The initial argument — that Congress wanted to ban TikTok to protect American citizens and their data — was shaky at best. If they really cared, it seems like the priority would have been to place some serious limitations on how easily Meta, Google, and Amazon can harvest and sell our data to third-party buyers or manipulate our voting habits. No, Congress got together to force ByteDance to divest from TikTok instead. ByteDance’s justification for why Congress and the President couldn’t enforce the divestment seemed even shakier — they claimed that doing so would violate the American people’s right to free speech. Politico has coverage:
TikTok and its parent company ByteDance sued Tuesday to challenge a law President Joe Biden signed to force the sale or ban of the video sharing app.
The petition filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit claims the law violates the First Amendment rights of its 170 million American users. It says the law shuts down the platform based on “speculative and analytically flawed concerns about data security and content manipulation.”
“For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban,” the filing said.
I would say that ByteDance will have a hard time spinning the functional ban as a free speech issue instead of a data security problem, but it seems like everybody and their cousin is pretty transparent about wanting to ban TikTok because seeing Palestinian civilians being blown up in real time is quite the hurdle for Israel’s PR team:
…You usually have to dig deep to find smoking guns like that:
ByteDance’s legal team can also lean on The Guardian to help flesh out the forced censorship angle too:
And while this forced divestment is aimed at TikTok, there is no reason to think that killing platforms to dissent starts and ends with the dance app. Should Congress succeed, you can bet that any and all public forums that are loci for opinions that aren’t in line with America and its allies’ PR positions will be hit with “data security concerns” or whatever justification is en vogue at the moment. Not just the online ones mind you, people in power are trying to get in-person students infiltrated by the FBI right now.
Congress and the President have already sided with a foreign government over our right to free speech. The only branch that can change that right now is the judiciary.
TikTok Sues To Challenge Law Forcing Sale Or Ban [Politico]
Earlier: TikTok Has A High Hurdle To Jump In Court
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
