Nonetheless, it is time to either ban TikTok or force the sale of all its shares to American parties. The American owners must also control all the app’s algorithms, in particular, the algorithms curating content. If Beijing does not permit such a sale, the federal government should expropriate TikTok.
A forced sale, however, does not run afoul of the First Amendment. TikTok’s owner, ByteDance Ltd., is a Chinese company and therefore has no constitutional right to operate the popular app, which now has approximately 150 million users in the United States.
A legislative ban of the app, however, raises difficult constitutional issues. Congress is now considering the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats That Risk Information and Communications Technology Act, sponsored by Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and John Thune (R-S.D.). The RESTRICT Act, as the proposed legislation is known, creates a framework for the secretary of commerce to review foreign-linked social media platforms and to take action if necessary.
The legislation, intended to target TikTok, is controversial and being criticized as overbroad.
On its face, the RESTRICT Act comes close to infringing the most important right enshrined in the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
Is a TikTok ban constitutional?
“If it’s time to abandon the idea that Americans should be allowed to access information from around the world on their own terms—including information that might be bad for them—I haven’t seen the evidence yet to justify it,” Robertson wrote.
No evidence? As an initial matter, Ms. Robinson is wrong when she minimizes China’s regime as “authoritarian.” Let us be clear: Americans are not fighting “Chinese authoritarianism.” They are up against China’s totalitarianism.
Xi Jinping is seeking to impose on the world China’s imperial-era totalitarian system in which Chinese emperors believed they had the Mandate of Heaven over tianxia, or “all under Heaven.” Indeed, Xi is swiftly erecting totalitarian controls inside China, which he undoubtedly will extend to America and the rest of the world if he gets the opportunity. In short, the threat to the United States is existential.
The threat is also urgent because China’s ambitious ruler is making preparations for war. His regime, in fact, declared a “people’s war” on America, which is the Communist Party’s way of justifying a strike on the United States. We are a society in the last moments of peace.
There are, consequently, critical factors that legitimize curbs that would otherwise infringe First Amendment protections.
“It is very much like giving them the keys to the kingdom,” Evan Greer of Fight for the Future, a privacy group, told Fox Business.
TikTok has consistently lied to Congress and the American public about data security.
“Everything is seen in China,” a member of TikTok’s Trust and Safety Department said. A “Beijing-based engineer” known as “Master Admin” had “access to everything.”
Moreover, the U.S.-based operations of TikTok were mere window dressing.
“U.S. staff did not have permission or knowledge of how to access the data on their own, according to the tapes,” the news site reported.
TikTok had said it never shared user data with the Chinese government and would not do so. The BuzzFeed reporting revealed that this assurance and similar ones to the federal government were false.
TikTok’s criminality justifies the banning of the app. In short, China’s regime, conducting what its military calls “unrestricted warfare,” has employed TikTok against the United States.
“If the CCP can weaponize a balloon, think about what it can do with 150 million American TikTok users at its mercy,” Keith Krach, chair and co-founder of the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue University, told Gatestone.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has used TikTok to, among other things, glorify drug use, push critical race theory, and amplify Russian disinformation about the war in Ukraine. The CCP does not allow the Chinese people to use the app. TikTok’s twin site in China, Douyin, promotes patriotic themes.
Weichert believes that Beijing has been using the app, with its powerful algorithms, to make Chinese propaganda fun and, in the process, turn younger Americans against their country.
“Congress must ban this odious app before we lose an entire generation and the entire country with it,” he said.
Yes, this is a do-or-die moment for America. China’s regime has a dagger, in the form of TikTok, pointed at the heart of the United States, and Americans have to figure out a way to make sure the communist party can no longer use it, First Amendment or no First Amendment. “The Constitution,” as is often said, “is not a suicide pact.”
