The American Civil Liberties Union considers a ban on TikTok a violation of the First Amendment, which protects speech from government regulation. An ACLU lawyer said, “The government can’t impose this type of total ban [on TikTok] unless it’s necessary to prevent extremely serious, immediate harm to national security. There’s no public evidence of that type of harm, and a ban would not be the only option for addressing that harm if it did exist.” (ACLU, March 23, 2023, press release)
Free speech advocates are saying that TikTok is a vital forum for discussion and creative expression and efforts to regulate it would ape the efforts of authoritarian regimes to clamp down on the social media. (Forbes, March 23, 2023, by Conor Murray)
Andy Meek in BGR, March 27, 2023, makes the argument that TikTok users would continue to enjoy their free speech rights even without TikTok, “… it strikes me as unbelievably ridiculous to make this crucial American freedom dependent on the existence of a particular app — let alone one that was launched in China.”