EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/eff-statement-us-supreme-courts-decision-uphold-tiktok-ban

by HAL3000 • 2 years ago

207 312 2 years ago

lolinder10• 2 years ago

Shutting down communications platforms or forcing their reorganization based on concerns of foreign propaganda and anti-national manipulation is an eminently anti-democratic tactic, one that the US has previously condemned globally.

These platforms are fundamentally anti-democratic in their very nature, increasingly so in the age of LLMs. They're places where people buy a voice and the illusion of support by astroturfing the platform and/or manipulating the algorithm (either through paid advertisements or by owning a platform and controlling the algorithm outright). They're places where a small minority of people can become an unstoppable movement that seems to have real support, sucking gullible voters in to join the growing "consensus".

In short, these platforms are places for manufacturing consent. The only sense in which banning one is anti-democratic is that it's selectively applied to tiktok instead of to all such platforms.

WarOnPrivacy2• 2 years ago

These platforms are fundamentally anti-democratic in their very nature

The US Gov has a mandate to preserve and uphold democracy. Shuttering communication is prior restraint - an anti-democratic action.

Platforms have no mandate to preserve and uphold democracy.

EarlKing• 2 years ago

The state is under no obligation to allow known foreign propagandists attached to a known communist party to engage in activities well outside the protections of the first amendment.

Of course, they don't HAVE to shutter. They can sell their interest in Tiktok and stay open. They have chosen not to do that thus far, and hence they have chosen to shutter.

sylware• 2 years ago

"Forcing" people to be "free".

If you want peace, you better prepare for war.

It is forbidden to forbid.

The necessary evil.

All that to say, we live in a complicated world, and beautiful ideals are only a direction to keep, never to be reached.

spokaneplumb• 2 years ago

Restricting who can own what, however… that’s long been fair game.

In my dream world we’d get something like the rules we had, until fairly recently, restricting max broadcast media audience control in a given market for a single owner, but for Web platforms. Don’t like being limited to five million users or whatever? Then use a standard that puts control over curation and presentation in the hands of the user. Want to control all that, like all these awful platforms do? Then live with the limit.

lolinder10• 2 years ago

You're presuming that these are communication platforms. I argue that they aren't—to the extent that they are useful for communication it's a pure coincidence, not a design choice.

Each of these platforms is fundamentally a propaganda platform—they're explicitly designed to manipulate people into buying stuff, and that capability is frequently turned to voter manipulation. The US government has decided that while US-based billionaires having access to such influence is fine and dandy, the CCP should not. So tiktok must be sold to a US owner.

Freedom22• 2 years ago

Absurd. To use just one example, if the US Gov has that mandate, why is extreme gerrymandering allowed? Seems like it's common for Americans to just repeat what they've been told without actually thinking about it.

braiamp3• 2 years ago

There's a better way: privacy laws. The US government decided not to use it.

lolinder10• 2 years ago

Privacy laws don't solve the real problem, they would only solve the fig leaf that politicians are hiding behind when it comes to tiktok.

The actual problem is and always has been control over the content being fed to users. It's not an issue of privacy, it's an issue of voter manipulation. It's just that the US has decided that it's okay with its own plutocrats manipulating voters while it's not okay with the CCP doing so.

On the one hand that's a very rational position for people who owe their election to algorithmic voter manipulation to take, but that doesn't really make it better ethically.

BLKNSLVR2• 2 years ago

Privacy legislation isn't going to happen because it's too late.

It's now an industry, with enough companies with enough employees and, more importantly, enough political and economic power to destroy almost any attempts to push legislation that may actually protect privacy in any real way.

But, honestly, I don't think the TikTok ban has any overlap with privacy concerns. It's pure cold war.

threatofrain3• 2 years ago

In a trade war any company is fair game. A trade war thus naturally reaches across multiple values that a nation may hold, bringing them simultaneously under tension. Free speech is just a coincidence to the nature of TikTok, but what about cars, drones, phones, or even soybeans?

When values are in conflict, which should win? In the hierarchy of values, where does economic world position stand in terms of national concerns?

llamaimperative23• 2 years ago

What? You're musing that a fucking trade war could possibly be placed above freedom of speech? The answer of which "values" should win is 110% clear.

hx8• 2 years ago

It's a shame that this is true for many platforms. Social media platforms have the potential to be incredibly democratic. The more people watch content the more it's shown to other people. Anyone's voice could be amplified in a way that was limited to broadcast networking and printing presses in the past. A million small conversations can occur in such a way that they create a chorus of discussion about public interests. Now it seems like most platforms seem to be thinly veiled psyops hoping to trade quick dopamine for mindshare.

unyttigfjelltol• 2 years ago

Now it seems like most platforms seem to be thinly veiled psyops hoping to trade quick dopamine for mindshare.

The first step to reform would be to persuade legacy media to stop reporting the opinions trending on X/Twitter as "news". Stop reporting it entirely, it's manipulated, at best unverified, rubbish.

llamaimperative23• 2 years ago

This is part of why I think there should exist a popular real-name-only network. It'd go far to prevent these types of attacks on the megaphone.

idle_zealot• 2 years ago

Social media platforms have the potential to be incredibly democratic.
Now it seems like most platforms seem to be thinly veiled psyops hoping to trade quick dopamine for mindshare.

It's a matter of incentives. The profit motive is fundamentally opposed to a low-intervention platform for democratic communication. For a brief period we had some social media platforms that made gestures in the direction of free communication. Then the investor capital came rolling in, and they were expected to increase revenue. How do you increase revenue of your free communication platform? You sell the messaging. Call it promotion, advertising, whatever. The only thing of value you have at your disposal are people's eyeball, you're going to sell what they see. You could ask your users to pay for the service... but then 80% of them will flake to a rival service that's still free. If there's a way to marry the profit motive and a truly democratic social media platform then our best and brightest have yet to find it. I suspect it doesn't exist.

gunian4• 2 years ago

I blame the Zuck algorithmic feed ruined it all he was my favorite out of all the feudal barons too :(

Barrin92• 2 years ago

The only sense in which banning one is anti-democratic is that it's selectively applied to tiktok instead of to all such platforms.

This logic applies to all media publications, not just internet platforms in the United States. When people say "anti-democratic" in the US I'm pretty certain they take it to mean "the government interfering in the speech of a private entity", not failing to uphold the principle of "1 tweet, 1 impression".

Every newspaper, television station, blog post, what have you consists of a small minority of people both creating and selling reach in unequal ways. If it is anti-democratic and therefore presumably not tolerated for a small minority to exercise or sell speech, then that's just equivalent to saying no private media enterprise should exist.

Needlessly to say the only person who can make this claim with a straight face is Noam Chomsky because he's been saying that about everyone for 50 years, but this is obviously not a position held by anyone currently trying to ban TikTok

lolinder10• 2 years ago

There's a major difference with the modern social media platforms, which is that the way in which they manufacture consent gives the illusion of popular consensus. That illusion makes them much more powerful than anything that came before, to the point where they are different in kind, not just in degree.

When a mainstream media outlet takes a position, most people are able to distinguish between that outlet's position and a large social movement in favor of a particular political position. The same cannot be said for these platforms, which by design attempt to make you feel like you're interacting with a large number of real people who hold real opinions. They much more effectively become seen as peers, and from that position can much more effectively manipulate people.

The role of "influencer" is a thousand times more potent than anything that we had in the previous era, and that's without even getting into the possibility of creating hundreds of AI-powered sock puppets or of deliberately constructing an algorithm to put specific people into specific types of echo chambers.

At this point in the game, the only way to equate speech-by-corporations with democracy is to be willfully blind to this difference in kind. The very rich at this point don't just have a megaphone, they have a direct neural link into an enormous number of brains. That's not free speech, that's free votes.

logicchains2• 2 years ago

In short, these platforms are places for manufacturing consent

These platforms are much less subject to manufactured consent than the traditional news media, which was controlled by a small number of entities aligned with the elites of the day. Decentralised information transmission is fundamentally better for the people than centralised information transmission controlled by a few gatekeepers who suppress anything not in their interests.

Look at how homogenous in views the baby boomers are relatively to the younger generations, as evidence of how much more effective at manufacturing consent the traditional media are.

logifail2• 2 years ago

They're places where people buy a voice and the illusion of support by astroturfing the platform and/or manipulating the algorithm (either through paid advertisements or by owning a platform and controlling the algorithm outright)

Anyone willing to take a good-faith stab at why this couldn't equally well be a description of traditional media too - say - the WaPo?

mmooss8• 2 years ago

The Washington Post has changed considerably in the last few months, specifically from being fiercely free to being bought.

couldn't

Hypothetically, almost anything could happen.

willis9363• 2 years ago

I challenge the notion that they're equal. Social media at least provides vox while traditional media is completely one-way. How much is astroturfing and illusion can be debated forever, but any positive value is greater than zero. Traditional media acts as programming first. Journalistic integrity and trust in institutions has been sold off for shareholder value.

lolinder10• 2 years ago

I posted this elsewhere:

At this point in the game, the only way to equate speech-by-corporations with democracy is to be willfully blind to this difference in kind. The very rich at this point don't just have a megaphone, they have a direct neural link into an enormous number of brains. That's not free speech, that's free votes.

riffraff• 2 years ago

I mean, so are newspapers, but you don't want to ban those either.

(I don't like TikTok and I agree it is damaging, but this is just reasoning I can't get behind)

uludag3• 2 years ago

Ironically this is exactly why I think TikTok is so important. Obviously every media site is used for manufacturing content, from NYT to Facebook. Also, obviously the US government has a say in what gets published and promoted. Wouldn't it be good then to have checks and balances to this, by having media not under the US government supervision?

Unless are you suggesting that the US government doesn't misinform the public in harmful ways?

tmnvdb5• 2 years ago

You are glancing over the fact that American media platforms are not really controlled by the US government except for legal restrictions on hate speech and violence, and that there is an extremely diverse set of voices that can be heard on the 'American' (or rather non-Chinese) internet.

It is also not clear to me how TikTok is supposed to provide better "checks and balances" just because it is owned and manipulated by the Chinese Communist Party.

mmooss8• 2 years ago

obviously the US government has a say in what gets published and promoted

That's not at all obvious to me. On what grounds, moral or legal, should the US government tell anyone what to publish or promote?

outsideusa• 2 years ago

As someone not living the us but regularly reading news from both sides of your media landscape, I can tell you that it's not regulated what they can write or say or what's promoted. Your media is all over the place. There are differences in how far they go on the spectrum and some are definitely insane on what they publish to the level of leaving out all the important details about certain situations to push their agenda. How do you think that there is any regulation at all?

Also for tiktok, the algorithm needs less than an hour to almost fully understand you and it will then push a mix of what you already like and agree with, things that you don't like and absolutely disagree with but in a way that makes it look bad so in the end you also agree with that, and some funny videos to keep you entertained. This way they are maximizing the time you stay in the app to increase their revenue. It polarizes your world view further and further and without people to talk to and discuss, your ideas and beliefs will be turned into religious level thinking, radicalizing you and making it more and more difficult to accept different opinions. If you only consume what you already believe, things will go downhill very quickly. That's the reason people can't talk to each other anymore, the truth in most if not all cases is somewhere in the middle.

What we need is social media that is not algorithm driven, not optimized to keep you at the device for as long as possible but to show you a multitude of opinions to a topic from different angles, not just the one you have already chosen as your truth. We need to talk again, accept that other people can have different opinions without shouting them down. We need to try to look at things from different perspectives not just our own.

And most importantly, we need to accept that we can't have an opinion about facts. We need to listen to people that actually have professional knowledge about a topic. The guy that used to be a fitness trainer but now has a telegram channel to spread some important truths about climate change actually knows shit about how the world works. They want to make money selling you any truth that works for you.

lolinder10• 2 years ago

I think you misunderstand me: I'm not in favor of banning tiktok on its own. I think you're right that that misweights things, further consolidating power in the hands of those who hold the remaining platforms.

What I'm saying is that all of these platforms are fundamentally anti-democratic in that they exist to predictably change individual behavior with a high degree of precision, through custom tailored information feeds that can be shaped to alter someone's perspectives on the world in the interests of whoever controls the feed.

I don't think it's better for that power to be in the hands of Elon Musk or of Mark Zuckerberg. I think that that power needs to be banned worldwide if democracy is to survive. Democracy hinges on the idea that voters will in general vote in their own interest, and the ability to individually manipulate voters into measurably changing their behavior breaks that assumption.

And note that this is fundamentally different than traditional media sources, which have a harder time shaping someone's entire life and worldview. WaPo can control what someone perceives the WaPo editorial board as believing. Only a social media platform can control their perspective of what their friends think.

thiagoharry• 2 years ago

In short, these platforms are places for manufacturing consent. The only sense in which banning one is anti-democratic is that it's selectively applied to tiktok instead of to all such platforms.

Which should be a major concerning point. Censoring a powerful media gives more power to the censor than censoring less powerful ones. Now the censor has the power to ensure that only US government and related big tech corporations are allowed to manufacturate consent over the public, with no way of having options of different views. Suddenly the media becomes even more dangerous.

nextaccountic• 2 years ago

How exactly does this differ from Facebook and Instagram?

BLKNSLVR2• 2 years ago

Reds under TikTok beds.

lolinder10• 2 years ago

I don't think it does, I think they all should be banned by the same reasoning.

arizen• 2 years ago

Owners residency/citizenship

sfjailbird• 2 years ago

The counter to incorrect information is facts - not trying to hide it.

What's next? Should we prevent giving air time to people from 'adversarial' countries at all? Or only allow it when accompanied by a sanctioned commentary to 'correct' any unwanted information?

While we're at it, how about 'adversarial' parties within our own country? Why should they be allowed to mislead gullible people?

Retric• 2 years ago

Making things up is inherently vastly cheaper than flighting misinformation.

Spreading misinformation takes nothing more than being persuasive. Being able to pick and choose stuff out of context or even just say anything without a shred of support makes hours of “content” easy.

troupo2• 2 years ago

The counter to incorrect information is facts - not trying to hide it.

We've seen how well it worked with Fox News, ONN, Alex Jones...

lolinder10• 2 years ago

I'm not arguing against incorrect information being spread, I'm arguing against the existence of platforms that are specifically designed to drip feed people information that, true or not, changes their minds about something with a high degree of predictability.

Ad-funded algorithmic feeds exist to change people's behavior. They're indoctrination machines, ostensibly designed to sell products (which is supposedly a good thing in a capitalist world) but very easily turned to indoctrinating about anything else. I don't believe that indoctrination machines should be allowed to exist. We've proven how malleable people are in the face of these machines, and it's simply too much power to let any one entity hold, regardless of who it is in charge.

wk_end• 2 years ago

The problem is Brandolini's law - “it takes an order of magnitude more energy to refute bullshit than that needed to produce it”. So allowing widely disseminated bullshit effectively opens our society up to a denial-of-service attack.

tanewishly• 2 years ago

The counter to incorrect information is facts - not trying to hide it.

I'm sorry, but that's a load of baloney on par with "if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear".

Second of all: it's obviously false. There are loads of examples - contemporary as well as older - where people actively peddled "incorrect information" to line their own pockets at the expense of the money/health/wellbeing of others. Having the facts does not repair the damage, nor does it prevent future harm.

But, firstly and more importantly, this framing suggests we should allow for misinformation. We absolutely shouldn't. The public debate isn't resilient to malicious actors. That's what makes misinformation so dangerous and what makes this slogan so hollow. It assumes good faith on all parties. There isn't, so stop advocating for solutions that require that.

In more detail: the public debate is meant for an actual exchange of ideas, thereby enlightening the participants. Anyone who is not interested in that, shouldn't participate. In particular, misinformation should be barred from the public debate. - and those spreading it held to account.

Whether it is knowingly claiming that lead is harmless, that smoking has no negative effects on your health, or anything vaguely political of the last dozen or so years: if you're unaware, it's not your fault yet, but you'll need to stop being ignorant. If you're aware that the information you're spreading is wrong: shame on you! You should be barred from participating in (that line of the) public debate.

petre3• 2 years ago

Precisely how Russia tainted the Romanian presidential elections using Tiktok dormant accounts to hijack another PR campaign.

I'm with the SCotUS on this.

throw-the-towel• 2 years ago

Hasn't the Russia story been already debunked? https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/12/23/romanian-centre-rig...

tw1237128• 2 years ago

There has been very little public investigation. This is what I could find:

https://www.politico.eu/article/investigation-ties-romanian-...

The Romanian National Liberal Party (opponents of Georgescu) bought the campaign. Their hashtag was "hijacked" (whatever that means) to boost Georgescu instead.

I do not know how TikTok works. Perhaps it is as simple as Georgescu supporters simply using the paid for hashtag for their own messages.

So, according to this article, the Russians did nothing. The Liberal Party engaged in questionable TikTok interference and Georgescu supporters jumped on the bandwagon.

The Western media falling silent on the issue would indicate that this politico.eu is correct.

est• 2 years ago

yes these platforms are BAD. But still, tiktok is a tailored app for US market and bends to US regulations. You think this is bad? There are worse, some US users even chose to signup Douyin or REDnote. How would you ban THAT? Build a national firewall like the communists?

blitzar3• 2 years ago

Now do twitter.

lolinder10• 2 years ago

Agreed. And Facebook and Instagram. The US government appears to think that a US billionaire owning an algorithmic mind-shaper is fine, but I disagree.

paganel• 2 years ago

In short, these platforms are places for manufacturing consent.

Like Hollywood, then.

In other words, some of the Westerners’ hypocrisy when it comes to the views they hold on their socio-economic system never ceases to amaze me, especially now, as we’re in the middle of a new translatio imperii phase.

hrtar• 2 years ago

The "small minority" label has been applied to Trump supporters on social media, yet they have won in the elections twice.

Manufacturing consent still works via the traditional newspapers. That is where "the (current) truth" originates from. That is what is amplified on social media, including here. It takes years of struggle of independently minded people to argue against mainstream. Often after two years mainstream takes the position of independently minded people and takes the credit.

TikTok is different in that it addresses teenagers. They don't have any political power and will change their opinions in their 20s/30s. The data collection and blackmail arguments are still valid. But they also happen in the West, except that three letter agencies collect compromising material on domestic and foreign politicians.

I mean, really? On social media anti-China sentiment is at an all time high. This Chinese manipulation operation must have really failed.

blackeyeblitzar4• 2 years ago

The only sense in which banning one is anti-democratic is that it's selectively applied to tiktok instead of to all such platforms.

Personally I don’t think singling them out is anti democratic, because this platform and Chinese run companies in general have issues unique to them.

TikTok lied under oath about the location of data they claimed was stored in the US. That’s fraud and has concerning privacy and national security implications:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/08/tech/tiktok-data-china/index....

This is why divestiture to an American entity with no ties back to a mainland China owner makes sense - it severs the tie that results in illegal surveillance. It’s not a ban on specific content or even the app - just a ban on the owner.

Another issue - it has also come out that TikTok (not Douyin) employees have to uphold the goals of the CCP as part of their job:

https://dailycaller.com/2025/01/14/tiktok-forced-staff-oaths...

And then there’s the basic lack of reciprocity in market access, since all non Chinese social media is banned in China and yet their apps can access consumers outside China.

whycome2• 2 years ago

It’s fascinating to talk to people from different cultures or different political leanings and find out how the internet that they browse is vastly different to the one I experience. Yet we aren’t necessarily seeking out different things. It’s just that tithe things presented to us align with (and reinforce) a different worldview. They’ll get annoyed about hearing about something constantly, and I’ll have little impression of the thing at all. We will have different “facts” established in our heads but not be able to pinpoint where we learned them. We have different realities.

gmuslera• 2 years ago

The biggest concern is having just one player directly or indirectly controlling all of them. One voice, under Trump (or anyone else) control.

delichon• 2 years ago

Given that the decision is unanimous just maybe it is in alignment with the constitution. If Clarence Thomas and Ketanji Jackson agree on something, that's some kind of signal.

gjsman-1000• 2 years ago

“which would’ve led to the inescapable conclusion … had to be rejected as infringing … free speech”

When the EFF sounds about as sane as a sovereign citizen…

With friends like these, who needs enemies…

schoen• 2 years ago

I worked at EFF for twenty years, and every iteration or incarnation of EFF would have said that it should be extraordinarily difficult for the government to prevent Americans from using foreign web sites or software. And that it should be extraordinarily difficult for the government to compel tech intermediaries to help block foreign sites or software. This would have been a bog-standard EFF position for the organization's entire existence.

(I would say something even stronger than "extraordinarily difficult", but then I'd be on thinner ice.)

EasyMark9• 2 years ago

I agree with the EFF on a lot of stuff. I don't believe in absolute _________ without considering life is virtually never that simple.

llamaimperative23• 2 years ago

Signal of belief in an excessively strong state?

Clarence Thomas is not actually conservative in the small government sense.

ls612• 2 years ago

Neil Gorsuch is though and he signed on too. He even said that while he thought the government had to prove a higher standard than the opinion required, it didn’t matter to the decision because the government in his mind had met that even higher standard anyway.

EasyMark9• 2 years ago

signal in belief that freedom of speech has limits, and it doesn't extend to a foreign adversary hoping to decimate the USA has been my conclusion from the 9-0 decision of SCOTUS

twobitshifter• 2 years ago

The commerce clause has been used since the founding of the country for this sort of thing. I never saw a way for it to be called unconstitutional.

logicchains2• 2 years ago

For most of US history people's access to information was controlled by a few powerful news/media corporations and the Supreme Court did nothing to stop that. It's no surprise that when we finally get a decentralised information transmission system not beholden to the elites, the Supreme Court doesn't want to lend it a hand.

unethical_ban3• 2 years ago

Social media algorithms are nuclear bombs for the mind. And they are beholden to whoever holds the detonator. It just happens that a lot of people are happy with China holding it.

When the mind-reading algorithm provides each user with their own reality to live in, then we are talking about editorializing. And allowing a communist, anti-Western government direct control over that power does not seem reasonable.

inb4 "better than my own government" - great, we agree that social media algorithms are a net negative to all society.

Communications is great. Video is great. Social media algorithms controlled by rage-inducing profit seekers and governments is not great.

phito2• 2 years ago

Wait, since when is TikTok decentralised?

arlattimore• 2 years ago

I’m not sure what order things go in, but I’d have thought national security concerns trump the need of its’ citizens to freely watch cat videos Those people publishing to TikTok were probably on Instagram and if they weren’t, they will be now if they want to reach the same American audience.

llamaimperative23• 2 years ago

I’d have thought national security concerns trump the need of its’ citizens to freely watch cat videos

You'd be wrong.

What value would a concept like the First Amendment have if it were voidable as easily as "we have national security concerns" or "the information on there isn't valuable." Given that those are pretty much the immediate go-to excuses for any autocrats clamp down on speech, such a right would be totally meaningless.

ipython14• 2 years ago

However forcing TikTok to divest of foreign ownership is not restricting the rights of Americans to express their opinions. Americans are free to widely exercise their first amendment rights- the TikTok order to divest foreign ownership doesn’t affect those users ability to speak. The first amendment does not guarantee you access to a specific platform- it means that the bar for the government to imprison you for speech is very high (you can be held in contempt for lying under oath, for example)

I would argue that in this case the platform itself is expressing speech by ranking, recommending and promoting certain content. A foreign entity has no such first amendment right- we have had restrictions on foreign ownership of news media for decades now.

I think it’s an interesting issue especially now that you have TikTok users who think they’re being treated unfairly moving to a pure Chinese platform RedNote and encountering actual censorship. https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/01/16/tech/tiktok-refugees-redn....

And now unconfirmed reports that RedNote is considering segregating the new American users from the Chinese users, ironically so Americans couldn’t influence Chinese users - https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/rednote-may-wall...

accrual2• 2 years ago

TikTok is used for far more than cat videos which is why it's a considered a threat to those in power. There are freely flowing ideas and narratives which they cannot control - except now they are by restricting access to it.

Instagram doesn't have the same culture at all and it's not a substitute. TikTok is a like a digital "third space" for communities, and just like the real life equivilents, is slowly disappearing. People without community are easier to control.

thehappypm3• 2 years ago

Why shouldn’t TikTok just divest, then? Bytedance could make a huge amount of money by selling TikTok. And then that huge influx of money could keep TikTok operating forever. The fact that they’d rather shut down is pretty telling.

x3n0ph3n3• 2 years ago

I don't often disagree with the EFF. Strange times.

ipython14• 2 years ago

I disagree with the EFF here too but I am so happy that there is a good faith well reasoned argument on the other side. This struggle is what makes democracy work.

parkaboy2• 2 years ago

Yeah this is a weird one where their m.o. on privacy/security are at odds with their first amendment side of things...sounds like the latter won out. I also disagree with them on this. This isn't something like net neutrality. It's one of many privately-owned social media platforms and one such with deeply privacy-invasive software that has adversarial foreign ties against the US.

parkaboy2• 2 years ago

Adding: commenter @schoen's above comment is making me second guess myself on this. I'm pretty torn.

hedora2• 2 years ago

There’s a simple, obvious and overwhelmingly popular solution to this problem that respects free speech and privacy. Unlike the current law, it wouldn’t blatantly violate the constitution by targeting a specific group:

Apply reasonable privacy and transparency rules to all social media platforms, regardless of ownership.

I’m not sure the EFF really needs to spell it out at this point.

whatshisface• 2 years ago

The fact that only one app is being banned makes it pretty obvious that privacy concerns are orthogonal to the political shift this represents. The law was originally passed before the Gaza ceasefire, and the activism on the app relating to that issue was the specific example that was blamed on Chinese influence. The hypothesis was that teenagers would not know or care about US policy towards the conflict if a foreign communication service was not facilitating the spread of relevant information.

raverbashing• 2 years ago

I think they're too naive wrt to "good guys always follow the rules" stuff

It's the kind of naivety that gets your lunch money taken at school

LightHugger• 2 years ago

Funny how the EFF posted an anti free speech article a week ago now they're hand wringing about this.

HN link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42652882

beepbooptheory2• 2 years ago

Well at least you can agree with both the state, and as it were at this point, the scary foreign state, on this one.. Probably worth more dollars to donuts to be on those sides anyway!

EasyMark9• 2 years ago

I feel it is a very strange hill to die on for them, given all the good they can do in other places. I'm kind of doubting my annual donation to them around the first of the year which I've done for at least 10 years, but nothing is ever gonna be 100%, but I might look at other similar orgs in the future for my $

gorgoiler2• 2 years ago

It is hard to love the notion that banning a third party’s app is infringing upon my own right to free speech. If it were a ban on the Internet then that seems to make more sense. It’s analogous to a ban on paper, pens, or bullhorns. I can be sympathetic to the idea that, for some people, one particular proprietary app is their main tool for expression, even if that’s hardly ideal.

A ban on routers made by a specific foreign company — when the government knows full well the Internet can’t work without them — feels like a more likely scenario. When Huawei equipment bans were in the news, were there similar First Amendment arguments about that, too?

ranger_danger• 2 years ago

if youtube was being banned instead for the same reason (pretend it was owned by ByteDance), would you feel the same way? what about any other website/platform that you like?

what if this was YOUR business getting banned?

ipython14• 2 years ago

What’s interesting about this argument is that the playing field is highly asymmetric between the us and china. China explicitly firewalls out large amounts of the internet from its population. If you want to do business via an e-commerce in china, you cannot do so without explicit permission, license and partial Chinese equity share - for example https://developers.cloudflare.com/china-network/concepts/icp...

On the other hand, we have much more relaxed restrictions going the other way. Why not consider “fairness” from that perspective as well?

gorgoiler2• 2 years ago

Yes, that’s a good way to think about it.

What if it was a ban, not on printing presses, but on a specific model of printing press, made in China, that happens to have 99% market share.

I want to try to see an analogy with Freenode, Libera, and IRC, but that was self inflicted damage by a private entity rather than by a government mandate.

ReptileMan• 2 years ago

The first amendment at its core is - if someone wants to say something and someone wants to listen to the first one saying it - the government has no right to prevent or interfere with the process. Banning the app trough which information flows is interference.

And the government doesn't offer any kind of remedy - you can't pick up your whole social cluster and move to another platform.

tiktok didn't had its 1A rights infringed, but every american that wants to listen to clips of old episodes of friends does.

mantas2• 2 years ago

What’s next, pitting a fence around some field is also freedom-of-speech issue since some people may want to talk in that field?

whoitwas2• 2 years ago

I agree with the ban on security basis, but could this be abused by countries to sabotage companies? China could buy majority shares of a company and force them out of business.

lolinder10• 2 years ago

The company would have to be specifically added by the President to a list which currently is just ByteDance, it doesn't kick in automatically.

loeg3• 2 years ago

We've just seen an example of the US blocking a sale on national security grounds -- we can block sales to China, too: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/us/politics/us-steel-nipp...

whoitwas2• 2 years ago

Right, but an entity or a number of entities could buy shares in a small cap company to own a majority stake without scrutiny. Seems like a good way to do espionage since corporations are global and have protected status.

nialv7• 2 years ago

Never expected to see the EFF siding with a big tech company, and fighting for its right to profit from its users.

Never expected to see the EFF dismiss an argument for user's data privacy as "shaky".

Quite disappointed honestly.

error_logic2• 2 years ago

There's a bigger picture in the question of precedent and risks created by the infrastructure to ban a platform like this.

Unfortunately it seems the powers that be are dead set on pursuing destruction of not just specific competitors but, eventually, the entire notion of constructive competition and its win-win outcomes provided the right safety nets.

nceqs3• 2 years ago

Never expected to see the EFF siding with a big tech company, and fighting for its right to profit from its users.

The EFF routinely sides with big tech companies. See their work on copyrights, patents, etc. Tech figures fund them. See https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine

jmyeet• 2 years ago

So we know the real reason why the government banned Tiktok [1]:

[Manufacturing Consent] argues that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion", by means of the propaganda model of communication.

Tiktok doesn't push government propaganda to the same degree as Meta and Google.

But whoever pushed for this was smart enough to avoid making it about speech ("content-neutral" in legal parlance). It's strictly commerce-based and there's lots of precedent for denying access to the US market based on ownership. For a long time, possibly still to this day, foreign ownership of media outlets (particularly TV stations and newspapers) was heavily restricted. And that's a good analogy for what happened here.

What I hope happens is people wake up to the manipulation of what you see by US companies.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

fastball2• 2 years ago

Tiktok doesn't push government propaganda to the same degree as Meta and Google.

Do you have a source for this claim?

isodev2• 2 years ago

It’s funny how they’re shutting down TikTok because it’s “manipulative and anti-democratic” while that’s a core trait of every algorithmic/engagement social media. Twitter and Threads should be banned as well then.

monero-xmr• 2 years ago

If the government can’t ban a business entity then doesn’t that say something about control? We have an app controlled by a communist dictatorship. They can keep the app running by selling it, but they won’t.

What’s perplexing to me is leftists love how companies in America can be forced to sell and broken if they are declared monopolies. But if an app is declared an agent of foreign powers suddenly forcing a sale is wrong? It makes me feel even more certain that HN is astroturfed by Chinese bots because who cares

cbg0• 2 years ago

Your last statement is a pretty silly generalization, and I don't think you need to bring in left/right extremes into this. For a lot of folks this is more about precedent on being able to ban anything the current establishment disagrees with, which has its own merits, even if you want to say that it's strictly being done because China controls it, which is not 100% of the reason why.

I despise communism myself, as my country went through 45 years of it. I agree with TikTok being forced to sell, and I'd like to see all social media sites offer more transparency mechanisms to NGOs and government agencies to show how their algorithms really work to have some watchdog be able to check if what we're seeing is heavily manipulated, especially during election years.

eagleislandsong5• 2 years ago

if an app is declared an agent of foreign powers

I suspect that people pattern-match this declaration to McCarthyism.

Additionally, the US has been invoking national security for a series of extremely dubious moves recently as well -- e.g. Biden's latest decision to block the sale of US Steel to Nippon on shaky grounds of national security, and his administration's recent policy to introduce export limits on GPUs to all countries except 18 (most US allies, NATO or otherwise, are now unjustly being restricted in how many GPUs they can import). Coupled with the incoming Trump administration's threats of trade war and expansionist designs on Greenland, people -- especially non-Americans, also in countries that have historically been friends of the US -- are very quickly running out of goodwill for the US, and in light of these events naturally the TikTok ban is seen as just another draconian attempt by the US to practise (economic) imperialism.

dudus• 2 years ago

They had the option to divest into an American entity. But failed or didn't want to do it.

You have the freedom of speech to manipulate and be anti-democratic as long as you are the US government or bound by its control.

blackeyeblitzar4• 2 years ago

Actually, the option to divest is to escape control by the Chinese government, not to enter control by the US government.

EasyMark9• 2 years ago

It's the source of the manipulation here. One battle at a time. I can't think of a more obvious one than giving the CCP a black eye as a first step to addressing those who are trying to polarize and destroy America as their first order goal.

Ferret7446• 1 year ago

It’s funny how they’re shutting down TikTok because it’s “manipulative and anti-democratic”

But it's not though? They are requiring divestiture from an adversary nation, not because TikTok is somehow inherently “manipulative and anti-democratic”

Nothing about TikTok has to change except who owns the company (unless of course the owners are manipulating the company's operation, in which case divestiture would indeed by quite disruptive).

baobun• 2 years ago

Huge creds to the EFF for speaking truth even when it is politically inconvenient (see comments here...)

This ban is infringing of IMO fundamental rights of individuals in US to share and use the TikTok app freely. That China is doing similar things to their citizens can't be an excuse.

Yeah I hate TikTok and its effect on society too and good riddance etc but this is a first for something very bad. We have to look at the larger picture.

Animats2• 2 years ago

The United States’ foreign foes easily can steal, scrape, or buy Americans’ data by countless other means.

Yes, all they have to do is sign up for the usual services advertisers use.

dzogchen• 2 years ago

Extremely weak argument. Just because one platform is shut down does not mean the right to free speech is affected. A platform, mind you, under full control by the Chinese Communist Party, who do not allow ANY form of free speech to exist in the country they have under their thumb.

loopdoend• 2 years ago

Not to mention the app is already banned in China, along with many others.

herbst5• 2 years ago

Building your own great Firewall definitely is a thread to your free speech. I don't know how this can't be extremely obvious.

mshroyer• 2 years ago

It's because this isn't a content restriction. Anything that was speakable on TikTok remains speakable on platforms that aren't owned by U.S. adversaries.

The distinction between this and China's "great firewall" and speech restrictions should be obvious.

ripped_britches• 2 years ago

I was saying the same thing when they decided to take down Silk Road /s

quanto3• 2 years ago

A former sausage maker here. I (used to) design these engagement/recommendation engines for a large corp, did academic research in the field, went to conferences, etc.

In general, I wholehearted support the freedom of speech, and if it were any other case, I would agree with the EFF statement here. However, knowing how the sausages are made, I am reluctantly agreeing with the ban, at least for now.

People underestimate how powerful these tools can be. Based on simple, readily available "anonymous" data, we can already impute your demographics data -- age, gender, family relations, occupation, income, etc -- using a decade-old ML techniques. In some cases, we can detect which stage of your emotional journey you are in and nudge you towards our target state. What surprised me about Cambridge Analytica was its ineffectiveness, at least as reported. There are plenty of teams out there that use these techniques to greatly further their gains, whatever those may be.

In Primakov doctrine, information warfare through sowing discontent and/or eroding psychological well-being is very much real and actualizable. I am not claiming that a foreign government is currently single-handedly controlling TikTok to brainwash the American youth; we do not have conclusive proof of that. However, the fact that such a tool is in a foreign country's arsenal is itself a massive danger to America's national security.

fulafel2• 2 years ago

the fact that such a tool is in a foreign country's arsenal is itself a massive danger to America's national security

This implies people outside the US should relate the same way to Meta, X, etc. (Which seems fine to me, just pointing it out)

quanto3• 2 years ago

yes, and they do. Even the US allies in Europe don't completely trust the US with their citizens data, hence the on-shore data requirements. This is despite the US is footing the bill for Ukraine and, by extension, defending Europe right now.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 2 years ago

Why? The US is not an adversary to most. But if they did, sure, it's their country.

jim-jim-jim• 2 years ago

I detect an undercurrent of pride that drives you to ascribe undue agency to your work. "Brainwashing" isn't real. Bleak material circumstances sow division, not memes. Oversocialized urban professionals have only pushed this narrative because media is an abstract low-friction environment where they can pretend to still exert control and avoid ever addressing real problems.

A "national security risk" is only a problem for the national security apparatus itself—not actual Americans. Kids don't want to die for their government because its failures have already shaped so much of their personal lives. It's evident in their rents, their student/medical bills, and the character of their neighborhoods. It's rather insulting to say shifty Chinamen are tricking them in all this.

Cyph0n• 2 years ago

First, it is much easier to blame everything on a boogeyman than to invest actual effort in improving the lives of Americans and investing in their education. Tale as old as time.

Second, the US realizes that it cannot reliably manufacture consent if its citizens are not tuned in to the information sources that it can influence.

pas• 2 years ago

There's no need to demonize people, soulless systems will do just fine. Game theory is pushing continental powers against maritime ones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcVSgYz5SJ8

Eextra953• 2 years ago

Where does one learn more about these topics? I've been interested in learning just how these apps influence people and would like to learn more.

eviks• 2 years ago

People underestimate how powerful these tools can be.

It's rather you're overestimating it (no wonder the ineffectiveness of CA was a surprise to you). It's such a low-power tool that it couldn't even be used to avoid its ban.

In some cases

In some cases you don't need any of the ML techniques to do that. But at any rate, that's an irrelevant scale when it comes to "massive danger"

arminiusreturns• 2 years ago

Damn the servile simp responses here are revealing. They are setting precedence and will use this on other things. Yes TikTok and many apps are used by many hostile foreign governments (Israel/Unit 8200 for example) (btw, RedNote got it's big boost when backed by Israeli investor Yuri Milner and his firm DST) for many psyop types...

That doesn't mean you get to control what Americans can do on their devices.

Boiling the frog...

blackeyeblitzar4• 2 years ago

There are many good reasons to ban TikTok. For example, reciprocity on free trade. Why should Chinese companies get access to the American market when no western social media apps are allowed in China?

herbst5• 2 years ago

Isn't that pure whataboutism?

tzs• 2 years ago

Reciprocity would be that American companies can access the Chinese market if they obey the same rules in the Chinese market that Chinese companies have to obey in the Chinese market, and Chinese companies can access the American market if they obey the same rules in the American market that American companies have to obey in the American market.

Facebook and others were in the Chinese market but they got blocked because they would not censor things that the Chinese government wanted censored and would not turn over user information that the government asked for. Chinese social media companies also are subject to those same censorship and user disclosure requirements, and will be banned (or worse) if they do not comply.

Would Facebook be allowed back in if they agreed to the censoring and to turning over user information? As far as I know none of the major American social media companies have been willing to do so, and so we don't know.

latentcall2• 2 years ago

Why would China let American social media companies in? If they did, their people might start only caring about themselves and not their communities, might want to drive F150’s and eat hamburgers and take Ozempic.

gazchop• 2 years ago

Urgh sorry EFF but you’ve lost me on this one.

There is actual harm done to democracy on these platforms. A democracy requires informed voters to function and the platform does the diametric opposite by misinforming them. Any attempt to regulate this or promote or moderate has failed simply because an actual structured funding source is misinformation. The only option to keep democracy standing is to kill it.

I’d expect the EFF to have some well read social or political staff. Apparently they don’t and are quite happy to spout absolutes.

BeFlatXIII2• 2 years ago

Democracy is when people are only allowed to speak truths.

EasyMark9• 2 years ago

bots and CCP trolls aren't really people doing good faith "truths" on the internet. Most of it is purely made up fiction

benrutter• 2 years ago

Curious to hear from other people here. I'm UK citizen, and on the whole, my perception is that I'm much more concerned about the effect on democracy from US led fake news and social media (specifically Twitter, Facebook and Truth Social) than TikTok.

I'm not making a case that that is justified, but I'm interested to know if other people in or outside the US share that perception?

glimshe3• 2 years ago

I can no longer send money to the EFF due to their obvious misreading of the situation. They will lose $100s/year from me, I hope it was worth it. Clearly, a naive take that doesn't understand the nuances related to Tiktok's situation.

Tiktok can still exist and keep showing their garbage to Americans, but it can't do so while being owned by a foreign adversary that attacks us almost continuously.

Sure, they can still buy our information elsewhere, but this is like saying I shouldn't put a lock on my door because thieves can break in through other means. Just check the looting happening in Los Angeles as a result of the reduction in the barriers for theft. Cost matters and if we increase the costs for China's data theft, their ability to steal from us will be reduced.

cromka• 2 years ago

Yet when Europeans feel the same way about American manipulative social media and the US sees it as targeting its tech industry, you don’t see a bias? Are you OK with EU banning Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, too, because it goes against its own citizens rights and safety? Or, following your logic, should we demand they are sold to European owners?

Why do you think it’s YOU who decides to be the gatekeeper on all that data and no one else?

You see the double standards here? The hypocrisy?

glimshe3• 2 years ago

You can demand whatever you desire from your government. It's your country.

belorn• 2 years ago

As a European, I am 100% ok with EU banning Facebook and other large advertisement funded platforms.

When GDPR was created there was a huge wave of people arguing that Facebook and other similar platforms would withdraw from EU. That did not happen, but if it had it would have been perfectly fine. Instead most American companies decided to create EU specific version of their platforms in order to comply with GDPR.

The next wave of privacy protecting regulations will likely recreate similar reactions. Those companies that want to stay in EU will comply, and those who don't will withdraw and give space to new ones. The trend of moving to national platforms/cloud providers has already started and been going on fairly strong in my country, especially from government organization and defense adjacent companies.

EasyMark9• 2 years ago

I feel that Europe has exactly that very right, as I support our right to exorcise control of the CCP from TikTok and/or shut it down. I completely understand why they would.

whycome2• 2 years ago

I think TikTok gets special status because its algorithm is just SO GOOD. If instagram was Chinese owned/influenced, we wouldn’t see this kind of potential control. TikTok is probably building models from all possible data: what angle is the user sitting or lying down and how does that correlate to mood or desire.

pbiggar• 2 years ago

The shutdown is entirely because TikTok wouldn't suppress content about Palestine.

latentcall2• 2 years ago

Yes pro-Palestinian content proliferated there.

russli1993• 2 years ago

All countries in the world, USA just showed it is perfectly fine to steal a foreign companies' asset. Let's do that to all USA companies, Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, Tesla, Boeing, Qualcomn, Intel, all of them. U know how rich you will be if you just got a piece of them? U know you could end homelessness, poverty, balance trade, stabilize your currency, elevate tax revenues, get free education and health care for your citizens, provide great jobs if you just got a piece of USA companies? Now you can! All of them can be Indian, Germany, France, UK, Poland, Brazilian, Mexican, Canadian, Kenyan, Egyptian companies. Everyone gets a piece, everyone gets them equally, everyone will benefit and be happy!

tracker1• 2 years ago

In the end, it's a security and sovereignty issue. A country can restrict foreign business, full stop.

That said, I don't think banning tiktok will have the desired results.

EFF statement on U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold TikTok ban

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