EFF Statement on U.S. Supreme Court's Decision to Uphold TikTok Ban

> Shutting down communications platforms or forcing their reorganization based on concerns of foreign propaganda and anti-national manipulation is an eminently anti-democratic tactic, one that the US has previously condemned globally.

These platforms are fundamentally anti-democratic in their very nature, increasingly so in the age of LLMs. They're places where people buy a voice and the illusion of support by astroturfing the platform and/or manipulating the algorithm (either through paid advertisements or by owning a platform and controlling the algorithm outright). They're places where a small minority of people can become an unstoppable movement that seems to have real support, sucking gullible voters in to join the growing "consensus".

In short, these platforms are places for manufacturing consent. The only sense in which banning one is anti-democratic is that it's selectively applied to tiktok instead of to all such platforms.

A former sausage maker here. I (used to) design these engagement/recommendation engines for a large corp, did academic research in the field, went to conferences, etc.

In general, I wholehearted support the freedom of speech, and if it were any other case, I would agree with the EFF statement here. However, knowing how the sausages are made, I am reluctantly agreeing with the ban, at least for now.

People underestimate how powerful these tools can be. Based on simple, readily available "anonymous" data, we can already impute your demographics data -- age, gender, family relations, occupation, income, etc -- using a decade-old ML techniques. In some cases, we can detect which stage of your emotional journey you are in and nudge you towards our target state. What surprised me about Cambridge Analytica was its ineffectiveness, at least as reported. There are plenty of teams out there that use these techniques to greatly further their gains, whatever those may be.

In Primakov doctrine, information warfare through sowing discontent and/or eroding psychological well-being is very much real and actualizable. I am not claiming that a foreign government is currently single-handedly controlling TikTok to brainwash the American youth; we do not have conclusive proof of that. However, the fact that such a tool is in a foreign country's arsenal is itself a massive danger to America's national security.

Given that the decision is unanimous just maybe it is in alignment with the constitution. If Clarence Thomas and Ketanji Jackson agree on something, that's some kind of signal.

It’s funny how they’re shutting down TikTok because it’s “manipulative and anti-democratic” while that’s a core trait of every algorithmic/engagement social media. Twitter and Threads should be banned as well then.

> The United States’ foreign foes easily can steal, scrape, or buy Americans’ data by countless other means.

Yes, all they have to do is sign up for the usual services advertisers use.

So we know the real reason why the government banned Tiktok [1]:

> [Manufacturing Consent] argues that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion", by means of the propaganda model of communication.

Tiktok doesn't push government propaganda to the same degree as Meta and Google.

But whoever pushed for this was smart enough to avoid making it about speech ("content-neutral" in legal parlance). It's strictly commerce-based and there's lots of precedent for denying access to the US market based on ownership. For a long time, possibly still to this day, foreign ownership of media outlets (particularly TV stations and newspapers) was heavily restricted. And that's a good analogy for what happened here.

What I hope happens is people wake up to the manipulation of what you see by US companies.

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

Curious to hear from other people here. I'm UK citizen, and on the whole, my perception is that I'm much more concerned about the effect on democracy from US led fake news and social media (specifically Twitter, Facebook and Truth Social) than TikTok.

I'm not making a case that that is justified, but I'm interested to know if other people in or outside the US share that perception?

It is hard to love the notion that banning a third party’s app is infringing upon my own right to free speech. If it were a ban on the Internet then that seems to make more sense. It’s analogous to a ban on paper, pens, or bullhorns. I can be sympathetic to the idea that, for some people, one particular proprietary app is their main tool for expression, even if that’s hardly ideal.

A ban on routers made by a specific foreign company — when the government knows full well the Internet can’t work without them — feels like a more likely scenario. When Huawei equipment bans were in the news, were there similar First Amendment arguments about that, too?

I don't often disagree with the EFF. Strange times.

I can no longer send money to the EFF due to their obvious misreading of the situation. They will lose $100s/year from me, I hope it was worth it. Clearly, a naive take that doesn't understand the nuances related to Tiktok's situation.

Tiktok can still exist and keep showing their garbage to Americans, but it can't do so while being owned by a foreign adversary that attacks us almost continuously.

Sure, they can still buy our information elsewhere, but this is like saying I shouldn't put a lock on my door because thieves can break in through other means. Just check the looting happening in Los Angeles as a result of the reduction in the barriers for theft. Cost matters and if we increase the costs for China's data theft, their ability to steal from us will be reduced.

All countries in the world, USA just showed it is perfectly fine to steal a foreign companies' asset. Let's do that to all USA companies, Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, Tesla, Boeing, Qualcomn, Intel, all of them. U know how rich you will be if you just got a piece of them? U know you could end homelessness, poverty, balance trade, stabilize your currency, elevate tax revenues, get free education and health care for your citizens, provide great jobs if you just got a piece of USA companies? Now you can! All of them can be Indian, Germany, France, UK, Poland, Brazilian, Mexican, Canadian, Kenyan, Egyptian companies. Everyone gets a piece, everyone gets them equally, everyone will benefit and be happy!

I think TikTok gets special status because its algorithm is just SO GOOD. If instagram was Chinese owned/influenced, we wouldn’t see this kind of potential control. TikTok is probably building models from all possible data: what angle is the user sitting or lying down and how does that correlate to mood or desire.

In the end, it's a security and sovereignty issue. A country can restrict foreign business, full stop.

That said, I don't think banning tiktok will have the desired results.

I agree with the ban on security basis, but could this be abused by countries to sabotage companies? China could buy majority shares of a company and force them out of business.

The shutdown is entirely because TikTok wouldn't suppress content about Palestine.

Huge creds to the EFF for speaking truth even when it is politically inconvenient (see comments here...)

This ban is infringing of IMO fundamental rights of individuals in US to share and use the TikTok app freely. That China is doing similar things to their citizens can't be an excuse.

Yeah I hate TikTok and its effect on society too and good riddance etc but this is a first for something very bad. We have to look at the larger picture.

There are many good reasons to ban TikTok. For example, reciprocity on free trade. Why should Chinese companies get access to the American market when no western social media apps are allowed in China?

Damn the servile simp responses here are revealing. They are setting precedence and will use this on other things. Yes TikTok and many apps are used by many hostile foreign governments (Israel/Unit 8200 for example) (btw, RedNote got it's big boost when backed by Israeli investor Yuri Milner and his firm DST) for many psyop types...

That doesn't mean you get to control what Americans can do on their devices.

Boiling the frog...

Urgh sorry EFF but you’ve lost me on this one.

There is actual harm done to democracy on these platforms. A democracy requires informed voters to function and the platform does the diametric opposite by misinforming them. Any attempt to regulate this or promote or moderate has failed simply because an actual structured funding source is misinformation. The only option to keep democracy standing is to kill it.

I’d expect the EFF to have some well read social or political staff. Apparently they don’t and are quite happy to spout absolutes.

Extremely weak argument. Just because one platform is shut down does not mean the right to free speech is affected. A platform, mind you, under full control by the Chinese Communist Party, who do not allow ANY form of free speech to exist in the country they have under their thumb.

Never expected to see the EFF siding with a big tech company, and fighting for its right to profit from its users.

Never expected to see the EFF dismiss an argument for user's data privacy as "shaky".

Quite disappointed honestly.

I was saying the same thing when they decided to take down Silk Road /s

I’m not sure what order things go in, but I’d have thought national security concerns trump the need of its’ citizens to freely watch cat videos Those people publishing to TikTok were probably on Instagram and if they weren’t, they will be now if they want to reach the same American audience.