[wheaties]

National security has always beaten First Amendment (and many other rights.) I love watching TikTok but even i know how this will shake out.

Now the question will be, who will rush to fill in this void? Will Bliesky release short form videos, too?

[hangonhn]

The campaign against TikTok has been driven heavily by Meta/Facebook: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/faceboo... (or https://archive.is/fffia)

My guess is that Meta will capitalize on the ban and is in a good position to given their AI prowess and ubiquity on most people's devices.

[logicchains]

Meta's Reels is much less engaging than TikTok (as measured by user numbers and anecdotal user experience), and if competition from TikTok is removed they'll have even less reason to improve it.

[hangonhn]

Yeah I've noticed that and have always been so surprised by it. Given Meta's resources and AI strength, I would have thought they would have made their Reels so much better but TikTok, who has FAR FAR less data on me (I beta tested Facebook that's how old my account is), can show me much more engaging content within about 15 to 30 minutes of me signing up and using it.

Maybe ByteDance has expertise on a wholly different sort of AIs that Meta isn't great at? I've always been very perplexed by this.

[logicchains]

>National security has always beaten First Amendment (and many other rights.)

This is absolutely not the case, as evidenced by the fact we all have access to encryption, which the security establishment tried to ban in the '90s. The First Amendment is the reason why secure encryption isn't restricted to government and military usage only.

[BeefWellington]

It was export restricted for ages. If you were an American company as late as the late 2000's (at least) you had to get permission to export strong encryption.

The right to communicate math ended at the US border. It's entirely feasible given the laws for that kind of walling off of content to be legal.

There's also the chilling effect of the government doing it anyways, even if they will eventually lose that legal battle in court.

[andrewla]

I would dare to say that National Security should beat the First Amendment.

But the argument that TikTok bears any relationship to "national security" is ludicrous on the face of it. They're not posting nuclear secrets, they're posting short videos.

[axus]

National Security Through Obscurity? When has the freedom of religion, speech, press, or assembly ever been bad for the United States? The government can make agreements with its agents to limit those, and can control its own information, but not other peoples'.

[chasil]

As I understand it, TikTok is only being removed from the Apple & Google app stores, and existing installations will not be touched.

For Google, sideloading TikTok remains an option, both for new installs and updates. This is not an option for Apple.

Is there a point where the installed app itself becomes illegal?

[monocasa]

If they have a ban, they can force ISPs to block it. The app does nothing without server access.

[drpossum]

What's the first amendment right being violated in this case?

[Miner49er]

It's mentioned in the article, Lamont v. Postmaster General found that Americans have the right to receive speech/information even foreign propaganda.

[EMIRELADERO]

Not only that, but the US subsidiary (TikTok, Inc) also has a 1A right to receive the feeds that power the app and relay them out to the rest of the country. The algorithmic choices of what content to show, to who, and when, are by themselves speech.

Because the government cannot ban the "receiving" part, it obviously also cannot ban the "relaying".

I don't know how the Court will rule, but if TikTok is poised to lose I'm very curious about how the Justices will deal with the conundrum I explained above.

[valbaca]

Instagram has already completely become a clone of TikTok