available in China while TikTok isn't, so Chinese censorship applies to Douyin while it doesn't apply to TikTok.

> You can even call them nazis without it getting removed

Which is why there is something called "Blacklisted tags" and it has been used towards QAnon posts [0] and on BLM posts. [1]

Some tags get shadow-banned so that it doesn't appear on TikTok. The users here take a new hashtag so that it can be searchable. This form of censorship still applies to TikTok.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/25/21338615/tiktok-qanon-has...

[1] https://time.com/5863350/tiktok-black-creators/

Re: Why we are suing the Administration

#128

Post by robjan »

drtillberg wrote: post #88

The silliness in the statement about being "obligated" to the TikTok community.... It's contradictory, just like all ToS would be. Compare: Public Relations Statement : "Put simply, we have a thriving community and we are grateful – and responsible – to them." With: Terms of Service [1] ( hilariously, TikTok provides a read time estimate on the ToS of "279 - 354 minutes"): We reserve the right to disable your user ac…

In this case they are probably using "obligated" in the context of repaying a debt of gratitude.

Re: Why we are suing the Administration

#129

Post by raverbashing »

fsloth wrote: post #34
raverbashing wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you are able. But when one of two players are not playing fair (China) you're not going win any medals (or fights) while holding by your usual ethical standards. And as much as I'm mostly completely opposed to the current US administration, Tiktok is a liability.

"you're not going win any medals (or fights) while holding by your usual ethical standards." That's the thing! These are not ethical standards. These are about the general rules by which a society operates. Generally countries with inclusive systems work better than countries with exclusive ones. China being the odd man out, apparently, at the moment. So it's not about ethics, it's about economics. It may seem like a…

> Generally countries with inclusive systems work better than countries with exclusive ones. China being the odd man out

I agree. More of a reason to make China accountable.

Re: Why we are suing the Administration

#130

Post by ryosuke »

euix wrote: post #100

Interesting article in Bloomberg just now: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-01/bytedance... . The kicker is at the end: “He thought that by making a promise to follow international standards or rules he would be able to escape the regulation or the kind of pressure from the American government,” said Ding. “But I think now he realizes he might have been wrong and that if he doesn’t want to sell the com…

Exactly. My understanding is that ByteDance has tried to maintain some distance with the Chinese government in the past, but this pressure from the US essentially forces it to reverse course.

It's antithetical to the US's purported objective of promoting a more liberalized market economy in China (though I suppose that was never something this administration really cared about).

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