The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling that says Congress acted within the law when it passed a “sell-or-ban” law targeting TikTok, the Chinese social media app that has grave national security concerns.
TikTok has problems that other social media companies don’t: For one, it’s owned by the Chinese, and that means the Chinese communist government has control of it. In China, the content is aimed at educating China’s young people, but in America, the content is aimed at destroying them and making them stupider.
The justices, in an unusual unanimous decision, said that Congress did not violate the First Amendment when it passed the law due to national security concerns.
“As of January 19, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act will make it unlawful for companies in the United States to provide services to distribute, maintain, or update the social media platform TikTok, unless U. S. operation of the platform is severed from Chinese control. Petitioners are two TikTok operating entities and a group of U. S. TikTok users. We consider whether the Act, as applied to petitioners, violates the First Amendment. In doing so, we are conscious that the cases before us involve new technologies with transformative capabilities,” the court wrote in its summary.
This challenging new context counsels caution on our part. As Justice Frankfurter advised 80 years ago in considering the application of established legal rules to the “totally new problems” raised by the airplane and radio, we should take care not to “embarrass the future.”
One of the functions of TikTok is that the app has access to your phone and can get access to your photos, videos and contacts. It also tracks where you are. The terms in the conditions also apply to the ability of TikTok to monitor any device on the same network. So if you use wifi to monitor your home or office, TikTok may have a backdoor to those other devices. It’s a form of spyware, critics say.
The court ruling gives TikTok until Sunday, a challenging deadline for any company to meet.
Read the entire ruling here:
I guess our government doesn’t want any competition as to who is following who around…..
To enforce a ban the USA will have to become China.
Ban it! Do not allow it in private enterprise. Ban it!
Good to see this rare unanimous decision.
I wish Trump would not cave on this issue. The danger to us is not just that China is collecting data from the numbskulls that spend all day mindlessly watching silly videoclips. The real danger is in the algorithms that China is using to push these mind-destroying videos.
A recent study showed most US teenagers aspire to become influencers when they grow up, while most Chinese teenagers aspire to become taikonauts (astronauts). Why is this? Consider that TikTok’s garbage is not available to Chinese kids; their versions strictly limit daily usage and use algorithms that promote more positive concepts (as well as their usual cultural propaganda).
As soon as I heard it was owned by the Chinese I deleted it. Others should do the same until this is sold or banned. Folks are NOT helping our country continuing to use a known Chinese app way of spying on us. Just delete it!