TikTok on Thursday pushed back against U.S. government arguments that the popular social media platform is not shielded by the First Amendment, comparing its platform to prominent American media organizations owned by foreign entities.
Last month, the Justice Department argued in a legal brief filed in a Washington federal appeals court that neither TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, nor the platform’s global and U.S. arms — TikTok Ltd. and TikTok Inc. — were entitled to First Amendment protections because they are “foreign organizations operating abroad” or owned by one.
TikTok attorneys have made the First Amendment a key part of their legal challenge to the federal law requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok to an approved buyer or face a ban.
I’m pretty ambivalent about the TikTok ban, but I will point out that TikTok is not allowed to be used inside China, which does kind of re-enforce the idea that it’s for pushing propaganda on the West.
It kinda reinforces the idea that China and USA are both extremely authoritarian and narrowly control free speech.
