Because American citizens (are supposed to) have rights that Chinese citizens don't. The first amendment covers access to information. Banning TikTok is a violation of all Americans' first amendment rights.
Banning the operation of a foreign-controlled corporation from a state that harshly restricts foreign economic activities in their borders is hardly a first amendment issue. It's not even close.
[EDIT] Case law citations would be a lot more convincing than downvotes.
Banning TikTok even runs counter to the value we hear used to justify the first amendment: diversity of thought and discourse is inherently good; it allows people to decide for themselves using their faculties of rationality. We even have Benjamin Franklin and polemic if not mis-attributed Voltaire quotes[1] used to inspire a basis for free speech.
Except for some reason, diversity of thought and free speech ideals aren't actually used to justify speech people disagree with, namely China's. This two-mouthed approach is noticed. It de-legitimizes the diversity of thought value.
To anyone who has argued for free speech before but is silent now, your silence says more than your speech ever could.
I'm not sure what Ben Franklin quote you are referring to. While I'm sure he valued diversity of thought and discourse, I don't know of a clever phrase of his that gets often used.
His security-liberty quote. It's easy to frame this as "trading the liberty of free speech and free association for the security of being free from Chinese propaganda," and I agree that we should be discussing the validity of that framing as fervently as we possibly can because at the face of it, it appears to be exactly that. Every argument against that framing seems to be trying to carve out an exception for the purpose of security, often with extreme language of existential threat.
I don't see why anyone would argue on security. They keep American social networks and software products out unless they "partner" with a Chinese company. It seems obvious we shouldn't allow a double standard here.
We gave up on forcing China to keep opening up to US trade if they want us to reciprocate. We shouldn't do that.
Did not vote, but it's because the "and nothing of value was lost" sentiment is trite. People might even agree, but there are more hacker-newsy ways of delivering that message and a better rhetorical delivery might find better reception.
I agree that banning TikTok on the grounds of its algorithm being controlled by China is dubious. After all, it is content, it is information, and it is up to an open society to call out the fact that social media is trash, that Chinese social media is anti-American disinformation poison.
However, it is reasonable to believe tiktok's recommendations are crafted to harm American intellect, prey on vanity to reward shallow behavior, and gather large scale behavioral and physical activity (site tracking, habits, physical location, items in homes, etc) for the purposes of the Chinese government. If it is recognized as a spy tool of a hostile government, why permit it?
Yes, yes, yes, but I will defend to the death for their right to say it! Free speech means accepting speech one doesn't want to hear, especially if it leads to outcomes one doesn't desire.
>As suspicious as the US federal government is, I don't think what those companies do is as tightly coupled with the government as TikTok and China.
They have backdoors to all major tech companies, they actively try to control discourse in social media and they just bailed out their tech sector. If that's not being tightly coupled, I don't know what is.
>Do you think the Chinese government is generally hostile to the long term success of Western liberalism?
No
>Do you think the Chinese government has meaningful influence on the behavior of TikTok or its recommendation engine?
Probably but no concrete evidence exists
>Do you think TikTok data on its hundreds of millions of users is available for general analysis to the Chinese government?
To the same extent our data is available to the US and its allies, yes. But China cannot do much with my data, my government can.
