The ban is pretty wildly unconstitutional and won't hold up unless you get a redacted judge. Is that an N/A resolution if that occurs?

@redacted Ignore that question, spelled out clearly in the description

@redacted Why is it unconstitutional?

@Snarflak 1st amendment. 5th amendment. And it’s basically a bill of attainder as it targets a specific company.

@redacted Which part of the 1st amendment does it infringe? It's not limiting anyone's speech, if that's what you're implying. How does it violate the 5th amendment? How is it a bill of attainder? Just stating things doesn't make them true.

@Snarflak It’s forcing the sale or shutdown of a communications platform? Good luck getting someone to buy it cause anti-trust concerns.

5th - the government cannot take your property without accusing and convicting you of a crime

Bill of attainder - this one is pretty obvious.

Three federal courts already ruled on prior executive actions. TikTok spent a billion moving all its data hosting to Texas with Oracle.

“It’s not limiting anyone’s speech” - just saying things don’t make them true.

@Snarflak Yes, just saying something doesn't make it true. To understand why it violates the First Amendment, I would start by reading how Montana's Tiktok bill was found in violation of it: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23820566-tiktok-v-montana

@redacted

5th - the government cannot take your property without accusing and convicting you of a crime

That applies to foreign companies?

What property are they "taking" by banning a platform?

Bill of attainder - this one is pretty obvious.

Not at all.

“It’s not limiting anyone’s speech” - just saying things don’t make them true.

This isn't banning any speech. It's banning a foreign-owned platform. The people who use that platform are free to speak exactly the same things anywhere else.

@PaulHabermas Can you summarize your argument in less than 62 pages?

@Snarflak Bruv. Companies have shareholders. There are plenty of American shareholder in Bytedance / TikTok LLC.

“60% of ByteDance is owned by global institutional investors such as the Carlyle Group, General Atlantic and Susquehanna International Group, while 20% of the firm is owned by Zhang and 20% owned by employees around the world. Three of the company’s five board members are Americans”

If you’d even opened the doc Paul posted you’d see a summary review that’s like 3 pages.

I’ve got no idea why you’re so opinionated on this while dismissing all the nuance here. We spoon fed you the argument, you just don’t wanna open your mouth.

@redacted If it was clearly and obviously unconstitutional, the prediction market would not be at 48% (and they probably wouldn't have wasted so much effort passing it.)

@SemioticRivalry Thanks for pointing this out. Looks like easy mana to be had.

Congress has passed plenty of laws for political theatre. They had to tag this one onto the Ukraine aid - not exactly a ringing endorsement of political process.

@redacted Why did TikTok create a massive multi-year lobbying operation to try to convince Congress to not enact the ban if it is obviously unconstitutional and will be defeated in court?

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/31/tiktok-bytedance-spent-millions-on-lobbying-congress.html

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/24/tiktok-china-lobbying-washington-00154232

@SemioticRivalry Because it’s super expensive to fight legal battles? Because the US may short circuit constitution by claiming national security? There’s a bunch of reasons and now this will take years and years.

Why is the ACLU on TikTok’s side if this is obviously a lost cause? Why has no concrete evidence been provided of abuse by TikTok to justify national security concerns?

It’s madness to not just write a data privacy law that says what’s allowed and what’s not.

@redacted Easy legal battles don't cost the tens of millions that TikTok has already spent trying to lobby the federal government.

I didn't say it was obviously a lost cause.

@SemioticRivalry Discovery alone is going to cost them tens of millions easily - how does one disprove a “national security” concern without basically dredging the company?

Edit: I never said it was easy. I just said obviously unconstitutional.

@redacted Did the Montana lawsuit cost TikTok tens of millions?

I'm definitely not a lawyer, but it seems like you're kind of squaring the circle, where the lawsuit is both a 100% easy victory for TikTok, and yet simultaneously will be extremely difficult to prove and will cost astronomical amounts of money and time. It seems unlikely that both of these things are true.

@SemioticRivalry It’s a totally different beast. You can’t argue national security at the state level. That’s the get out of jail free card for Federal Government and that’s what makes it expensive.

Without that, it’s an easy case. The national security argument has been adulterated to basically anything (e.g., tariffs under Trump, etc). Does that make more sense to you?

Edit: forgot to mention that a judge stopped the ban in Montana before it ever went to court. It hasn’t gone to court yet.

@redacted I feel like if you can see that it's such a bad case with such high probability, a judge should be able to make the same conclusion without such extensive proceedings.

@SemioticRivalry Ya that’s not how this works.

@redacted why not?

It seems like I have basically all the evidence showing that it's a serious case (prediction markets, tiktok taking it seriously, legal commentators taking it seriously) versus your word so I'm inclined to think it's serious

@SemioticRivalry Strawmanning much? This is the second or third time you’ve painted my position as something it’s not. This is my last comment here as I don’t believe you or snarf are engaging in good faith.

Who is arguing it’s not “serious”?

Not sure how to be more clear that my position is that it’s (1) unconstitutional and (2) because it’s at the federal level the “national security” element means it’s basically a witch trial.

@redacted you are the one who said it's "pretty wildly unconstitutional and won't hold up unless you get a redacted judge."

@redacted I'm not opinionated about this. I don't think it violates 1st Amendment, but otherwise I'm just asking for you to justify your strong opinions.

If you’d even opened the doc Paul posted

How else would I know it has 62 pages?