I'm no lawyer, but the connection to the Radio Act seems somewhat tenuous. In that situation, foreign governments would have to argue they have a free speech right to broadcast their message. In the TikTok ban case, it's not about TikTok's right to speech, it's about American's right to both receive speech and to speak. Americans can use TikTok as a platform of speech, which is different then the Radio Act.
There also already exists speech on TikTok that Americans have the right to hear, so the ban is more akin to the Lamont case mentioned in the article, IMO.
From what I've read of it, the Citizens United case was decided correctly. If you believe that how you spend money should be exempted from the First Amendment then it should be revised with that specific carve-out, but its definition of free speech was kept extremely broad for a reason.
Wealthy propagandists wielding mass media was in fact a key part of the American Revolution. The likes of Benjamin Franklin held no punches, and certainly would not have abided by sort of regulations overturned by Citizens United. Imagine telling the man that he's not allowed to publish a newspaper supporting his position because an election is imminent. He'd laugh in your face and do it anyway. His influence is a large part of the reason we have the First Amendment.
If the internet existed at the time the power to censor it would have belonged to the British crown, much as they had the power to read/censor mail (one of the original motivations for the first amendment).
Exactly. The problem is not that corporations have free speech. Rather, it’s that we have effectively no bounds on their growth, allowing their voices to drown out the citizenry.
The First Amendment is about free speech. Money is not speech, and should not require a specific carve-out. If you equate money to speech then elected officials become beholden to those with money, which kills democracy.
Is a boycott not an act of free expression? What about giving to charity? I'm sure the US Government would love to shut down all donations to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund, but thanks to the First Amendment those activities are protected by the constitution.
Money is not speech. But if you use money to print newspapers, buy ads on radio or TV, put up signs, etc., those newspapers, ads, signs, etc., are speech.
If you can ban people from spending money on those things you are de facto banning speech.
If you allow corporations to pump hundreds of millions of dollars to buy ads on radio or TV, newspapers etc. you are allowing them to drown out the voice of citizens, and at that point you are de facto banning speech of the citizens.
The premise that Citizens United publishing a documentary about Hillary Clinton in some way "drowned out" anybody's speech, let alone "defacto banned speech of the citizens" is farcical. Nobody had ever even heard of that movie, if not for the legal battle over whether they had a right to publish it.
Particularly in the modern era when the ability of individuals to make themselves heard is greater than anytime in the past. When this country was founded, only people wealthy enough to own printing presses could hope to reach large numbers od people. Today, the means to reach lots of people exists in your pocket and people are mostly just limited by their ability, or inability, to think of anything worth saying.
Does that mean foreign countries (Russia, China etc.) can pour billions into political Facebook ads, and the only thing US citizens can do is to purchase ads to counter the foreign ads? I am sure Zuckerberg would love that!
Shareholders (whom many people believe have primacy in corporate decisions) are frequently international/foreign.
If you can be laid off to appease foreign interests, what’s the difference in letting foreign interests buy unlimited ads?
America has already decided (Citizens United) that unlimited money can be used by citizens to drown out the speech of their compatriots. The Supreme Court justices can take bribes, gifts and vacations paid for by billionaires, and you can be laid off to appease the foreign shareholders.
Why not let them have infinite ad spend? We can just say that the marketplace of ideas is a literal marketplace. Foreign companies can buy land and use up all the ground water; parch the land dry.
We’ll just tell people it’s a “free market” and they’ll eat it up. Hell, we allow tens of thousand of Americans to die every year to prop up insurance profits; kickbacks for private prisons. The next DLC will be “war for profit”!
Why not stop pretending and just put a “For Sale” sign on everything? At least then we could stop pretending.
TikTok is not being banned or blocked. You will still have the right and ability to access it. What it does is block American companies from doing business with TikTok; the main effect is to cut of revenue to TikTok.
It's effectively a ban, that's why everyone calls it one. Most Americans use iPhones and the app store has a monopoly, there won't be any other way to install it on an iPhone.
As you seem to be well aware, that's only true on iOS, not Android. It's Apple's fault that their users can't install apps from companies that don't have a business relationship with Apple, not the government's. (Except perhaps to the extent that the government has allowed Apple to get away with having such user-freedom-destroying restrictions in the first place, but that's an entirely different discussion.)
It's a bit like saying Google didn't "ban" Fortnite from Android because you can still access the app thru sideloading. Ultimately if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's a duck.
It's definitely banned from the App Store, and any other US business. Just not from the country, because I agree that would be a violation of US citizens' rights (Not TikTok's. They're a foreign company, not a US citizen.) and therefore unconstitutional.
Technically correct and legally correct are two distinct things. Just because something is technically true doesn't mean we ignore the harsh reality in the court of law. It's a TikTok ban, and trying to "Um Actually" your way around it is ignorance at how the legal system works.
There also already exists speech on TikTok that Americans have the right to hear, so the ban is more akin to the Lamont case mentioned in the article, IMO.