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Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline

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Re: Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline

#711
post #95

This whole thing is both silly and unsurprising. Everybody knows the fearmongering about Chinese control and manipulation is a smokescreen. The real reason is that Tiktok doesn't fall in line with State Department propaganda [1]. It's noteworthy that SCOTUS sidestepped this issue entirely by not even considering the secret evidence the government brought. That being said, it's unsurprising because you can make a stri…

We don't know that the secret evidence was that TT doesn't promote U.S. propaganda. We can surmise, but speculation can be wrong. Besides, the justices might simply have revealed that secret evidence, had it really been just that. But they claim they didn't even consider the secret evidence. Unclear whether they took a peek, but they say they didn't consider it.

Re: Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline

#712
post #319

This is going to be an interesting experiment: A widely used social network across the world WITHOUT american content. Until now, the closest thing we had like this were national our regional networks like Russia's vk, but Vk was never truly popular outside Russian speaking countries. Now we, for the first time ever, will have the situation where a social network has global reach but without american content. Will it…

First, I still don't think the ban will actually happen. The current administration will punt the issue to the next and Trump has already signaled he wants to save Tiktok, whatever that means. That might be by anointing a buyer that he personally is an investor in. Tiktok may choose to still shutter in the US rather than being forcibly sold. But there's a biger issue than loss of American content should this come to…

A worrying angle is that Elon is essentially subservient to the CCP because of Tesla’s presence in China. Remember when Tesla signed a pledge to uphold socialism at the behest of the CCP a couple years back? It’s also why Elon - who claims to uphold free speech, capitalism, democratic values, etc - will NEVER say anything negative about China. If Trump is close to Elon, and Elon is easily influenced/controlled by the CCP, it really undermines the independence of US leadership. I am concerned this next administration will be soft on China in all the wrong ways, including not enforcing a ban that has been legally instituted and upheld unanimously by SCOTUS.

Re: Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline

#713

Good grief.. I clearly wasn't following it closely, but even the fact that this could have become a thing ( SCOTUS ruling using 'redacted' as evidence ) is severely disheartening.

> but even the fact that this could have become a thing

So you're upset that the Biden admin attempted to sway the court with secret evidence. But any admin always could behave in that way, and nothing you can do can stop that. The fact that the court decided to ignore that secret evidence should be comforting. Sure, nothing forces the court in the future to stick to that, but this is always true as to everything.

Re: Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline

#715

The silliness of the ban itself aside, it is wild how casually the whole “both chambers of congress passed a law and that law was upheld by the highest federal court but maybe it won’t be a law if one guy decides he doesn’t like it” thing is being treated by the media. It is like “Does America have laws?” is a 3 minute section of Good Morning America between low-carb breakfast recipes and the memoir of a skateboardin…

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Re: Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline

#717

The silliness of the ban itself aside, it is wild how casually the whole “both chambers of congress passed a law and that law was upheld by the highest federal court but maybe it won’t be a law if one guy decides he doesn’t like it” thing is being treated by the media. It is like “Does America have laws?” is a 3 minute section of Good Morning America between low-carb breakfast recipes and the memoir of a skateboardin…

Wait until you hear about how one ordinary guy on a jury can nullify a whole law. Our system is geared to err towards enforcing fewer laws.

Re: Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline

#718

This outcome is worse than I could have ever conceived: 1) People have valid concerns about TikTok. TikTok will remain, and those concerns will remain. 2) People have valid concerns about free speech. The law that tramples free speech stands and is upheld by the court. 3) People have valid concerns about unfair and unequal enforcement of laws. The law will be blatantly and openly ignored for political reasons. Litera…

Yeah this is why I don't like the "tit for tat - they banned facebook, insta, etc." argument.

We're supposed to be better than them, but we stoop to their level.

Re: Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline

#719

The silliness of the ban itself aside, it is wild how casually the whole “both chambers of congress passed a law and that law was upheld by the highest federal court but maybe it won’t be a law if one guy decides he doesn’t like it” thing is being treated by the media. It is like “Does America have laws?” is a 3 minute section of Good Morning America between low-carb breakfast recipes and the memoir of a skateboardin…

Creating three branches of government that all have to agree that a law should exist (legislative) is constitutional (judicial) and should be enforced (executive) has proven to be an excellent method of keeping bad laws from negatively affecting us. Despite being seemingly simple on the surface, it's created a process a bit longer than what a single Schoolhouse Rock video can teach us, and it's too much for legacy media to handle.

Maybe they only learned from the aforementioned Schoolhouse Rock video, because they seem especially bad at understanding anything outside of the legislative branch. Not only does the legislative branch need to pass a bill into law for it to become a regulation, without objection by the judicial branch to its constitutionality, but the executive branch needs to write that law into a federal regulation, and the legislative branch can reject any new regulation they believe doesn't comply with the law, as can the judicial branch, who can also reject the regulation if it isn't constitutional as written, even if the original law that created it was.

It's no wonder that legacy media's wild misunderstandings of how laws and regulations work only get a small snippet of time, between their more entertaining and feel-good stories that drive viewership and revenue.

Fortunately we are no longer stuck with just legacy media, so I recommend finding a news source that actually knows what they are talking about. I've found the best bet is to get news from outlets and aggregators that specialize in a specific topic, shielding them from the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect, and forcing them to publish news that is actually correct.

This is why I come to Hacker News for my tech news aggregation. For political news, my favorite so far has been The Hill, especially for videos like their Daily Brief and Rising videos published on YouTube. I'm open to more, so if anyone has any recommendations, let me know.

Re: Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline

#720

I think the easiest answer to follow for "why is this not prevented by free speech protection" is "the fact that petitioners “cannot avoid or mitigate” the effects of the Act by altering their speech." (page 10 of this ruling, but is a reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turner_Broadcasting_System,_In... )

Simple answer. A chinese owned company has no such rights or protections. Free speech does not apply. The law also does not censor content (so no free speech violation anyway). The law simply bans the distribution of the app on marketplaces stores for reasons stated (national security). Big difference.
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