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Banning TikTok Is Unconstitutional. The Supreme Court Must Step In

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Re: Banning TikTok Is Unconstitutional. The Supreme Court Must Step In

#91

Post by kelseyfrog »

philips wrote: post #19
kelseyfrog wrote: post #8

The authors Ashley Gorski and Patrick Toomey seem to think that the rule of law and advocating for consistent ruling on constitutionality will have an effect. If I’ve learned anything about how the Supreme Court works, it’s that this is a political calculation, not a legal one. The outcomes are decided first, and then jurisprudence is employed to substantiate them — not the other way around.

I share your cynicism. Do you see any way out? I feel the same way about the supreme court justices today as I do about Senators for lightly populated states: people operating with little oversight and with little to no accountability to the people who they hold power over. The bigger problem with the Supreme Court is that, largely, the political calculus is mostly cemented for life of the justice. The only way out I…

I fundamentally see this as a consequence of the original sin of Senate. Article I, Section 3, Clause 1 and Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 work together to make the Supreme Court a reflection of state values rather than popular values. Any time the two drift apart - due to changing popular opinion, migration, etc, the difference is reflected in political tension. There's no viable escape hatch for popular grievances against the supreme court (impeachment is non-viable again, because the Senate structure) which puts us in a precarious situation.

I don't see a viable way forward since amendments also follow a state structure given Article Five.

Re: Banning TikTok Is Unconstitutional. The Supreme Court Must Step In

#92

Post by 0xB31B1B »

otterley wrote: post #29
breadwinner wrote: post #9

TikTok is NOT being banned. TikTok can continue unmodified if it transfers ownership to anyone outside China.

The ACLU is staffed with extremely competent First Amendment attorneys and yet they seem to be intentionally muddying the water about this. As a 1A scholar (and ACLU supporter) myself, I find it extremely frustrating.

ACLU has dropped in quality significantly in the past 10 years IMO and this seems par for course for them since 2016.

Re: Banning TikTok Is Unconstitutional. The Supreme Court Must Step In

#93

Post by jimnotgym »

Salgat wrote: post #76
ccvannorman wrote: post #31

If I had children aged 7-17 and felt China was intentionally nudging them via algorithmic suggestions away from STEM and toward vapidness, and if I was unable to control their access to it, I guess I might appreciate that my government had banned it. But, as others have mentioned, it sets a dangerous precedent. If nothing else, this attempted ban has raised national awareness about the negative impacts of TikTok. Wha…

The forced divestment is for national security reasons. Bytedance, as a Chinese company, is required by law (Cybersecurity Law of the People's Republic of China) to provide full data access to the Chinese government on request, and they are compelled not to reveal when this occurs. Since this is done through legitimate channels (on Bytedance's side), this won't even be caught with an audit. So you have a situation wh…

Meta & co are required by US law to do the same for people in the rest of the world. Didn't see a huge US outcry about that, in fact I saw a lot of hate for things like GDPR

Re: Banning TikTok Is Unconstitutional. The Supreme Court Must Step In

#94

Post by computerdork »

fsflover wrote: post #6
pmarreck wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American platforms are already banned in China. Some of this is a tit-for-tat, I surmise. The embracing of terrorist sympathizers across the platform is not helping.

> American platforms are already banned in China. So if Americans are discriminated in China, would you suggest to do the same with the Chinese in US?

You're statement is true, would should not do the same thing in terms of discrimination, but the two situations are a bit different. Your talking about culture, while this deals more with a outside government's influence on our populace.

For me, think the ACLU makes a valid argument, that this could set a bad precedent. But, the Chinese government already has a system to at least partially monitor and influence what some businesses do (requiring corporations to have role for the CCP in their charters). https://www.csis.org/analysis/new-challenge-communist-corpor.... It doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility that the CCP uses tik-tok to influence the US populace (think Russia and its use of social media during the 2016 election of Trump).

Yeah, this situation is pretty messy.

Re: Banning TikTok Is Unconstitutional. The Supreme Court Must Step In

#96

Post by teqsun »

otterley wrote: post #58
paxys wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pointless misdirection. "I'll burn down your house unless you sell it to me for $1" See, that's not arson, because you always had a way out.

This is a terrible analogy: 1/Selling something doesn't destroy it 2/You don't want to destroy it because you want to fetch a high price for it 3/Nobody's offering $1 for TikTok, and nobody expects ByteDance to accept $1 for it 4/A fair market price would make ByteDance whole

But they're not asking ByteDance to just divest a portion for US operations, are they? It's successful in many countries, so it seems kind of radical to force them to sell everything just to continue operating in one country.

Re: Banning TikTok Is Unconstitutional. The Supreme Court Must Step In

#97

Post by lxgr »

glitchc wrote: post #53
ccvannorman wrote: post #31

If I had children aged 7-17 and felt China was intentionally nudging them via algorithmic suggestions away from STEM and toward vapidness, and if I was unable to control their access to it, I guess I might appreciate that my government had banned it. But, as others have mentioned, it sets a dangerous precedent. If nothing else, this attempted ban has raised national awareness about the negative impacts of TikTok. Wha…

I think that's where we were with seatbelts in the 1950s, tobacco in the 1920s and alcohol in the 1850s. In all of those cases, society ultimately decided that guardrails were needed.

Yet imagine a law that mandates seatbelts only for non-US manufactured cars...

The main problem is the hyperoptimized addictive nature of some modern social media apps, not who makes them.

Re: Banning TikTok Is Unconstitutional. The Supreme Court Must Step In

#98

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

llamaimperative wrote: post #43
emmelaich wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give a recent (last 20 years) example of a Supreme Court political not legal decision? FWIW, I think the Supreme Court will not uphold the ban. But TBH I don't know the details of the 'ban'.

The decision to ban Colorado from making its own decisions for its own election with regard to what "engaged in insurrection" means and therefore disqualifies someone from their own state's ballots. Purely political. The law says clearly that states run their own elections and it says clearly that insurrection is disqualifying. Would've been politically inconvenient though (for either side of the spectrum, and especi…

That's actually one of the ones that shows how the supreme court isn't always party lines. That was an 9-0 opinion to block Colorado from stopping Trump from running for office there.

Also the constitution clearly gives the federal government the ability to conduct federal elections, not states, and that's exactly what they called out in their brief.

Re: Banning TikTok Is Unconstitutional. The Supreme Court Must Step In

#99

Post by teqsun »

DarkKnightKing wrote: post #41

Huawei and several other companies have faced this. Several American companies face this in China. Its not unprecedented. Are you suggesting its unconstitutional because freedom of expression is being curbed? Thats not true, those creators have other platforms to post their content.

To quote directly from the linked article:

"The law’s supporters have, at times, minimized the ban’s impact on the First Amendment, citing the mistaken belief that TikTok users can simply move to another platform. From a constitutional perspective, this is nonsense. The government can’t justify shutting down The Washington Post because readers can simply buy The New York Times instead."

Re: Banning TikTok Is Unconstitutional. The Supreme Court Must Step In

#100

Post by computerdork »

henryfjordan wrote: post #85
_bin_ wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the easier framework is this: China has banned her citizens from using most United States-based social networks. This prevents American companies from accruing profit from Chinese citizens and advertisers, and shrinks their potential pool of user data for refining algorithms or selling. As such, it's effectively a trade policy for us to in turn ban her social networks. Unless and until we are equally able to…

[flagged]

Well, it does offer an avenue for inacting some form of ban. And not so sure it's all that morally low.

Because what China's ban of US social media might say is that China recognizes social-media's power to influence the populace (think Russia's use of Twitter and FB in the 2016 election). Yeah, am actually in favor of some form of restrictions, because we as a country need to realize that social media is a tool that can be used against us.

Yeah, if it was an outside country owning a major US newspaper, it'd be more clearcut.

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