TikTok says it is restoring service for U.S. users

I don't know if it's a free speech issue but legally speaking it's definitely not a first amendment issue because the law targets foreign corporations and the Constitution doesn't apply to foreign entities

The ACLU hasn't been a credible defender of free speech in some time. (FIRE and EFF still credible.)

> Laws that does not explicitly curtail free speech but effectively still does just that can certainly be created.

You can say the same thing about an antitrust law that forces Alphabet to sell Youtube.

This issue is not about freedom of speech to any of the players. Its geopolitics. The ACLU and the EFF care about the precedent it sets.

Shocking news: different players have different motivations.

ACLU is a biased organization and only supports the bill of rights when it suits their political alignment.

Honestly these "civil liberties" orgs have lost the plot a long time ago, or are just at "useful idiot" mode

Not to mention, why would they trust the US to pay tens of billions of dollars after this rigmarole? The incoming head of state doesn't exactly have a great track record of seeing through on promises to pay and is threatening tariffs against all and sundry.

Anybody with that kind of financing readily available is throwing it at AI and not another social network, no matter how useful it might be for domestic propaganda.

> the laws in China prevent a sale

First I've heard of this.

The conflicting legal obligations remind me of the Microsoft "safe harbour" case, which is becoming a lot more relevant and still isn't really adequately resolved.

They’re majority owned by non Chinese investors. I don’t see how china law would have any say.

Chinese laws are whatever Xi says they are, so that's where Trump negotiating a deal for himself / his rich buddies comes into play..

I think that's a major part of the concern. Their first duty is to the Chinese Communist Party. Historically all sources of information in communism have to serve the goals of the party above all else, and this is tightly controlled.

I'd remove the race baiting but yeah it's pretty spot on.

You have no issues with corporate influence on US politics?

Corporations and their wealthy owners have an outsized influence on policies to the near total exclusion of everyday people. Not sure what future you're envisioning here but you might want to consider where you fall in the pecking order before bending the knee to blatant oligarchy.

holy crap… wow!!!

[dead]

Say what you want about the communists, they at least killed the landlords like they promised

> after the democratic party decided that their winning strategy would be to villainize tech and emerging west coast values.

Trump proposed the TikTok ban and even tried to enforce it via executive action during his first term. He also said he would put Zuckerberg in prison and attacked big tech companies for almost a decade at this point. The reason Silicon Valley is aligning themselves with Trump’s administration is for strategic reasons. If there are any ideological reasons I doubt these would stand the test of pendulum shifts.

Republican speaker Johnson also still wants to enforce the ban and only considers Trump’s interference as a delay to have TikTok sold to a US entity (which the bill explicitly allows as an alternative): https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/speaker-johnson-2-...

With other words, while Silicon Valley founders said and pushed that they actually have ethics, morality and "good for the world" ideas, it wasn't actually true and money+extreme capitalism won in the end.

> Biden could have easily deferred the penalty phase by 30-90 days

Legally, it’s unclear Trump can. (Practically, of course.)

Please don't put words in my mouth, I did not comment on who bears the most responsibility for the ban. It is undeniable that Trump laid the groundwork for it though:

July 7, 2020 - Secretary of State Mike Pompeo considers banning TikTok: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53319955

July 31, 2020 - Donald Trump wants to ban TikTok and will not allow ByteDance to sell the platform to an American tech company: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/31/tech/tiktok-trump-bytedan...

August 3, 2020 - Donald Trump backpedals and allows ByteDance to sell the platform to an American tech company: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/aug/03/tiktok-ro...

August 6, 2020 - Donald Trump declares a national emergency based on the information TikTok collects: https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/ex...

Crypto is a very easy way to funnel bribes to the sitting president, who has immunity for actions taken in regards to "official actions".

> Hey, I bought $1,000,000,000 $TRUMP coin, can you ease up on $RegulationImpactingMe?

> Regulations are official actions, so sure I can take a look-see.

> People aren't allowed to change their minds?

Sure they are, but they should explain why they changed their minds. In the case of meme coins like $TRUMP, it's hard to defend crypto as an investment or as a currency, which leaves the obvious reason: it's a scam.

In the case of Trump, I'm sure he was all for crypto as soon as he realized that he personally could make money from it. Same goes for his NFT grift.

FWIW, it was at least year in the making, but I will admit that the execution did add a proper show vibe.. as would be expected from a reality show star.

And today's Bureau of Global Public Affairs[1]. Which "engages media to shape the global narrative on American foreign policy and values [and] communicates U.S. foreign policy objectives to the American public." Of course, it's difficult to pierce the veil and determine exactly how they go about doing this. Narratives are propaganda.

https://www.state.gov/about-us-bureau-of-global-public-affai...

I think anyone who says democracy is good and the will of the people should be respected is implicitly saying that is not true. Implicitly saying voters are individual agents and not a mob.

Otherwise, if democracy is good and votes should matter and at the same time voters are a mob subject to manipulation... democracy is what? A system of government by whoever can do better propaganda? Why would that be good for anyone except those who do propaganda?

So yeah, I think many people are claiming that is not true.

One question I would ask if people are just a mob, who is actually pushing the buttons? Owners of media, political leaders, are also humans, no? They have the same weaknesses, at least in principle.

If you accept some people are different (those who command and control propaganda) then we must conclude that not all people are vulnerable to it, so maybe it's a spectrum. But still democracy sounds like a bad idea, as a majority are probably on the low end of the spectrum, and the majority rules.

Chase Hughes:

"Manipulation Playbook: The 20 Indicators of Reality Control"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3AN2wY4qAM

Anti-populists don't realize the danger they pose to the order they claim to protect. The foundation of Western political order is the idea that the only legitimate government is one run by the people and therefore for the benefit of the people. Even if this model is, to some degree, merely aspirational, it provides a source of legitimacy and an outlet for frustrations.

When anti-populists treat the public with naked contempt and divorce government policy from the preferences of the people, they're demolishing load-bearing pillars of the order that's allowed the West to prosper.

What do you think happens when people realize that "democracy" is a sham in the sense that their preferences don't translate into the rules they follow in daily life?

There are hundreds of HN users commenting here as if their opinions have meaning and value.

Which would be in question if they could all be under various states of “influence”…

At the very least the median credibility would be roughly zero.

> ...when the Athenian Democracy voted to condemn Plato to death.

That was Socrates, not Plato.

Socrates was allowed to choose his own punishment too, so he wasn't exactly condemned to death right away. He also had the opportunity to escape prison. He chose not to.

Qhat you doesn't make much sense, starting with your claim Plato was sentenced to death by Athenian democracy, which there is no evidence of that I know of.

The one condemned to death was Socrates. Kind of weird for that to be the detail you get wrong…

And the reason we didn't have universal suffrage.

This is a thoughtful reply. But, if it's just propaganda games played by the elites, I suppose another way to ensure informed outcomes might be literacy tests. Or property ownership.

I guess more than anything I'm just surprised that it's the "threat to democracy" crowd that would be taking such a cynical view of democracy. They're admitting that Trump's propaganda was just better than theirs. Which is, in some ways, hilarious.

Free speech is satisfied in every country, then, because you can sit at home alone and scream whatever you want at your wall without consequences.

If your loud agreement with a lie is disseminated far more widely than your loud agreement with a truth, does it feel like you have free speech?

> And the entity being constrained is a foreign actor

Genuine question from a non-American: does the 1st amendment only apply to US citizens?

> Speech is not being criminalized -- you can say the exact same things on a different forum.

Yes, it's being suppressed. Criminalization is just one of the many coercive ways to censor something, but states have many tools in the box...

That may be why freedom of the press is also guaranteed.

Code is speech. By saying you can't distribute a particular app in the United States you're restricting speech.

You can no more riase taxes to properly fund government than you can fill a bucket with no bottom.

One only need to look at the Harris campaign to see that the political class in the us is fundamentally innumerate as well as incapable of making a cost benefit analysis.

I also find it comical that banning TikTok is the red line for folks when the NSA and other government agencies have been acting with impunity when it comes to harvesting data for decades now.

On the broadest strokes it makes sense. We gave up the liberty of truly owning the land so the government can build houses on them. From there we more or less are rented the land and almost everyone pays a tax for it.

Homeowners have some power. But if the government really needs to (modern example includes building a new railway), They can elect to forcibly pay you and seize it (eminent domain).

>We all give up the liberty of driving on the wrong side of the road, and nobody seems to mind.

Auto transportation was never a right to begin with. As inconvenient as it is, you are free to walk wherever you want without trespassing. Even across a road. But there's a line when you start to simply endanger others by say, walking on a road at 5 mph.

You're analogizing the freedom to access the internet to driving on the wrong side of the road?

The context here was Indian raids. Some rich land owner wanted to pay a one time fee. Benjamin Franklin was saying a 1 time fee wasn't enough - and it would only offer temporary safety rather than ongoing safety higher taxes would offer.

This essential liberty was freedom from being killed. Pretty fucking essential.

>The content wasn’t at issue

You sure about that one? (https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/05/06/senato...)

Obviously the transfer of ownership was always about the content, and implicitly the fact that if a Chinese company owns it, the US has no control over it. Opinion making in the US is always implicitly enforced, not explicitly.

There's a great bit of an old interview with Noam Chomsky talking to an American reporter in which the reporter asks Chomsky: "You think I'm lying to you, pushing a US agenda?" and he responds: "No I think you're perfectly honest, but if you held any other beliefs than you do you wouldn't be sitting in that chair talking to me"

this is the platform version of that concept.

Thats funny, I took a look at publicly available harms from various social media apps and deleted Meta apps.

Who needs salt typhoon when we have GeoHotz

The EU has the advantage that their politicians don't all own gigantic shares in any social media companies (because the EU doesn't have any), so they are afforded the rare luxury of actually voting for the good of the people. That's why the EU has decent data privacy laws.

The TikTok ban would've been far less problematic if they had created legislation for all companies that curtailed data trading and increased user privacy. But that was never the goal.

How so?

It's not about where the videos are posted, it's about having apps that collect exact GPS position of smartphones that soldiers carry while the position of the ships they are on is classified. The fact that there's videos is just the "proof" that they have installed such apps that exfiltrate things like their location, for example.

Famously, soldiers wanted to use strava in secret military bases: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracki...

I think they're trying to say that you don't respond to bad behavior (China banning apps) with your own bad behavior (US banning apps). If America is opposed to the way China handles social media then we shouldn't seek to emulate them

My dog is a dog. He doesn't see anything wrong with pooping on the floor, so he won't be fazed if I do it too: threatening to poop on my own floor is not going to get him to stop doing it. If I follow through with my threat, not only will I be doubling up on the problem of poop on the floor, I'll also be behaving in a way that is far more improper and unacceptable for a me than it is for my dog, because we do not hold human beings to the same standards of behavior and hygiene that we expect from dogs.

China is an authoritarian dictatorship. Their government does not see anything wrong with violating the rights of their citizens, so they won't be fazed if we do it too: threatening to restrict access to social media in the US is not going to get them to stop doing it in China. If we follow through with our threat, not only will we be doubling up on the problem of illegitimate political restriction on public discourse, we'll also be behaving in a way that is far more improper and unacceptable for the US than it is for China, because we do not hold constitutional republics to the same standards of rule of law and respect for individual rights that we expect from authoritarian regimes.

“That fact that it was a drop in the bucket for them makes it that much more outrageous, not less”

I disagree. I get the point that you’re making. That they could have more easily NOT done it. But I would be a lot more ensconced if these people were putting up 50% of their net worth on these bets.

And again, I fully agree that they shouldn’t be able to trade individual stocks. In my past I was a dev at a private wealth management company. While working there I was completely barred from trading individual stocks because it’s possible that I could have come across nonpublic info in the company because they would do internal audits for some entities. It made sense. Congress is an even bigger deal because they literally write the rules of companies that can affect stock prices. I was barred because I could have passively found nonpublic info, but they can actively cause the situations that cause price movement.

But it's not insider trading at this level, that's the whole point. This is a freakishly small amount of stock. At these levels he would own a lot more META if he just bought QQQ (META is 3.3% of composition) with a fraction of his net worth

Well, you either join them [0, 1] (no affiliation to either) or support people trying to fight them? [2]

[0] https://www.joinautopilot.com/

[1] https://www.quiverquant.com/congresstrading/

[2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/pennsylvania-l...

Pray for something very destructive to happen to Capitol Hill during a full session of Congress.

Tell everybody else about it, because most Americans are simply unaware at how blatant the insider trading is and how it works.

At some point you have to wonder if they're just not allowed to exist to allow plausible deniability...

Either way it's clearly not going in the right direction when you have a guy selling cans of fucking beans from the oval office and launching crypto rug pulls

That is a good point, the nance and kruz etfs aren't doing badly, but they aren't rockstars either.

But you could also make money on Meta tanking if you had prior knowledge.

Most policies aren't the sort of thing that is going to attract broad popular support (or opposition.) Did you look at the opposition numbers? Who are the "shadowy powers?" Lawmakers say that China is the shadowy partner here doing bad things with Tiktok. I don't necessarily trust the US government on this issue, but I was speaking to a Chinese national last year, they asked me why the US was banning Tiktok. When I said "because China is using it to spy on Americans" they replied "Of course they are!" and laughed.

I think there are probably some people who are pushing this for self-interested reasons (American social media apps) but also I think the stated reason for the ban is probably the truthful motivation, and I'm ambivalent about trusting the US government and US corporations not to spy on me, but I tend to trust the US government when they say they are trying to stop China from spying on me. And if zero people spying on me is not an option, well, fewer people would probably be an improvement.

It's not that polls are imperfect, it's that they're often entirely misleading and incorrect. And if the only tool you have to do a job isn't fit for purpose, then that just means that you aren't equipped to do the job properly.

If the only tool we have for measuring Washington's behavior against public opinion is one that doesn't accurately reflect public opinion, then that means that we just don't have a reliable way to measure Washington's behavior against public opinion.

Yes, the republican dominated congress and senate are certain to do that. It's very clear this puppy has no bottom.

To be fair, he's already been impeached twice; this wouldn’t be anything new to anybody.