[belorn]

Banning citizens from using the app seems unconstitutional, but is preventing the the company ByteDance to operate inside the US unconstitutional? Those two seems like two completely different questions even if the outcome is similar.

From a EU perspective, regulating what companies do is not in conflict at all with human rights. The privilege to operate a company, provide advertisement, sell products and services, to use the local economy, all that is regulated. It should also be mentioned that companies generally tend to receive some benefits that individual persons do not, especially when it comes to taxes, risk taking, and debt. Companies can own and operate things which private person can't. The distinction between the rights, responsibilities and privileges that a private person has compared to a commercial company are fairly major.

Why is the ACLU talking like TikTok is a US citizen which free speech rights are being infringed?

[teqsun]

Really? From my reading of it, it seems to focus how such a ban would inhibit the speech of US citizens who use the application, not TikTok as an entity.

[belorn]

Regulation that dictate how a company may operate will naturally inhibit the consumers if the regulations is so heavy that the company will no longer exist. That doesn't mean such regulation is impossible.

The ban does not say that US citizens are not allowed to use the application (or apply speech). The method of the ban is similar to those blocking torrent sites, as in blocking them on an ISP level.

ISP already operating a fairly large block lists, both in the US and EU, blocking everything from pirate sites, scam sites, and more serious criminal ventures. The legal frame work generally do not talk about users (outside of deep packet inspection territory). They simply get applied more like industry regulation. It should be noted that the 1965 case has not prevented ISP block lists, and I would assume that the long list of pirate cases where ISP has objected to block lists in the last 30+ years has thoroughly tested the 1965 case. We can also look at the very recent net neutrality situation, where ISP has very much been defined as something very different from the postal service.

As a minor aspect being said in articles describing the ban, the ban would not prevent users from accessing the app if its already installed. As an ISP block it would break the functionality of the app, and new users would only get a spinning bar when trying to download it, but citizens would not be legally bound by the ban. That is mostly semantics but there is a legal distinction.

[klabb3]

This is the best point I’ve read about this. I don’t think TikTok should be seen as a facilitator of free speech, because it has no obligations to allow it. It’s a private enterprise with their own community guidelines censorship, but most importantly they control the ”algorithm”. No matter how much these platforms claim to be town squares, they are absolutely not and thus serve no essential speech function. If they did, content would not require installing spyware to see. (In my opinion secret mandatory engagement algorithms don’t deserve even section 230 protections).

On the other hand, it doesn’t sit right with me that ”China scary” is enough to outright block whoever is successful in the surveillance capitalist game invented in the US. It screams of political hit job for hire by the tech oligarchs. It’s like banning Taco Bell for health reasons and leaving McDonalds alone. If the modern US was not a plutocracy, this would have been an opportunity for legislators to do real harm reduction and steer predatory mega-corps in a better direction.