alt Hacker NewsSimple 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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The EFF disagrees.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/eff-statement-us-supre...
> The law simply bans the distribution of the app on marketplaces stores for reasons stated (national security).
This is red alert talk. We need to make damned sure we know exactly what we're asking for here and that we're not giving up more than we mean to.
This is affecting the free speech rights of US citizens directly. You might wish it was as simple as you try to portray it, but it clearly isn’t
Cool, so is all US companies in all other countries around the world then, no protections. 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!
I get this argument, and obviously it's not stopping people from uploading the same content other places. But isn't there (or shouldn't there be) something about not banning what people can consume? Like could the US ban aljazeera? Or banning foreign books?! And still TikTok is different, because it's about the potential for quietly manipulating or curating what is seen, even if that content is produced domestically... And even if people can use other apps, there's still a community and subcultures that are being dismantled.
> Simple answer. A chinese owned company has no such rights or protections. Free speech does not apply.
The Constitution does not place limits on which people are protected by it (you don't have to be a citizen for it to apply as the founders were looking to limit the powers of their government not their citizens). And with the expansion of those protections to corporations through Citizens United, I'd be surprised if a court found that `company + foreign != person + foreign` when they've decided `company == person`. (Well not surprised by this Court.)
> 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.
The rest of your comment still stands right in my eyes. National Security has often been used as a means to bypass many things enshrined by the Constitution.