Well the Senate killed the earlier bill. There’s a decent chance they pass the Ukraine/Israel aid bill without this amendment. It would then be stricken in reconciliation. Unfortunately there’s also a decent chance the Senate passes it because this version probably fixes things the Senators had problems with.
If it does get passed there’s a very good chance there’s a court order to prevent anything until the courts rule on the constitutionality of the law. If Bytedance loses that there’s zero chance they sell though. The US market is not big enough for them to jettison an international company.
Why are you cheerleading for TikTok to remain in the hands of a US adversary, during the same week when said adversary forced a US company to abjectly ban US-based messaging apps?
Retaliation. Tit for tit.
If the government can just point at a company and force a fire sale then there is no market, there is no order, there is no financial industry. This is an incredibly dangerous law.
The government absolutely has unconditional and unlimited authority to restrict enemy states from ownership of anything in the US they want to.
There is absolutely no possibility of any Constitutional issue. The government has explicit authority to handle anything they want about international commerce in the Constitution.
That’s why they’re having to pass this law I guess then? Because they already have the authority to do the thing they’re trying to make the law to get the authority to do?
And TikTok isn’t owned by China. It’s owned by ByteDance, a MultiNational Corp with Chinese ties. It’s not operated out of China, Tiktok is operated out of Singapore and Los Angeles.
And what exactly is the security concern of people making funny cat videos? Nobody is saying the government has to put Tiktok on government computers. So what exactly is the exposure here that trumps the first amendment and prohibition on bills of attainder in the US?
You’re thinking of laws in terms of obedience. Law is about agreed-upon structure (sometimes functional, often dysfunctional).
Enforcement is about obedience, and comes up when people don’t go along with the agreed-upon structure. When the structure is made poorly, enforcement has harmful consequences.
Examples:
- food stamps (law)
- no stealing (law)
- preventing theft or multiple-subscription to food stamps (enforcement)
- the wilderness act (law)
- suing the government for not following the wilderness act (enforcement)
Law and enforcement are closely linked, but definitely distinct.
They have the authority to create structure (pass laws) regarding foreign powers operating within the States. So they pass laws (create structure) that state the agreed-upon structure, and enable that structure to be enforced.
Except we don’t have that power. Not unless there’s a national security threat. And they might make our children more woke isn’t a national security threat.
American individuals and this company have a first amendment right. Furthermore this isn’t a ban on all foreign owned companies. This is a ban on companies with ownership that have nebulous ties to certain countries. A list we can add to at any time. That is capricious and open to being abused. It’s also unconstitutional under the no Bills of Attainder rule.
Except we do have that power. There’s reasonable national security risk, and your lack of understanding of the dynamics involved doesn’t make them nebulous to others.
In any case, if you don’t like it, vote with your life choices. If it’s not that important, well… …it’s not that important.
The alternative is to outright ban it. Tik Tok is a cancer directly controlled by a hostile nation state. The government absolutely has the right to block foreign interference like this.
Pray tell how is this any worse than Facebook? Is the CCP in the Los Angeles TikTok office moderating content?
Or is this just more bullshit invented on the spot to justify an unconstitutional power grab?
Facebook isn’t under an obligation to provide America’s data directly to the government of a hostile foreign power. Tiktok is
An obligation? Is there proof of that? That’s a pretty incendiary accusation.
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/afcl/fact-check-tiktok-03242023144611.html
Technically according to this article tiktok won’t share data with the PRC - but their parent company bytedance is obligated to share data with the PRC when requested. Bytedance has authority to require tiktok to share data. Therefore through this channel tiktok is obligated to share data with the PRC when requested.
They’re owned by the CCP (and before you say they’re not, the ByteDance C-suite is basically all current Chinese citizens and the headquarters is in Beijing).
Businesses and people do not have rights in the way most westerners are used to. Assume anything out of China or generally owned by Chinese companies is a direct arm of the CCP … because even if it isn’t today, the CCP can unilaterally throw down an order from the top and take control of the company/have them do whatever they want or the leaders replaced.
“they won’t let the algorithm be sold and without it, it’s an empty deal” I don’t see how that’s a problem. Obviously there’s a great deal of knowledge about what “the algorithm” does across the userbase; just get users to raise tickets about what they miss and others to upvote them, then knock them off one by one. There’s nothing magic about “users who liked post A also liked post B” or “company X paid us $1000000000000 so here’s post C whether you like it or not”. It might even end up being better than the original.
