TikTok’s bid to overturn a law which would see it banned or sold in the US from early 2025 has been rejected.
The social media company had hoped a federal appeals court would agree with its argument that the law was unconstitutional because it represented a “staggering” impact on the free speech of its 170 million US users.
But the court upheld the law, which it said “was the culmination of extensive, bipartisan action by the Congress and by successive presidents”.
[…]
The court agreed the law was “carefully crafted to deal only with control by a foreign adversary, and it was part of a broader effort to counter a well-substantiated national security threat posed by the PRC (People’s Republic of China).”
Except all the social media are doing the exact same thing. This is pointless political posturing
Not quite. TikTok has been shown to tweak their algorithm against criticism of China. That’s the real reason for the concern. Their ability and willingness to purposefully manipulate people.
Which is no different from any of the US social media companies tweaking their algorithms against criticism of all number of political things.
Twitter blatantly forced right wing radical propaganda down their entire user bases through a for months. Facebook was selling user data to foreign influence groups to assist with political message targeting. They’re all the same.
Lots of people think the US social media platforms do that. But none of the scientific studies have been able to show it.
The US companies are all purely driven by engagement, to maximize profit. The most effective source of that engagement, changes from person to person. But it’s most commonly what you might call “Rage Bait”.
Twiter’s recent bend toward the right, is primarily self selection of it’s users. As the left… left… the platform, the pool of available content shifted right; Causing even more to leave. Unless you have some paper I haven’t seen.
And Facebook selling data, is entirely different and unrelated. Nobody (no lawmakers) care about that.
