Bizarre, in the land of free speech the government is suppressing it.
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"Free speech" is not like the free square in Bingo. You can't just use it whenever. Commerce is already regulated, speech is already regulated, there's no way around those things not being absolute. If you have a specific argument about the nuance of this situation, then make it.
I’m no Tiktok fan but the US has extremely broad free speech protections and its hard to see how this could be constitutional.
Individuals posting videos of themselves is clearly speech so we are in the 1st amendment territory. None of the usual exceptions for certain types of content (defamation, threats, fraud etc) apply because the restriction isn’t on specific content.
The only way out I could see is saying national security/secrets require us to prevent the Chinese company Tiktok from operating in the US.
But their free speech isn’t limited. They lose a platform, which is something completely different. Free speech doesn’t mean having to facilitate it.
People can still create a website and post their clips, or move to instagram or Snapchat or bluesky or twitter or whatever.
Thats true from the point of view of the individual poster claiming free speech infringement. I guess I was thiking of it from the point of the corporation which could claim something like a right to use an algorithm to promote certain videos as speech. I’m not sure if this has been decided by higher courts yet.
> Individuals posting videos of themselves is clearly speech so we are in the 1st amendment territory.
Who’s preventing them from posting videos on platforms not controlled by CCP?
"the Act, as construed and applied, is unconstitutional, since it imposes on the addressee an affirmative obligation which amounts to an unconstitutional limitation of his rights under the First Amendment."
That seems like a very different case since it imposed different rules depending on the content of the speech. The analogous situation to the tiktok ban would be shutting down the postal service, which would be surprising but presumably constitutional.
We should be more like China then? I’m confused.
Land of free speech? Maybe in like a John Wayne movie was this ever true…
Like you know other parts of Bill or “Rights” like “prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures” except like your toothpaste at the airport… Americans are generally too funny thinking it is still “land of the free”
> Land of free speech? Maybe in like a John Wayne movie was this ever true…
What country would you say has stronger free speech protections than the US? I won't say there's none, because there are roughly 200 countries, and I don't know enough about many of them, but I cannot name one.
Not the UK, France or Germany, and I'd be surprised to find any other European country.
For a sampling of other laws/measures:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insult_(legal)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se-majest%C3%A9
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press#/media/File:World_Map_of_the_Freedom_of_the_Press_Status,_OWID.svg
The USA is not especially high up on the World Press Freedom Index:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Press_Freedom_Index
My main problem with free speech in America is how it’s become some sort of unquestionable belief that it’s absolute. There are many instances of freedom of speech being curtailed by the USA government, yet they are somehow redefined into some sort of “unspeech” and don’t count instead of being honest and saying “yes, we restrict speech on this occasion for X reason”. It’s a very dangerous Orwellian approach to not allow yourself to see when your freedoms are being restricted.
This list is reminiscent of "happiness index" which simply encodes a certain ideology via a benchmark, the components of which a reasonable American does not necessarily agree with being the utmost important factors, and only is taken seriously if abstracted and lipsticked by generic names like "press freedom" or "happiness".
The simple example that UK is ranked higher than US is prima facie evidence that it is complete bullshit, considering the lack of First Amendment and much stricter libel laws that UK media has to worry about.
The two examples of that are CSAM, which makes obvious sense to restrict, and copyright infringing material. It might make business sense not to let people post the latest Disney movie but it just goes to show the first amendment isn't absolute.
it is not snark, I am European living most of my adult life in the US and I have had more than one laugh over the years with “we are land of the free”
You’re thinking in binary terms about a gradient.
freedom being gradient sounds a lot like part of a speech of a dictator :)
It’s a spectrum. Some places are more free than others, and we’re as far toward the free end of the spectrum as anyone unless you count places where the government has totally collapsed. I suppose there are anarchies somewhere but they’re never stable.
You can say “land of the free my ass” every time a law prevents you from doing something you want, but that doesn’t mean other places have more freedom.
I agree 100%.
I never said that other places have more freedom though. I just find it fascinating that American really believe in their "rights" and frequently mock other countries, societies, etc...
Something doesn’t have to be perfect to be good. Most American’s recognize and lament the erosion of freedoms over the years, while still valuing the many that remain.
I don’t think they should be be laughed at for that.
It can be good for some and bad for others, especially as someone who is not born in China but is of Chinese descent. I usually avoid sharing my opinion on geopolitics outside the family and prefer to keep to myself if I prefer Chinese brands over Western ones to avoid being judged. The government can use the law to target Chinese-born individuals, and initiatives like the 'Chinese Initiative' make me more cautious and aware of my race.
Even very intelligent people will accept this argument for America, and then reject it for often literally every other country.
Imagine I made the same argument for Russia, or China, or North Korea, or Syria, or Venezuela, or some other country the Western mainstream media says is bad. You'd presumably come up with a reason - immediately, effortlessly, almost without thinking - why it didn't apply in that case, and that that country really was bad, and their imperfections really meant they were not good.
Unlike the U.S., which simply cannot fall out of favour with some people, no matter what they do.
If an organisation doesn't serve its purpose, whether through ignorance, stupidity, or malice, it should be either broken up or restructured. There's no reason not to do this with businesses, states, etc, other than the usual quasi-religious ones, centered around various tired and confused dogmas involving markets, freedom, human nature, and that sort of thing.
Summary: Human beings should be given second chances, and third chances, and so on, as many chances as we can give them. Organisations on the other hand should be given one chance. We owe them nothing.
As someone that had to deal with one of the countries in your list - they’re bad.
At no stage in my argument did I make any point contrary to that, and my argument is in no way about that.
The point is simply that U.S. democracy is visibly in tatters. Clinging on to this notion that still, in spite of all the evidence in front of our eyes, the U.S. is somehow fundamentally and essentially different to the other historical empires, is just your usual bog-standard nationalist delusion.
I think that the founding story of the States is beautiful, and that some of the early writing is really quite something (I'm thinking of Paine in particular here). And I'm very fond of some of the other cultural output. It's not "pleasant" to face the reality of the modern day U.S.A., is what I'm saying, but to hope to improve the state of the world, it has to be done.
There are many statistical datapoints which suggest the country is doing very poorly socially. Then it seems to me that a serious case can be made that the vast network of state, semi-private and private institutions over there involved in the "security" sector (arms, cyber, related fields) has gotten completely out of hand and answers effectively to itself only.
I'm trying to refrain from making specific examples here, because any mention of a specific issue will result in the assumption that some partisan point is being made. Accepting that risk, perhaps we could: look at the president; look at what the alternatives were; look at the previous presidents from the last decades; look at the legal system; look at the prison system; look at povery rates; look at crime rates; look at political prisoners; look at the increase in attacks on the media; look at military spending; look at straightforward, old-fashioned corruption; look at drone strikes; look at studies of how the state's actions tracks with polls of what the populace want; etc etc.
At a certain point, it's hard to believe in the intellectual integrity of observers who cling on to the argument: "ah, but look, that other country is worse!" This is an obvious race to the bottom, and can excuse any level of depravity. Again, it's hard to see how this belief is possible to hold without a solid dose of quasi-religious nationalist fervour.
US doesn't rank at the top, but is still rated as quite free by Freedom House https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores?sort...
About 74 points higher than China based on my math
Hayes Code.
Comics Code Authority.
And so on and so forth.
None of those were laws?
The Hayes Code exists to have a standardized industry guideline in response to individual states issuing dozens of differing film censorship bills. So while it is not a law, it is a guideline for how to be compliant with a rapidly proliferating number of censorship laws.
Ironic how the EU comes out on top for acknowledging sideloading as a fundamental feature of smartphones. It will take the "it's a series of tubes" guys quite some time to figure that one out.
I think the main problem will be TikTok to conduct business in America, charge for ads to target American users and pay American content providers. It’s just a free app if they can’t earn money on it.
God, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’s the perfect use case for crypto to avoid US payment rail controls. Get a16z on the phone, he said with less sarcasm than one would expect.
Using crypto doesn’t somehow make you immune to prosecution. If the government says TikTok is banned, no company’s chief counsel is going to suggest getting around the ban by using bitcoin.
It took forever for the US to do anything about Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb breaking the law. In a post competency, low regulation environment we’re entering, it makes sense to explore creative solutions to extend runway imho (vs immediately folding).
I would argue the lack of action against those was due to lack of political will. At least at the beginning many saw Uber and Airbnb as net positives, American led innovators offering competition to hotels and taxi cartels. TikTok on the other hand is getting hammered by both sides of the aisle. the incoming admin has its contradictions but has been pretty pro tariff / anti Chinese competition so I am not sure games like that are going to play much but we shall see.
I can’t edit this now but I see Trump has changed his tune on TikTok in another comment, so maybe they will have better luck.
> It took forever for the US to do anything about Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb breaking the law.
And yet look how fast tik tok was banned.
This has nothing to do with speech.
So banning a public square has nothing to do with free speech?
"A fundamental principle of the First Amendment is that all persons have access to places where they can speak and listen, and then, after reflection, speak and listen once more."
"The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States,” said the court’s opinion, which was written by Judge Douglas Ginsburg. “Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.”
They've determined that it's not a violation of free speech because China, and that it's not a bill of attainder because China. You could replace "China" with anything.
What does it mean to be a "foreign adversary?" When did voters get a say in that? When Democrats (and every media outlet) were accusing Trump of being a secret Russian agent, and people who supported him of being traitors, would it have been legal (and not a "punishment" but a "prophylactic" as the appeals court said about TikTok) for the legislature to limit their free speech by name?
The US has a long history of banning foreign-owned media; newspapers, radio stations and tv stations have been the traditional targets. The Federal Communications Act set limits on foreign ownership of broadcast licenses by prohibiting foreign entities from owning more than a certain percentage of a broadcast licensee. This is actually a large part of the reason Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, decided to become an American citizen.
Laws banning the foreign-ownership of influential apps seem like the modern day progression of the original FCA.
It’s not a public square. They ban people from their private square all the time.
The Court held that social media—defined broadly to include Facebook, Amazon.com, The Washington Post, and WebMD—is a "protected space" under the First Amendment for lawful speech
The court also held that forcing tik tok to sell or be banned is lawful.
Tik Tok is not a public square. A public square is a public square.