Lawmakers Who Insisted The US Gov’t Should Never Combat Foreign Influence Online, Vote To Combat TikTok’s Foreign Influence Online
from the ain't-no-hypocrisy-like-congressional-hypocrisy dept
Is the US government allowed to step in to deal with foreign influence on social media or not? According to at least some members of Congress, the answer appears to be “yes, when we dislike what they’re saying, and no when we like what they’re saying.”
When the original House bill to “ban TikTok” passed, David Greene and Karen Gullo at EFF noted the odd contrast of dozens of Congressional Reps who both signed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in the Murthy case, saying that the US government should simply never be allowed to interfere with speech, including to counter election misinformation, and also (just days later) voted to ban TikTok.
Over the weekend, the House once again passed a TikTok ban bill (similar to the original with a few small changes), which they bizarrely bundled with funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. The bill passed the House 316 to 94, with the yeas and nays following no particular partisan breakdown.
And, I recognize it’s not perfectly fair to see “yea” votes as a clear vote for banning TikTok, given that this was a bundle of (mostly) foreign aid bills that I’m sure some members saw as much more important than the TikTok ban question. However, it does seem notable that so many Members of Congress insisted to the Supreme Court that the US government should never interfere with foreign influence campaigns online, but then voted to ban TikTok, in large part because of the risk that it might try to run foreign influence campaigns online.
Looking through the roll call and comparing it to the signatures on the amicus brief, I find 13 members of the House who both think that it is clearly unconstitutional for the US to try to respond to foreign influence peddling, but who also believe that they could ban TikTok in response to concerns about foreign influence peddling.
The amicus brief is pretty clear on this point. It complains, specifically, about the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force. It suggests that it acted illegally in trying to respond to foreign influence peddling: “The federal government, specifically the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), also used its power and influence to deceive and coerce social media companies.”
The amicus brief claims this is a clear First Amendment violation. From the brief:
Thus, the First Amendment stands against any governmental effort to coerce or otherwise burden the free speech of private entities— even if that action falls short of outright suppression.
And yet… when it comes to Reps. Jim Jordan, Elise Stefanik, Kelly Armstrong, Aaron Bean, Kat Cammack, Jerry Carl, Scott Fitzgerald, Russell Fry, Erin Houchin, Darrell Issa, Ronny Jackson, Max Miller, Guy Reschenthaler, and Claudia Tenney, apparently it’s only not okay for the government to burden the free speech of private entities when those entities are not connected to China. Then, suddenly, principles go out the window, and of course the government can do this.
After all, those Reps both signed the amicus brief and voted in favor of the TikTok ban. To be fair, this is a smaller number than those who voted for the original TikTok ban. However, that difference is mainly explainable by the fact that many of those who voted no here simply do not want to provide foreign aid to Ukraine.
Still, though, it would be nice if elected officials weren’t so openly hypocritical all the time. As the EFF post a couple months ago noted:
We believe there is an appropriate role for the government to play, within the bounds of the First Amendment, when it truly believes that there are posts designed to interfere with U.S. elections or undermine U.S. security on any social media platform. It is a far more appropriate role than banning a platform altogether.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, aaron bean, claudia tenney, darrell issa, election influence, elise stefanik, erin houchin, foreign influence, free speech, guy reschenthaler, hypocrisy, jerry carl, jim jordan, kelly armstrong, max miller, ronny jackson, russell fry, scott fitzgerald, tiktok ban
Companies: tiktok
Comments on “Lawmakers Who Insisted The US Gov’t Should Never Combat Foreign Influence Online, Vote To Combat TikTok’s Foreign Influence Online”
They meant Russia
They meant Russian speech. Everyone else can be interfered with, particularly when their skin is less than lily white.
Why now the surprise and protest at Congress violating the First Amendment ?
Congress has been routinely violating the Bill of Rights since the Alien & Sedition Act.
No surprise either at how few Americans even slightly understand the actual political power functioning of their central government.
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Are you new? No one here is surprised. Certainly not Mike.
'The government has no business medling in speech(that I agree with)!'
Time and time again numerous politicians and other expose that when they say they support the first amendment and free speech what they mean is ‘speech I agree with and nothing else‘.
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Suck it, PRC-stooge!
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ok troll
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Valis hasn’t ben seen in this post yet.
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The preceding message has been brought to you by TrueAmericanPatriotNews.ru!
foreigners
Leaving all the little details aside, China has banned Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and so on. So I have ZERO issues with us just banning them back.
Fuck it. We can’t be playing using 2 sets of rules.
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China does a lot of bad shit. The US should not be taking our policy decision based on what China does.
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Let’s emulate China. Great idea.
Re: 'Now that I've done X too neither of us can call the other on X! ... wait.'
Well that’s one way to call in an artillery strike on any moral high ground you might have otherwise had…
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Because two wrongs make a right, amirite? America now cannot legitimately criticize censorship engaged in by other countries’ governments, shit-for-brains troll.
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As long as a Democrat does it, it’s OK. That’s what the peanut gallery keeps assuring me.
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If you had courage you'd cover Musk's fight against Brazil and AUS
…but you don’t and you’re a partisan hack who loves gov censorship by proxy when BY the (lefty) US gov against US “dissidents”….well you actually love it when it when it’s lefty totalitarian regimes in Brazil and Australia too, actually. You hated the exact same crap from Modi, in India, of course, though it’s not particularly clear to me what the difference is, if anything. But cuz Modi was ostensibly “right wing” (what does that even MEAN, in politics so unrelated to our own? We should stop blinding applying these labels) You HATED every time Musk refused to stand up to him (despite edicts seeming to follow their own internal law) and now, that Musk seems to be telling Brazil and AUS to go fuuck themselves, not least cuz they are not following their own law, you’re completely silent.
You are a many things, among them a liar, a gaslighter, but also a COWARD.
Re: brazil
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/04/09/elon-finally-finds-a-government-hes-willing-to-stand-up-to-when-the-censorship-demands-target-his-political-allies/
Presumably Mike hasn’t gotten around to Australia yet
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On top of your utter egocentrism and entitlement in pretending you should have the privilege of making editorial decisions for a website with which you are not affiliated, your blatant ignorance alone means your rants can be dismissed without fear of missing anything important.
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TBH, Bratty Matty’s so narcissistic he sees being a commenter on this site as some kind of affiliation.
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Musk is free to tell Australia to go fuck themselves, but his refusing to take down a video of a knife attack because a government is asking is the wrong time to stand on what he believes is principle.
Every single accusation, a confession.
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I mean, I did cover the story in Brazil, which is looking dumber and dumber as time goes on. Michael Shellenberger had to flee the country after it was shown that he misunderstood the documents he had found, and Musk backed down and agreed to pull down the content the Brazilian government demanded. I hadn’t covered Musk caving just says after promising never to do so, but if I find time, perhaps I will (since you want me to).
As for Australia, I’m still waiting for the details to play out on that, as there’s no need to rush in before we understand all the details.
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Sorry, that kind of reasonableness isn’t going to work for Matt. You have to fire off with the first Newsmax take you hear as the only source of “facts” on the story and draw conclusions based on a biased perspective that Musk is the heroic main character of this game called life.
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This is one of the worst TechDirt summaries I’ve ever read. Despite the acknowledgement that the bill is far from a TikTok ban, how can you possibly evaluate it as a TikTok ban?
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The bill is not exclusively a Tiktok ban bill, because they knew bundling with a bunch of humanitarian stuff would make it more likely to pass.
But it is still very much a Tiktok ban bill.
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The bill includes a provision that bans tiktok unless it sells itself to a US company. We can evaluate that ban of tik tok as a Tik Tok ban.
I can’t actually see where Mike called the bill a tik tok ban, rather he claimed there was a vote to ban tik tok. In the framing Mike actually used, the bill could (and did) do many things. One of those things is a tik tok ban.
I understand this might be confusing. Thankfully your name is patrick, so you’ve helpfully given me a framing to explain the issue.
Man-Ray: “This bill requires tik tok to divest?”
Patrick: “Yep.”
Man-Ray: “And if it refuses, this bill bans tik tok?
Patrick: “Yep.”
Man-Ray: “So a vote for this bill was a vote to ban tik tok?”
Patrick: “Its not a tik tok ban”.
Thats what your post sounds like.
Political theater
I think a lot of our representatives will consider this a win-win. Get the aid package you want and pretend to be tough on China by allowing part of the bill to go through that the courts will toss out.
I think banning Tik Tok would be a very silly thing to do.
But supporting Ukraine is a 1000 times more important to me, I would gladly vote for any bill that does both.
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So you’re okay with government censorship as long as there’s a humanitarian upside?
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You’ve gotta pick your battles, and I view the genocidal invasion of Ukraine as an existential threat to the rules based international order that has allowed us all to prosper and live in peace.
Tik Tok is a silly video platform. It would be a grave violation of the freedoms America stands for to ban it, but it is not a matter of life and death.
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You make it sound like this political tactic of smashing unrelated things together in a bill is unavoidable.
Reactions like yours is exactly why they do it.
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No, public reactions like that aren’t why bills are written like this.
Bills are written like this because the rules of congress allow a 34% minority of representatives or senators to stick their thumbs up their asses and say “You don’t get to vote on this”
I get it, you don’t like this person’s response and you don’t like the way bills are written. But unless that anonymous coward is actually one of the speakers of the house or senate, their response isn’t the reason bills are written like this.
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Yes. It’s very stupid this bills are connected.
But they are, and we have already spent six months without sending support to Ukraine, this bill finally came to a vote and I’m happy it passed.
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Just out of morbid curiosity would you support a hypothetical bill that was aimed at providing funding to food shelters in Ukraine and included a teeny-tiny little provision that your house(among others) would be seized and sold to help cover the cost? Because if ‘it does something I support so it doesn’t much matter what the cost is’ is the standard you want to use then it seems you’d be okay with that.
Re: Re: Re:5
Wow thanks for engaging in serious debate, troll.
I honestly don’t understand how you could think TikTok is more important than a war.
As for selling my house. No of course I would not appreciate the gov auctioning off my house to fund the war effort, but I’d be more okay with it than you think. I’ve already pretty much emptied out my savings anyhow.
Seeing as I host a Ukrainian refugee in my house it would require the gov to find an alternative place for them to live, probably costing at least as much as would be earned by selling my apartment.
Re: Re: Re:6
So you’re okay with the government stripping away your rights to fund a war.
Do remember, the next incoming president will then use those laws to go even further with the stripping of your rights, until they get to make up crimes you never committed jist to toss you into the meatgrinder, or worse, murder you on a whim.
They won’t care about your rights, because, like you said, “war is more important”.
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Every (sarcastic) accusation a confession.
Censorship?
I’m going to be honest, I don’t see why everyone is looking at this as some grand censorship scandal. Yeah, if TikTok is banned, you don’t get to exercise your freedom of speech there anymore, but the same can be said about any theatre or auditorium that’s condemned by safety inspectors. But the canceled speaking events and shows don’t amount to censorship in the eyes of the First Amendment.
The First Amendment just means that the government needs a good reason to encroach on your freedom of speech, and largely can’t pass laws or actions that are meant to suppress your speech.
The bill is clearly aimed at TikTok’s ties to the CCP, and cutting those ties is even an explicit way out of the ban. None of the rhetoric I’ve heard, none of the talking points, and none of the bill’s language even come close to suggesting that the censorship of American citizens is a goal of the bill.
Yeah, you won’t be able to speak there, but that’s not the point. The point is to tell a foreign government and those beholden to it to get out. It sucks if you liked TikTok, but the USG doesn’t trust ByteDance’s 20% ownership of it, and seeing how the CCP operates, I can’t say I trust ByteDance either.
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That is… not the standard at all.
There is no “good reason” exemption to the First Amendment.
There is a very short, well defined list of exceptions to the First Amendment, and the court has (recently!) shot down attempts to add more.
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My point is more so that providing services or a platform that enable speech doesn’t isn’t a free-pass from legislation. Newspapers still need to abide by laws that are unrelated to speech. I’ll admit that the waters are a lot muddier here because TikTok got this attention because of its prominence as a social media platform.
As far as I can tell, there’s no indication that the legislation is concerned with what’s being said on TikTok, and is only targeting it because of who’s running the show. This comes a lot closer to the freedom of association and freedom of assembly that the first amendment guarantees. Although, I’m admittedly, I barely know anything about the nuances around those, especially when dealing with foreign nationals who are operating out of foreign soil, and may be operating on behalf of their foreign government.
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and your getting flagged cuase tiktok is not owned by the ccp troll
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Then Tiktok needs to have committed a crime.
The US hasn’t declared war on China yet, and the only thing Tiktok can “reasonably” be accused of is lying about its relationship to the Xi Dynasty.
If Tiktok is spying, then the state has to prove that Tiktok was indeed spying.
Otherwise, it’s a Bill of Attainder, ie, the government is not allowed to punish anyone or any corp on a whim or on hurt feefees or so.ething similar.
And the US emulating China is NOT a path the US should go down on.
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I do agree, this quickly becomes an issue regarding Bills of Attainer, so these will likely go to court regarding that clause of the constitution.
It’s hard to predict which way that court case will go, particularly because Nixon v. Administrator of General Services narrowed the scope of the legal tests that are applied.
The relevant conclusion that court case reached was that legislation must be intended to punish, and that punishment could survive strict scrutiny if it’s a side effect of non-punitive goals.
It’ll be difficult for the government to make that case, since the references to TikTok and ByteDance make them out to be targets more so than exemplars.
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If the TikTok ban stands up to constitutional scrutiny (though it shouldn’t), there’s every reason to believe it won’t stop there. Free speech will die if this stands.
The soundbites matter more than the law or reality.