With the House of Representatives voting to ban TikTok unless it severs ties with China, David Greene of the Electronic Frontier Foundation says the ban violates the First Amendment rights of U.S. users who communicate with one another and get information from the site. A ban could result in Tik Tok’s shutting down entirely or in a sale to a U.S. company that could have editorial policies that would hinder free speech as practiced on the site today. (PBS, March 13, 2024, by Geoff Bennett and Courtney Norris)
Jameel Jaffer of the Knight First Amendment Institute says the TikTok ban is a practice associated with authoritarianism and expects the ban to be declared unconstitutional. Given Supreme Court decisions on similar issues, Jaffer says, “…nobody is arguing that TikTok is just Chinese propaganda. And yet, in a case that was decided half a century ago, the Supreme Court said, even when it’s uncontested that what Americans are trying to receive from abroad is communist propaganda, they have a First Amendment right to do so.” (MarketPlace Tech, March 14, 2024, by Lily Jamali and Rosie Hughes)