alt Hacker NewsSupreme Court upholds TikTok ban, but Trump might offer lifeline
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Anyone here who's not a TikTok content creator reasonably upset about losing access to the platform? Can you tell me why it will sting for you? I was really surprised that my daughters (avid teenage TikTok users) are much more relieved than mad. Both said they wasted too much time on TikTok and were hoping life will now feel better. Seems the very thing that made the platform sticky puts it in a guilty pleasure category perhaps.
(I'm asking about the lived experience outside of the political questions around who should decide what we see / access online.)
EDIT: Thank you for the replies! Interesting. I'm still wondering if most people use TikTok just for passive entertainment? I don't love Youtube, but it's been a huge learning and music discovery resource for me.
The only thing I get sent from TikTok are dances and silly memes but I don't have an account.
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...)
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.
What changed now?
Even a judge, Sotomayer said during this case that yes, the Government can say to someone that their speech is not allowed.
Looks like a major erosion of first amendment protections.
The United States is currently in the middle of a cyber cold-war with China.
They hacked all of our major telco's and many of America's regulatory organizations including the treasury department. Specifically they used the telco hacks to gather geolocation data in order to pinpoint Americans and to spy on phone calls by abusing our legally mandated wiretap capabilities.
Yet people are arguing that we should allow the people who did that to continue to install apps on millions of Americans phones.
I can't tell if people just don't know that this is happening, or if they take their memes way too seriously. I sort of wonder if they don't know it's happening because they get their news from Tiktok and Tiktok is actively suppressing the stories.
This would have been a great opportunity to regulate and prohibit massive data collection on mobile phones, by writing a law that requires the platforms (iOS,android) to architect differently and police this aggressively. Takes care of a lot of the TikTok worry and cleans up ecosystems from location tracking/selling weather apps as well.
TikTok is perhaps the most impressively addictive social media app ever created. The algorithm used in the US was apparently banned in China for being too addictive.
There's a certain historic symmetry with how opium was traditionally used in China, then Britain introduced stronger, more disruptive versions, forcing a stronger social reaction.
Geopolitics aside, I think everyone is kind of aware that social media is a vice, and like it or not, this could just be the beginning of our society beginning to scrutinize these platforms.
No matter what you think of this ban, the court is obviously not the right place to solve it. It is completely unsurprising that this is a unanimous decision because foreign trade is one of the few powers expressly given to the federal government in the constitution:
>[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;[0]
(The actual law may not have relied exclusively on the Commerce Clause, you would have to read it to find out. But from a high level there is nothing stopping congress from regulating any instance foreign trade.)
[0] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8...
TikTok is also banned in China. For the Chinese market, Douyin is there from the same company ByteDance. Americans need to understand this decision is not an emotional one but for the nation, just like the opposite party does for its nation.
Nobody is talking about music?
For the last 4 years, TikTok has been my primary music discovery engine. Probably is for a large chunk of users.
What effect will this have on the music industry?
Regardless of one’s view on the outcome, this case is a reminder that textualism as a legal philosophy stands on shaky ground. This case is decided not on some strict analysis of the words written by a legislator, but on the court’s subjective view that there is a compelling national interest (which in turn seems based on speculation about the future, rather than a factual analysis of events).
Textualism might give the court some useful definitions, but it is after all still called, quite literally, an opinion.
In a more functional democracy we would see that mass data collection of any sort, by any company (foreign or domestic), is a national security risk.
Have witnessed first-hand the threats by foreign state actors penetrating US-based cloud infrastructure. And it’s not like any of our domestic corporations are practicing the type of security hygiene necessary to prevent those intrusions.
So idk, the whole thing feels like a farce that will mainly benefit Zuck and co while doing very little to ultimately protect our interests.
We would be much better off actually addressing data privacy and passing legislation that regulates every company in a consistent manner.
Where is reels, reddit and shorts gonna get all of its most popular content from now?
Surprised not more people are tying this to the Uber-Didi situation. IIRC it was a big complicated mess, but e.g. (this)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersecurity_Law_of_the_Peopl...] seems to imply that e.g. Uber would have to use Chinese domestic servers subject to auditing, etc. Upshot is eventually Uber stopped dumping billions to try to get a foothold, and eventually divested their Chinese operations.
(Also later Didi got kinda screwed imo right after their IPO in IMO a retaliatory move by the Chinese gov). So, is this TikTok ban one more shot in a new form of economic warfare? Is this type of war even new? Again, IMO, I think in instituting this law, this kind of stuff was on at least some of congress' minds.
FWIW, this has driven many users to RedNote, which is even more Chinese in every way, regardless of whether it's even the same kind of platform. I doubt it would ever be anywhere near the same numbers as TikTok (assuming ByteDance didn't sell off) but it does illustrate the trouble with this i.e. cat-and-mouse game.
Edited for word choice.
Well, India has already banned Tik-Tok, now the US is. It looks like some European countries are giving it the side eye. This may be the beginning of the end for it.
I'm sure the other countries are watching this and considering what the US is doing with their data in its apps.
I'm surprised TikTok isn't trying to push a web version, hosted outside the USA as an alternative to shutting down. While it would be difficult for a new social media service to gain traction that way, TikTok has a huge established audience.
My wife and I are split on this, though neither of us are regular TikTok users.
I keep coming across elected officials who are apparently briefed on something about TikTok, and they decide there’s a reasonable threat regarding the CCP or some such. The idea that the CCP could drive our national conversation somehow (still murky) bothers me.
My wife feels like this is the US Government trying to shut down a communication and news delivery tool.
While I don’t agree with her, I don’t think she’s wrong. It seems all the folks who “have it on good authority” that this is a dangerous propaganda tool, can’t share what “it” is.
A globally used social media app without American narrative and propaganda. A huge loss for American soft power.
It's really quite funny to read the timeline in the opinion.
Essentially, Trump started the TikTok ban, Biden continued it, and Congress finally put it into law. And now both Trump and Biden, as well as Congress, are shying away from actually enforcing the ban.
• In August 2020, President Trump issued an Executive Order finding that “the spread in the United States of mobile applications developed and owned by companies in [China] continues to threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”
• President Trump determined that TikTok raised particular concerns, noting that the platform “automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users” and is susceptible to being used to further the interests of the Chinese Government.
• Just days after issuing his initial Executive Order, President Trump ordered ByteDance Ltd. to divest all interests and rights in any property “used to enable or support ByteDance’s operation of the TikTok application in the United States,” along with “any data obtained or derived from” U. S. TikTok users.
• Throughout 2021 and 2022, ByteDance Ltd. negotiated with Executive Branch officials to develop a national security agreement that would resolve those concerns. Executive Branch officials ultimately determined, however, that ByteDance Ltd.’s proposed agreement did not adequately “mitigate the risks posed to U. S. national security interests.” 2 App. 686. Negotiations stalled, and the parties never finalized an agreement.
• Against this backdrop, Congress enacted the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.
If TikTok is truly banned on Sunday and no action is taken to stop it, the company’s value could drop significantly—perhaps by as much as 90%.
This raises an even bigger question: Who really owns TikTok? Who is the true decision-maker behind the scenes? Who is so wealthy and powerful that they’re willing to let $100 billion vanish? The answer to that question will be more obvious.
This will ultimately benefit the current Big Tech incumbents. Tiktok was gaining ground rapidly on advertising money and I wouldn't be surprised if there was lobbying that stifled the competition.
Instead of banning TikTok, we should be trying to compete with them and make a better product that wins customers over. It's sad to see the US becoming more authoritarian and follow China's example.
Link to opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24-656_ca7d.pdf
Still have no good answer on why its bad for a company that is supposedly under Chineese influence to collect this kind of information on us, and adjust and tweak an 'algorith' for displaying content. But its perfectly fine for a US company to do it? Wouldn't the right solution be to protect the citizens from all threats, foreign and domestic?
An implementation detail that might be interesting is that the discussed method of the ban is to use the same ISP block that is used for torrent sites (and other websites).
This may be a bit of relevance when talking about how banning a website get applied through the legal system.
Thousands of US content creators were earning on TikTok. Now they need to migrate over to other alternatives. Also this is a reminder for all content creators to always plan for failovers. Though I would assume most them already are on multiple platforms.
An interesting angle to this whole drama that I haven’t seen discussed much: in the creator industry, TikTok is known for being significantly harder to make money from your content, as compared to YouTube. For various reasons, content just makes much more money on YouTube than it does on TikTok.
I do wonder what will happen if TikTok users migrate to YouTube shorts, and if that will change this.
Remember, TikTok has also been banned in the largest country in the world by population for years now..
rumors are that XHS wont region split, in which case this is setting up to a monumental event in the evolution and future of the internet. words can't really describe how big of a decision this is going to be.
If TikTok is just in the business of earning money they would've sold.
I'd like to see less pervasive chronic use of media, so would hope Canada follows suit, but I don't think banning specific services for political reasons is necessarily a good way to get there. Along with other toxic outlets like gambling, we should be able to make coherent judgements about what belongs and what doesn't based on assessments of well-being indicators that evolve over time. I know it's a fairly conservative take, but it's one I'm happy with, and have a hard time seeing how we're better off with the existence of things like TikTok that provide such an easy way to siphon off human hours in a way that few things other than TV before.
Incidentally, I feel almost controversial for seeing more ads for alcohol and gambling than anything else, and thinking "when did we agree it was a good thing to be more permissive about encouraging objectively addicting risky behavior?".
The United States, through its influence over Facebook, instagram, and twitter, facilitated the Arab Spring. Of course we don’t want an adversary to have the same influence over our domestic political conversation.
Biden has said he won't enforce the ban and Trump has said he will keep TikTok from going dark. Shou is attending the inauguration. Ivanka and Kai are posting actively on TikTok. It is not going anywhere.
How very "land of the free" of America
The next Supreme Court decision will be them deciding if disagreeing with the TikTok decision is sufficient grounds for being censored.
Public disagreement with the TikTok decision could lead to legislative pressure, which would add support to the pressure campaigns of Chinese lobbyists and diplomats, or of other organizations that are funded or donated to by Chinese people or people of Chinese descent. This could either result in new legislation being passed that nullifies the ban, or pressure the Executive into failing to enforce the ban.
Either of those outcomes would, in effect, allow the user data of Americans to be accessed by the government of China. Disagreement with the TikTok ban would in and of itself aid America's adversaries.
Besides, disagreement with it implies that America unduly restricts speech, when we're supposed to hate China because China unduly restricts speech. That's a clear case of creating a false equivalence in order to foment discord, which again is material support to China's goal to monitor American's communications and corrupt the minds of America's children.
Good news for everyone. Get off these endless scrolling trash providers
China's vision of the Internet turned out to be more prescient than we realised at the time. Everyone is going to their own Great Firewall. In hindsight, it will seem crazy that we ever allowed media platforms to be controlled by foreign governments - especially ones which like to seed revolution, social unrest and regime change
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!
The ruling isn't surprising, although I almost expected Alito or Thomas to dissent.
Everybody already moved to red book and are starting to recognize that the US is just an aging colonialist with nothing to offer the future
https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/s/hXe9HsWslW
The GenZ folks (including my kids) that I interact with on a day-to-day basis are much happier on that application and they’re starting to realize that the US is not what it pretends to be
That doesn’t mean any place is better (though possible) it simply means people started finally realizing the truth of the United States
Does this only apply to TikTok or any other "foreign adversary" application that collects user data?
What's stopping another version of TikTok from being created, effectively defeating the purpose of banning a single app?
Crazy how this Gestapo like gov managed to force uninstall Kaspersky. I paid money and they actually did that? That actually just shows me that that antivirus was too strong against the NSA.
Anyhow I'm a Linux user and a VPN user and a Tor user and an I2P user and a Freenet user.
AND I LOVE LEARNING ABOUT DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS IN RUST.
This government is becoming too totalitarian and should be made an example of. The internet was made to be impossible to take down and so should our thoughts and ideas. Distribute everything from now on.
It sounds like they are just banning it from new installs on app stores, won't people just browse to the URL to use it?
The distinction between apps and websites seems arbitrary to me... especially since a huge fraction of apps seem to be effectively just a browser window with a single website locked in full screen.
I have never before used tiktok, but just now as an experiment I opened it in a browser and scrolled for a minute- I had no problem accessing an apparently endless stream of mostly young women jumping up and down without bras, and young men vandalizing automobiles.
Ah the land of free speech and freedom of the press.
Not even in Europe we have such crackdown on freedom while Americans scream censorship because nazi symbols and certain phrases are illegal in Germany.
Just as an aside, I'm surprised that Instagram has done nothing to facilitate the migration it wants. I've been hitting the same old rate limits while trying to "migrate" by subscribing to creators who have IG accounts as well. It's now got me down to one or two a day. Not only have they not made it easier ("import your export data file here, we'll subscribe you to everyone with the same handle"), they are making it quite hard.
What does this shutdown mean for US employees of Bytedance? Will they shut down their US offices or continue business as usual working from the US but only serving users outside?
>In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration, upholding the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act which President Joe Biden signed in April.
Glad to see when it comes to protecting tech monopolies the wisest among us are in full agreement.
Silly things like a right to a speedy trial are up for debate though.
I think this is a massive over reach. You can argue to restrict social media to those over 18, but Americans should have a right to consume content they choose.
What's next, banning books by Chinese authors? Banning Chinese Americans from holding key positions in social media companies, after all they might have uncles in the CCP!
Follow the money. TikTok is an issue for Facebook, BYD cars are an issue for Tesla.
If US users continue to use the app via VPN, will that hinder the CCPs ability to weaponize it? If so, this outcome may be a good middle ground.
So many trolls here. They must be really annoyed.
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 keep being a english first space? Will it survive/thrive? How the content is going to evolve? What does this means in terms of global cultural influence? Will we see internationalized Chinese content dominating it? Will this backfire for the US?