TikTok sued Tuesday to block a US law that could force a nationwide ban of the popular app, following through on legal threats the company issued after President Joe Biden signed the legislation last month.
Wouldn't actual data privacy laws stop this all the same? I can't help but feel this weird song and dance avoiding the privacy argument exists so US companies don't get in the crossfire for doing the same shit with your data.
No, because it's more about the curation algorithm than it is about the data or privacy.
Regulating curation is a clear violation of free speech laws for citizens, but foreign entity that controls TikTok has no such protections. Giving them this protection could be a dangerous precedent.
This is still a problem with US based platforms, though.
I would think people of the fediverse of all places would feel strongly about allowing users to control their own curation rather than allowing private companies to dictate what individual users see.
Where did you get the idea that Oracle can see their source code? That only applies if they host their source repository on Oracle, if they host the servers there chances are it's binaries that are hosted on the server not the source code.
Wasn't Facebook proven to give misleading information that led old people to vote for Trump that was ultimately from Russia propaganda sources? Where's the Meta ban?
It'll be interesting to see how this one plays out. In my head this argument is a little shaky, since it seems to be effectively arguing that Americans have the right to access foreign propoganda machines? There is legal precedent here, but the nature of propoganda has massively changed since the 60s.
This is going to be a very interesting court case that has broad reaching implications, but expect no Americans to give a shit because it's not going to feature a trash fire to gawk at.
Supreme Court ruled that publishing propaganda in America is free speech. You're not allowed to interfere with an American's access to propaganda
Justice Brennan made explicit what had been implicit in the majority opinion, declaring that “the right to receive publications is . . . a fundamental right,” the protection of which is “necessary to make the express guarantees [of the First Amendment] fully meaningful.”
I'm aware of the precedent, but there's a pretty massive difference between being able to receive printed media, and being able to have continual access to post and contribute content to a foreign propoganda tool that uses an algorithm to purposefully suppress subjects the CCP disapproves of. I don't believe the precedent is going to be applicable here, but IANAL, and maybe ByteDance's lawyers think this defense will be a slam dunk.
In my head this argument is a little shaky, since it seems to be effectively arguing that Americans have the right to access foreign propoganda machines?
I don't see why that's shaky? There a plenty of books written by members of the CPC (Including Xi Jinping himself) on Amazon, in English, should Americans be banned from accessing that foreign propaganda?
Especially for real law, you would have to define propaganda which I don't think has really been done.
I have thought about it and I don't see why all information isn't some form of propaganda because you're either bias on purpose by trying to persuade or bias by what you're aware of and know which can't be all information with our tiny human minds.
How do you measure bias without having some objective physical level model of the truth even?
I think the argument against TikTok and other Chinese companies is probably that you wouldn't allow Facebook by Chinese Communist Party and this crosses the line into that. To be fair though, you could probably ultimately make the same argument for US companies. Why is there so much money available for ads for VPNs compared to the financials of that market? Only a few answers to that one...
Propoganda does have a legal definition though, it's not nearly as nebulous as all biased information. It does need to be purposefully distorting, either by falsifying information or by withholding relevant information. It also needs to be produced by an organized group or government, just making up nonsense about yourself doesn't count.
I can agree with that, but it becomes muddier when it's a social media platform where your participation on the platform lends it credibility. As an example, the Hong Kong protests were supressed on TikTok at the behest of the CCP. You could argue that by creating the content that ByteDance's algorithm used to bury the videos being posted on TikTok, regular unwitting Americans were assisting the CCP in covering up the protests.
It'll be on ByteDance to prove those kinds of concerns invalid, just as it will be the US' job to demonstrate the threat posed by TikTok to Americans.
TikTok sued Tuesday to block a US law that could force a nationwide ban of the popular app, following through on legal threats the company issued after President Joe Biden signed the legislation last month.
The court challenge sets up a historic legal battle, one that will determine whether US security concerns about TikTok’s links to China can trump the First Amendment rights of TikTok’s 170 million US users.
If it loses, TikTok could be banned from US app stores unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sells the app to a non-Chinese entity by mid-January 2025.
In its petition filed Tuesday at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, TikTok and Bytedance allege the law is unconstitutional because it stifles Americans’ speech and prevents them from accessing lawful information.
The petition claims the US government “has taken the unprecedented step of expressly singling out and banning” the short-form video app in an unconstitutional exercise of congressional power.
“For the first time in history,” the petition said, “Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban, and bars every American from participating in a unique online community with more than 1 billion people worldwide.”
The original article contains 223 words, the summary contains 204 words. Saved 9%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Ok then, let's sue for the Chinese ban of literally most of the Internet. Where can I find the court that gives a shit about countries who don't wanna participate in other countries Internet toys and what the fuck are they gonna do about it?
So… the company that was removed for spreading propaganda is suing for being removed for spreading propaganda and is using…. checks notes: propaganda as evidence.
Well, then the only hope it has of winning is on first amendment grounds because they already said that they would not be willing to sell the algorithm.