I asked this question to multiple LLM.

ChatGPT: Wrong but reasoned itself back to being correct.

Gemini: Correct.

Grok: Using expert it got the right answer after 35s.

Claude Sonnet 4.6: Confidently incorrect.

Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/7pmcoWr

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47181648

Points: 7

# Comments: 5

It is, and the court acknowledged that editorial control is protected speech.

The ruling was made based on data privacy ground, not First Amendment Speech ground.

How is it self-incrimination? That logic doesn't work.

80% of TikTok's users are outside of the U.S., why would they sell the whole thing?

And the law is written in a way that there is no value to just sell the American operation without the algorithm, they have to sell the whole thing, including the algorithm, in order for there to be a serious buyer.

It's technology highway robbery. Imagine if China told Apple "sell to us or be banned", we'd tell them to pound sand too.

The problem of allowing government banning propaganda is it allows government to ban anything they label as propaganda. There is no law defining what's propaganda, so you just end up with the government being able to ban any information they don't like.

Imagine the government drums up for another illegal war like Iraq using fake evidence, and we ban all counter evidence as "foreign propaganda". Do you not see how dangerous that gets?

>That, for me, is enough of a reason to ban it and justify it under our constitution

The Supreme Court has explicitly ruled in the past foreign propaganda is protected speech under First Amendment.

You cannot strip American citizens' rights to receive foreign propaganda if they choose to do so.

Really? Because the U.S. government, in their own court filing, have openly admitted that there is no evidence of TikTok's wrong doing in terms of manipulating information.

I don't think it gets much more authoritative than U.S. government's own court filing.

The link you provided has been debunked over and over again. It was a paid-for study aimed to generate certain conclusion.

And its methodology is silly at best, insane at worst (uses U.S. social media company as a control group for neutrality on China lmao).

https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/lamont-v-postmaster-...

Good. Because ByteDance has never tried to hide the fact that it's a Chinese company. So that argument wouldn't matter even if there are evidence of them pushing Chinese propaganda.

Such as?

https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/lamont-v-postmaster-...

I don't think you know what the First Amendment is. Not only does it guarantee freedom of expression, but also freedom to receive other's expression and speech.

The U.S. government is not allowed to ban any foreign books, movies, or even propaganda.

I really wish people like you do a little bit research before making such a confident statement like that.

So instead of arguing the U.S. social media has an anti-China bias, they argued that it's the evidence of TikTok being more pro-China.

Using American social media as the control group for neutrality on China is absolutely insane.

The most likely cause is that TikTok is just a lot less political and more international than YT and Instagram.

For rest of the world, people do not automatically associate words like "Xinjiang" to "Chinese government oppression", the fact that they expect that to be the top result can be argued that American media is the one manipulating information.

In fact, the same result can be used to interpret as "strong traces of anti-China manipulation on American social medias".

If you can show evidence of that you should give it to the U.S. government, because it has repeatedly said there is no evidence of such and any threat remains hypothetical.

Except the whole reason for the TikTok bill is that information/speech will be under Chinese government control on TikTok and that can be weaponized.

So make up your mind, if you say TikTok is being banned for the possibility of "weaponized propaganda", then it is information being suppressed.

If you say it's not about information suppression, then you can't use the "Chinese propaganda" argument, which is used by pretty much all ban supporters.

>This isn't like China where the government bans any services they can't control, and directs the services that they can control to suppress any information they don't want people talking about.

That's exactly what it is.

First of all if you have any evidence of TikTok engaging in it, you should present it since even our government have said there is no such evidence and that possibility remains hypothetical.

Secondly no, it's not illegal to spread misinformation, no matter the motive. The First Amendment absolutely guarantees that right.

Reuter reported this: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covi...

U.S. social media absolutely are controlled by the U.S. government, and we can, and have been able to get any user data we want from them.

It is, because politicians voted for the bill have openly admitted the Israel-Gaza content is what pushed them to vote for the ban. Instagram, YT, etc are under U.S. control and engage in sufficient self-censorship when it comes the Israel-Gaza conflict in order to make Israel look good.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/tiktok-ban-israel-...

Except they can't. All of the other apps are under U.S. government control and have engaged in severe censorship on certain topics such as the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Even the politicians who voted for the bill have openly admitted that making Israel looking bad is the reason they are banning TikTok.

This ban effort regained momentum after October 7th, 2023: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/tiktok-ban-israel-...

Good example, and thank god that is unconstitutional.

For example China can arrest American citizens in China without dual process. But we cannot arrest Chinese citizens, or anyone here in the U.S. and just put them to prison without dual process.

Americans in China have no freedom of speech. Should we ban Chinese citizens in the U.S. from speaking freely as well? Again, that is unconstitutional. U.S. constitution protects anyone within the U.S. not just U.S. citizens. Otherwise we can just send someone with a green card to jail without trial.

So your example only serves the counter-argument, which is that reciprocity is not something you should aim for when it comes to human rights.

> which is in turn used to spread CCP propaganda.

Since not even the U.S. government has been able to provide any such evidence, and have admitted that the threat is hypothetical, if you have any such evidence you should present it.