It's hard for me to imagine TikTok retaining even 20% of the US market share after an app store ban. But that 20% would still be a huge cultural victory for ByteDance, would be an impressive resistance.
The US would really have to turn into a monster, would have to deputize a huge amount of internet services into becoming policemen to go further, and that's a horrible thing that I don't want to see. But also, I struggle to see that deputization down without a huge stink that makes congress look like foolish jerks.
And it'll never work. No matter how many ISP types we conscript, there's just way too many VPNs and other capabilities out there to workaround a technical ban. Squeezing hard will sort of illuminate the futility of the act.
And sort of that's my hope, that the ban becomes a lesson in futility, that sort of shows ByteDance's posture here is right (albeit at a considerable loss in market position). I want the internet to have a win here, I want democratized individual choices to triumph over tight centralized control, I want nations to not have the means. Other nations attempt elaborate control and I don't want the example of control to be proven viable here in the US. There's dark dark roads Congress & the government could go down to try to enforce this ban, but I'm kind of hoping they fail fast and fail hard.
(Also reserving the right to change my mind later. I struggle to see right now how picking on one (and only one) big foreign service is justified.)
If it's banned it'll all but die out of American popular culture. People will shift to things like YouTube Shorts instead. You can't even get the average person to understand mastodon let alone buy into a VPN subscription to circumvent regional bans.
“We understand the concerns expressed and are committed to finding a resolution that puts the interests of our users and the American public as our top priority.”
They should sell it or spin it off or whatever and make statements commensurate with that.
> Literally what else could he possibly say in this situation?
The strongest move might have been business as usual. He doesn’t have public stockholders to appease. And his users aren’t going anywhere. The only case I can see for this statement is he doesn’t totally expect to win in court and needs to politicise the question as a back-up.
He could’ve said Nothing. That he’s so hostile to something that would be so financially beneficial to him makes me even more suspicious of his motives.
Do they even have standing? The proposed "ban" is enforced on the app stores, so I could see Google or Apple have standing, if they don't want to be forced to delete an app their users like. Meanwhile tiktok.com will still work in browsers.
> Finally, the Act did not violate the Bill of Attainder clause of the Constitution because this Act does not convict former President Nixon of a crime and does not expose him to prosecution.
They almost certainly would have standing. Banning their app from the app store clearly directly affects them.
But they could instead just allow people to login on the mobile site and install it as a progressive web app, instead of forcing them to use the app so they can track people better.
I think it's a good idea for (groups of) countries to require large foreign countries to create local daughter companies to service their citizens locally. This way you can enforce your (hopefully democratic and good) laws and protect your citizens from things like spying. It's somewhat ironic that the US is raising this issue though since they do the same themselves. As far as I know their secret services are allowed to spy without restraint on anybody but American citizens. Or they are doing so anyhow.
If the US has any credibility in the context of its constitutional sanctity, then this "ban" will be declared unconstitutional by the us supreme court.
if this were a poker game, ByteDance would have a full house. There is just no way they can lose this case, if only because the Citizens United ruling grants their corporation personhood.
USG has forced sales similar to this in previous years (Grindr), both without an act of Congress and without the lingering smell of national security concerns. This is different, yes, but different in that the legal case is more robust, not less.
Does he seriously think the US SCOTUS is going to override the will of 79 senators, for the sake of a company with documented ties to the Chinese Communist Party?
If I was a senator, I would consider that almost treasonous. Frankly, even if you disagree with the vote, a democracy can and should be able to make such judgement calls. At that rate, the CCP should be able to buy beachfront property in California, ship military and nuclear weapons to the property, and claim that we can’t stop them because they paid the import fees.
No. The Supreme Court exists primarily to interpret the law, reconcile laws with other laws, and address vague language or other inconsistencies. Overriding the will of senators, immediately after a bill’s passing, is very rare and threatens their perceived legitimacy. Senators can always impeach SCOTUS judges, and to do such an act begs for it.
Considering Congress passes almost 500 laws per year (1229 from 2019 to 2021, 1234 [sic] from 2021 to 2023), it is a little less than 1% of cases.
But that’s just the federal branch. Your list includes states and local municipalities - which makes the real number much, much lower. Much closer, arguably, to 0.1% or less of all legislation.
> Much closer, arguably, to 0.1% or less of all legislation.
You're missing the giant flip side of that coin; that local, state, and Federal courts can all determine laws conflict with other laws or the Constitution, and do so regularly.
If your town passes a "no black people allowed after 10pm" law, it'll never get to SCOTUS, but it's still unconstitutional. The first level of courts it encounters will immediately overturn it.
(Two other notes: clearly unconstitutional laws tend to be a bit rare, because they're a bit embarassing when they get readily overturned. A significant portion - as much as 20% - of those 500 average bills is naming post offices; for example, https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/203. Much of the rest are similarly void of thorny constitutional questions.)
The fact remains that it is entirely within the role of the court to overturn unconstitutional legislation, which the court does regularly.
The idea that the court would not give proper scrutiny to a legislative act -- one which may violate the first amendment, fifth amendment, and may amount to an illegal bill of attainder -- just because it had support from the senate, well, that's just preposterous.
> Frankly, even if you disagree with the vote, a democracy can and should be able to make such judgement calls
That's literally SCOTUS's job though, particularly as it relates to the US Constitution. The whole point is that unconstitutional laws "in theory" should be struck down.
Its job is to resolve cases and controversies. If that requires finding the Constitution supersedes a law (or a federal law supersedes a state law), so be it.
Right - so the question is: should the Senate be able to pass any law, no matter what, because it was overwhelmingly voted for? To me the "overwhelmingly voted for" criteria is not enough. Why would we even need a Supreme Court in that case? Just let the legislative branch do whatever it wants as long as most vote in favor.
> If I was a senator, I would consider that almost treasonous.
The Constitution - in this case, probably the First Amendment - very clearly limits what the Senate can do. The entire three-branch system is built on checks and balances of this nature.
> Frankly, even if you disagree with the vote, a democracy can and should be able to make such judgement calls.
Can we vote to put redheads in extermination camps?
Determining whether to allow a business incorporated offshore to operate in our country is completely incomparable to a inherited permanent genetic trait.
I won't be intentionally obtuse, but I was under the impression that basically all large tech companies are incorporated offshore. We think of them as American certainly, but when it comes time to pay taxes, I get the feeling they don't exude patriotic enthusiasm to do so. I'm quite sure that they feel much more allegiance to shareholders wherever they might be in the world than they do for Americans as a group.
1. That's completely missing the point. The will of the Senate isn't the only thing that matters in our system, as it has concrete protections even for minority rights (for example, free speech for Nazis, as distasteful as it is to most of us) that cannot be overridden by mere legislative fiat, and thank goodness for that.
2. This bill, among other things, tells American private companies they must censor their app stores by excluding a particular application. It is, inherently, an act of censorship, and I think there's a good chance it doesn't survive court review. At the very least, it'll be years of litigation.
Tell that to China that does not allow Facebook, Instagram and Youtube in China. They have access to 400 million americans but we can't have access to 1 billion Chinese people? China was running a long time a go
Western platforms were losing to Chinese ones in PRC before they were blocked. When hammer came down to enforce onerous human moderation on ALL platforms in PRC, western platforms chose not to comply, because adding layer of human moderation at the time wasn't worth the cost/optics. This was a time when PRC domestic platforms had 10,000s of humans in the loop and western ones had essentially none. Why do you think Facebook and Google both had internal projects to re-enter PRC market after they scaled up human moderation in west? That's what fair competition is - facebook, google et al blocking what PRC gov wants blocked and handing over info on dissident according to who PRC says are dissidents. All expensive things PRC platforms has to do. AKA "fair" competitive enironment. Thinking western platforms should compete in PRC without following PRC laws is insipid. Fair would also be the TikTok/Oracle JV where Oracle responsible for US interests, like PRC has for Microsoft. Nevermind half the reason western platforms were blocked was because they were unmoderated platforms that helped organize extremist attacks that caused 2009 minority riots. It's one thing to block TikTok if TikTok allowed 9/11 and refused to do anything about it, it's another when they do what every other US platform does, but just better.
We are trading partners for sure but the American model and Chinese model are fundamentally opposed. For the last 10-15 years, tensions have been getting hotter because Xi has been consolidating power and flexing his strength across the region and exporting censorship. You can look at Hong Kong as an example of this. It's clear China doesn't want to live under a Western hegemony and has been trying to get more power and the US sees this. Trump instituted tariffs and we've also banned Huawei 5G equipment and it's all in the interest of national security and China hasn't liked this. So things have been going back and forth. TikTok is just seen as a scary possibility in that they could influence American minds at a scale that is unprecedented. There's a law in the US that no foreign entity can own a large share of any US broadcasting company. This is just to prevent hostile takeovers and controlling media. This is pretty similar to that in that TikTok is a media company and the US wants to exert that same control. User data is a red herring and honestly the least of the concern if you think about the soft power they control with the TikTok algorithm. Even though we have a trading relationship, things have been heating up under the surface for decades.
It's hard for me to imagine TikTok retaining even 20% of the US market share after an app store ban. But that 20% would still be a huge cultural victory for ByteDance, would be an impressive resistance.
The US would really have to turn into a monster, would have to deputize a huge amount of internet services into becoming policemen to go further, and that's a horrible thing that I don't want to see. But also, I struggle to see that deputization down without a huge stink that makes congress look like foolish jerks.
And it'll never work. No matter how many ISP types we conscript, there's just way too many VPNs and other capabilities out there to workaround a technical ban. Squeezing hard will sort of illuminate the futility of the act.
And sort of that's my hope, that the ban becomes a lesson in futility, that sort of shows ByteDance's posture here is right (albeit at a considerable loss in market position). I want the internet to have a win here, I want democratized individual choices to triumph over tight centralized control, I want nations to not have the means. Other nations attempt elaborate control and I don't want the example of control to be proven viable here in the US. There's dark dark roads Congress & the government could go down to try to enforce this ban, but I'm kind of hoping they fail fast and fail hard.
(Also reserving the right to change my mind later. I struggle to see right now how picking on one (and only one) big foreign service is justified.)