> But Russia is a greater immediate threat

I disagree; and it's the dismissal for the past 13-14 years of China as an immediate threat which is what has in part allowed China to become such a large longer-term threat.

> They would prefer a different rules based order than the one America would prefer

I would put it differently: China wants its own global hegemony instead of the U.S.' -- and that's understandable (everyone wants to rule the world). But if the U.S. doesn't want that to happen then it has to take steps to counter it.

Re #2 -- while there is a tit-for-tat element here, forcing a sale of TikTok or removing it from the App stores, is still worlds apart from the type of censoring of information that the Chinese government engages in. So it's not a case of "we want to do the same thing". If you've lived in China (I have) you'll know what I'm talking about.

> won’t stop the Chinese from mining centralized social media databases

that's not the issue; the issue is control of the network

> Wouldn't the right solution be to protect the citizens from all threats, foreign and domestic?

No. In the US government's view, its responsibility is to counter potential foreign threats -- and not just foreign, but adversarial (this wouldn't be an issue for a social network controlled by the UK or Japan, for example) -- which would include a highly pervasive social network controlled by a foreign government that is the US' largest adversary.

As for whether social media companies in general are good or bad for American society, that's a completely separate question. (I tend to think they do more harm then good, but it's still a separate question.)

The two are vastly different.

The GFW doesn't just block websites/networks/content that is controlled by adversarial foreign governments, but all websites/networks/content which the CCP is unable to censor. The GFW is about controlling the flow of information to its citizens from __any__ party not under the CCP's control.

I think the question "What is Tiktoks speech?" was raised. And the answer, "the algorithm" didn't really strike home.

So I read it like they didn't interpret this as a free speech issue at all.

It's not a top down broadcast and the SCOTUS has a hard time wrapping their head around 250 individual people receiving individualized content with no oversight or necessity for accuracy.

That justification also seems like it quickly can be used to shutdown access to VPN services hosted elsewhere like Mullvad.

They have?

They released a Marty Rimm-level report citing that pro-Palestinian was mentioned more than pro-Israeli content in ratios that differed from Meta products. This was the 'smoking gun' of manipulation when it's more of a sign Meta was the one doing the manipulation.

That's the way I like it for my children. Pardon the demagogue. The US, being the awful mess it is is still 100x better IMHO than the chinese government. It's the lesser evil kind of thing and honestly the reason I believe that democracy is 100% THE way to go. Things can only get US level nefarious with democracy. Far from perfect but much less evil.

The only problem with democracy is that it's so fragile and susceptible to bad non-democrat actors intervention, which is more of an awareness problem.

Is X vulnerable to Chinese government interference because its American executive has other business interests in China at stake?

I’d argue the TikTok remedy should be applied to X, too.

You are assuming a lot about supposed evidence nobody has said anything specific about. One shouldn't also assume people in Congress know how to evaluate any evidence. Nor justices, based on the questions they asked.

Good thing Mr Zuckerberg is a shining beacon of independence from the US government.

The short answer here is that directly addressing a threat from a foreign adversary formally designated by both the legislative and executive branches long before the particular controversy before the court affords the government a lot more latitude than they would have in other cases.

China can benefit without doing any influencing. It can simply mine the vast amount of data it gets for sentiment analysis. Say they want to be more aggressive against the Philippines. They can do an analysis to gauge the potential outrage on the part of the American people. If it's low they can go ahead.

China can show favorable political content to America and American youth.

American culture has been such an influencing force on the world due to our conduits, movies and music. TikTok is a Chinese conduit, and I do believe this is happening. Our culture can be co-opted, the Chinese had John Cena apologize to ALL of China. They can easily pay to have American influencers spin in a certain way, influencing everything.

Thank you for this concise and comprehensive summary. The DDoS threat had never occurred to me.

So China blocking US social media is justified for the very same reasons?

Meanwhile, it's perfectly fine for foreign adversaries to use American social media to interfere with American events. Anything for that GDP.

... and also the USA, too.

I assure you, if you read the opinion, that is indeed it, and the objection you raise about other instances of data collection not being targeted is addressed directly.

I think you would be hard pressed to come up with any evidence for your assertion. First of all the UK is not a foreign adversary (quite the opposite). Secondly Facebook didn't sell data in that case, it was collected by Cambridge Analytica via Facebook's platform APIs (as described in your own link). In general Facebook doesn't sell data, their entire business model is based on having exclusive access to data from its platforms.

And the difference is that the US government can tell them to stop doing it.

CA wasn’t data being “sold”

> That can’t be it. Facebook sells the same data to foreign adversaries including China and Russia.

I'm not sure they do that anymore, not in the current geopolitical climate and not with the DC ghouls having taken over the most sensitive parts of Meta the company (there were many posts on this web-forum about former CIA people and not only working at the highest levels inside of Meta).

This whole Cambridge Analytica thing is such a nothing burger - I have yet to be given a concise reason how it was anything other than targeted advertising. Something that happens day-in, day-out a billion times over on all our "western" platforms in the form of ads. And no, the fact that this data wasn't "consented to" doesn't mean anything other than being a technicality. If anything, I'd chalk the whole thing up to anti-Trump hysteria that happened around that time.

People keep coming up with other avenues by which China could get this information, but the court addresses that directly: the legislature is not required to address every instance of a compelling threat in one fell swoop.

I thought this too, but I think there's a new law for this as well: "In a bipartisan measure, the House of Representatives unanimously pass a bill designed to protect the private information of all Americans by prohibiting data brokers from transferring that information to foreign adversaries such as China" https://allen.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=...

The case turns on the fact that China is formally designated a foreign adversary. The statute doesn't allow the government to simply make up who its adversaries are on the fly, or derive them from some fixed set of first principles. There's a list, and it long predates this case.

> yet Russian apps are in our app stores

Major social media apps? Chinese apps are still in our app stores, just not TikTok (as of Sunday).

The only Russian app I'm aware of is Telegram. What other Russian apps might people be unwittingly running?

And yet Russian apps are in our app stores.

There are no Russian apps that collect extensive data on hundreds of millions of Americans. (And if I'm wrong about that, the US should absolutely force divestiture of those apps or ban them).

>a treaty partner who gave up their nukes in exchange for a security alliance with the US

If it wasn't ratified by the senate then we didn't enter into a treaty, I really don't understand why this is so hard for people to understand.

You are free to have that our opinion but our elected government disagrees with you. It’s not the job of the court to adjust laws based on personal preference of HN commenters.

Yes but there are Reagan's interests and Hitler's interests. You have no choice but to pick the lesser evil.

> Meta could still turnaround and sell this information to Chinese companies

Let them collect and ban this. Difference between Meta and TikTok is you can prosecute the former’s top leadership.

Your question is irrelevant because none of the parties you've listed have interests that are aligned with the CCP, assuming you're referring to the people as a whole. Obviously there are specific individuals whose interests are aligned with China's government but laws in a democracy aren't meant to make everyone happy, they're meant to meet the interests of the majority of people

> Nobody wants China to take Taiwan, that's not something its possible to convince people of

It's not about convincing them to want it but rather about sowing doubt and confusion at the critical moment.

David French's NYT column last week starts with what one might call a "just-plausible-enough" scenario: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/09/opinion/tiktok-supreme-co... (gift link, yw).

Im not so confident about that. Attenuating isolationist policy in the face of Taiwan is the easiest, but I can see anti-ROC propaganda in the mix.

They would be within their rights to do that. But then they would have to compete with other participants in the discussion. On TikTok they can ensure there is no such competition.

The magnitude of the attack is not comparable. One thing is being a bad actor in a network owned by someone else where you can get monitored, caught and banned. Versus owning the network completely and amplifying messages with ease at scale. The effort needed and effectiveness of the attack is extremely different.

Domestic based social media platforms can be pressured to comply with demands such as the DOJ's investigation into Russia's 2016 disinformation campaign on Facebook. Likewise social media platforms based in a foreign adversary would be pressured to comply with demands of that foreign adversary.

This is a common criticism in these kinds of discussions, but no, protecting oneself from foreign influence and threats does not require a moral high-ground, just as locking your front door doesn't.

Self-interest doesn't require moral justification.

For some reason I can't reply to "luddit3" below you. But he should check a list of countries that started the most wars and invasions in the last 150 years and which one tops it easily.

There is no good, just bad and kill-it-with-fire kind of evil. You choose bad you get a bad life. You choose the other you get literally hell. One government harvests and sells the organs of its healthy population[0][1][2] and the other makes some people feel sad.

Ironically, the "good" guys here allow you to talk shit on the internet about them while the "bad" guys would catch and harvest my organs someday for writing this comment.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_... [1] https://chinatribunal.com/ [2] https://theowp.org/reports/china-is-forcibly-harvesting-orga...

In preventing a country from being invaded, yes, we are.

This is exactly why China controls the internet and any company with a presence there.

Thus why Facebook is blocked in China, but not in the EU, since we have a much less adversarial relationship with them.

I'm no lawyer and can't be arsed to do the proper research but for Georgescu to be able to declare he had 0 campaign spending while everyone knows that the tiktok campaign cost 20-50 million euros is insane to me.

If they aren't already prosecuting him on this I guess technically it's legal but such a weird loophole in the law. Any spending towards promoting a candidate should be public knowledge imo. EDIT: he was claiming bullshit like GOD chose him and that's how he got that good of a result. I guess his God is the people in the shadows that made his tiktok campaign lol

> For me the biggest scandal in Romania is that they threw the people's choice to the trash just because he didn't show up in polls

I think they did it for many reasons but not because he didn't show up in polls.

Top ones are:

- PSD didn't advance in the second round and they had the leverage to pull it off

- Georgescu was clearly anti-NATO so maybe the US pulled strings

- Danger of having a president with Russian sympathies

- He was claiming that he didn't spend a single dime on the election while everyone in the know knows that his tiktok campaign cost sever million euros

What if, and hear me out, China didn't limit its propaganda to the truth?

> The nation’s highest court said in the opinion that while “data collection and analysis is a common practice in this digital age,” the sheer size of TikTok and its “susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects” poses a National Security Concern.

FTA

SCOTUS doesn't really get to decide whether that is good justification or even correct

They do, and they did. From the ruling:

The Act’s prohibitions and divestiture requirement are designed to prevent China—a designated foreign adver- sary—from leveraging its control over ByteDance Ltd. to capture the personal data of U. S. TikTok users. This ob- jective qualifies as an important Government interest un- der intermediate scrutiny.

Good point, but still that's not reciprocity. Allowing the CCP to fine tune their propaganda at American citizens while US companies have to comply with heavy handed censorship is not a fair trade.

> (...) to North Korea, China, Russia, or Iran or an entity controlled by such a country

This is very limited and will not prevent indirect sales (like we now see happening with Russian oil for example).

It is also why I said "indirectly".

Liberties are not granted to everyone equaly ≠ Some liberties are [equally] denied.

> The ideal world order isn't the one where Chinese can't find out what happened on Tiananmen square and Americans can't find out what happened in Gaza.

I don't see how this law banning a social media site brings us at all closer to a world where Americans cannot get access to accurate information about major global conflicts. This is so far down the imagined "slippery slope" as to be absurd. In fact, I'd strongly argue that this law would achieve the opposite. If you're relying on Tik Tok for accurate information like this, then you are opening yourself to echo chambers, biased takes, and outright propaganda. There are many excellent sources out there in America freely available and easily accessible.

Luckily nobody needs TikTok to find out what happened in Gaza.

> Whatever you think of the law of the PRC, they applied it consistently

Chinese courts are explicitly subservient to the party.

China has a constitution mostly like America’s, freedom of speech, religion, press are enshrined even more strongly than in the American constitution. What China lacks is judicial review and an independent judiciary, so the constitution has no enforcement mechanism, and so is meaningless. The Chinese government as formed has no interest in rule of law.

It does, actually https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/lawsregulations/201911/20...

So what? If you believe in liberal values (with a small l), like freedom of speech, you lead by example.

Are you aware of this Wikipedia page? [0] I think you should motivate why you believe that what is described in that page should not be called "constitution". Or articulate why you believe that thing does not exist. Or at least motivate your statement. Where does it come from?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_China

I do, but there is no data or evidence supporting said non-resident corporation is under control of an adversary, so why should I believe anything the government claims? If you're going to talk about security, just stop, nearly every component in your phone is produced in China, and you still use that everyday.

> You'd have to be very naive not to think that the Chinese government has an interest in controlling what US users of TikTok see.

Just because something has been repeated in the news 20000 times, it doesn't make it true without evidence. Speculation is just it: speculation.

As far as I've seen, it's not Chinese company spying on me, it's US ones, it's not Chinese companies hacking Wifis in all major airports to track regular citizens, it's US ones, it's not Chinese intelligence spying on European politicians, it's US ones, it's not Chinese diplomacy drawing the line between rebels/protesters, good or bad geopolitically, it's always Washington, it's not Chinese intelligence we know of hacking major European infrastructure and bypassing SCADA, it's US one.

The elephant in the room is US' fixation for exceptionalism and being self authorized to do whatever it pleases while at the same time making up geopolitical enemies and forcing everybody to follow.

I don't buy it, I'm sorry. I don't particularly like the Chinese system, I don't particularly love their censorship, and I don't particularly like their socials on our ground when our ones are unable to operate there (unless they abide to Chinese laws, which are restricting and demand user data non stop, something they are very willing to do in US though).

My beef is with American's exceptionalism and with the average American Joe who cannot see the dangers posed by the foreign policy of its own country. The US should set the example and then pretend the same, instead it does worse than everybody and cries that only it can. It's dangerous.

> Something we know about because the US political system has levers that can be pulled to apply pressure for transparency.

We know most of it because of whistleblower leaks.

Slippery slope fallacy. We aren’t banning all chinese companies just like they haven’t banned all US companies

Where were you for the last 10+ years when China was blocking all social media from the US but the US wasn’t blocking it? Or does hypocrisy just apply to the USA? It seems like you have some kind of agenda unrelated to the pure concept of hypocrisy.

Unless you work directly for the US government in some way, you are perfectly free to get on a VPN and continue using tiktok. And unlike your chinese friends, you don't even need to break the law to do it.

First Amendment rights do not extend to corporations under foreign (adversarial) government control. Simple as.

This amendment to the constitution was rewritten a few times, each time more clearly stating that it applies to “the people”.

From: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt1-7-1/ALD...

First Amendment Right is only for American citizens, no? If you're a visitor to the US for example, you don't get the First Amendment protection against anything, you're a guest. Why doesn't the same principle apply to a foreign company? I don't see how banning tik tok affects your first amendment rights or first amendment rights of American companies - maybe you can explain?

Also, the oligarchs just want us to use their crappy social media sites. This sets the stage for making competition illegal in some ways.

Ridiculous statement. You must believe they should have political speech then? Maybe they should be able to donate to elections or even vote too? Why stop at corporations?

If they want speech, they should reside in the US, not just own a piece of a company that does.

The rights enforced inside the US are very generous compared to most countries and many apply to both legal and illegal residents, but restricting some rights, especially political ones, is crucial to have a sovereign state

Computer touchers awash in luxury beliefs.

I've honestly never seen so many stupid people making stupid arguments on HN before.

Nothing but lazy disingenuous arguments who's only purpose is to bait conversations for replying with even lazier whataboutisms.

Either the brainrot has really set in for these people or we are being flooded with ai/bots.

It's not leaks and breaches that are the immanent concern here. The concern is deep, adversarial manipulation of public sentiment -- a psyops asset that gives a competing nation significant leverage as they pursue ends that challenge established US interests in the Pacific.

You don't have to agree that protecting those interests is worth the disruption to the global market, free speech ideology, etc. But to engage in the debate, you need to recognize that this is the core concern.

> "Sorry, you can't have this on a golden platter, the best we can do is silver."

Right, and silver is better than nothing.

I think many of us on HN would agree that US social media companies having the means to manipulate user sentiment via private algorithms is a bad thing. But it's at least marginally better than a foreign adversary doing so because US companies have a base interest in the US continuing to be a functional country. Plus it's considerably more difficult to pass a law covering this domestically, where US tech giants have vested interests, lobbyists and voters they can manipulate.

So yes, a targeted ban against a foreign-owned company isn't the ideal outcome. But it's not difficult to see why it's considered a better outcome than doing nothing at all.

Tiktok was banned primarily for influence, secondarily for data.

The influence is what law makers care far more about. Remember what Russia was doing on facebook in 2016? Now imagine that Russia actually owned facebook at the time.

You're not wrong that domestic threats exist as well. But perhaps the biggest thing to know that may help you understand, is that the national security apparatus operates within the paradigm of what is called 5GW, or Fifth Generation Warfare[1]. 5GW is all about information, and a foreign adversary controlling the algorithmic news feed of 170 million Americans for an average 1 hour a day is important in that context.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generations_of_warfare

That's not forgetting the ability for them to just straight up 100% legally purchase a lot of this information from data brokers.

I haven't followed this closely, but I assumed it was related to a foreign entity having the ability to hyper-target content towards said 17 year olds (and the entire userbase in general) -- A modern form of psychological warfare.

The concern is they won't be 17 forever. 5/10/20/30 years down the line some small portion of these kids are going to hold important jobs, and some of them will have worthwhile blackmail material in their tiktok history.

You can still push a particular group of those 17-year olds pushing specific views to influence elections. As long as some proportion of the electorate watches stuff on TikTok.

I think this underestimates how popular TikTok is with 20/30 year olds.

> the national security concerns around 17-year old nobodies publishing videos of themselves doing silly dances

C'mon, we can have a more informed conversation than that.

TikTok is an entertainment platform the average young American watches for more than an hour a day. Videos cover just about any topic imaginable. We just had an election. Is it really so impossible to imagine a foreign power adjusting the algorithm to show content favorable to one candidate over another? It's entirely within their power and they have every motive.

Because it’s used to influence elections worldwide. Most recently the first round of the Romanian elections were won by an unheard of pro-Russian candidate who ran a disinformation campaign on TikTok, allegedly organised by the Kreml.

https://www.politico.eu/article/investigation-ties-romanian-...

https://www.politico.eu/article/calin-georgescu-romania-elec...

Blackmail. Information. They could be kids of someone with access/high clearance or get it themselves in a few years.

This reads like a denial of the existence of hybrid warfare. Why wouldn't China use TikTok to sow negative sentiment about the US?

I’d assume the concern is more swaying public opinion, sowing division to make us incapable of unified political effort, or even to destabilize us, things like that, not so much infiltrating networks - they already manufacture much of that equipment.

If I understand correctly how it works, it’s a propagandist’s dream, building personalized psych profiles on each person. You could imagine that it’d be the perfect place to try generating novel videos to fit specific purposes, as well - the signals from this could feed back directly into the loss functions for the generative models.

I think politicians’ efforts to regulate tech are generally not great, but I think this one is pretty spot-on.

National security doesn't have to mean they use the app to take over the devices it is installed on. It can also be used to spread misinformation or blackmail people.

> Do we really believe the Chinese are going to infiltrate by way of tiktok when they can hack into our telecom networks or any significant figures individual machines?

The allegation is that it's used to spread misinformation and affect public sentiment, not for infiltration.

It is a separate law from the one passed in April, 2024, which makes what you're talking about illegal: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7520

You suspect that? It is the literal stated reason for it.

Laws don't have to solve all of the potential problems that may exist in order to be valid (this is one of the things they talk about in the decision).

However, there is another law that made sale of data to foreign adversaries illegal, passed in April 2024: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7520