Posted originally on the CTH on December 28, 2024 | Sundance

The central argument is this. “Whether the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (“the Act”), as applied to petitioners, violates the First Amendment.”

Congress enacted a law that effectively bans the social media app TikTok, or at the very least, forces the sale of the company to a non-foreign owned entity. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on the First Amendment aspect. Biden signed the law that requires TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance to divest from the app or face a ban on U.S. networks and app stores.

Mitch McConnell [SEE HERE] and Mike Pence [See Here] are asking the Supreme Court to support the law and support the forced sale or ban. However, President Trump is urging the Supreme Court to be very careful.  [SEE HERE]

John Sauer, President Trump’s nominee to be solicitor general, has penned an amicus brief saying, “The power of a Western government to ban an entire social-media platform with more than 100 million users, at the very least, should be considered and exercised with the most extreme care—not reviewed on a ‘highly expedited basis.”

After initially supporting the ban on Tik Tok in 2020, President Trump changed his opinion and now contemplates whether a ban against the popular platform is in America’s best interest.

“Consistent with his commanding presence in this area, President Trump currently has 14.7 million followers on TikTok with whom he actively communicates, allowing him to evaluate TikTok’s importance as a unique medium for freedom of expression, including core political speech. Indeed, President Trump and his rival both used TikTok to connect with voters during the recent Presidential election campaign, with President Trump doing so much more effectively. As this Court instructs, the First Amendment’s ‘constitutional guarantee has its fullest and most urgent application precisely to the conduct of campaigns for political office.’” (source)

Many people have wondered what changed President Trump’s mind, with some pointing to President Trump’s meeting with TikTok CEO Shou Chew at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month.   Additionally, Elon Musk and the Silicon Valley tech team, including JD Vance, are opposed to Tik Tok.  However, the shift in Trump’s thinking since 2020 makes sense if you look at the timeline.

TikTok is a content and information platform that presents a significant issue from an American perspective.  It is a Chinese platform available in the USA, but American platforms are banned in China. As a consequence, there is a particular conflict on geopolitical interests. Thus, in 2020 President Trump was against TikTok as an equity/fairness issue.

However, if most or all of the USA social media platforms are under the influence and control of government, which they are. And when President Trump became a victim from that influence and control, which he did. And when the only counterpoint for pushback against the Mis-Dis-Mal information scheme of the U.S. Govt., is to use an external platform to deliver information…. Then the relative issues in the platform discrimination argument take on a different context.

If you look at the timeline, after he was silenced by the U.S government’s influence in Big Tech, President Trump changed his position on Tik Tok.

If USG control the public conversation, and the overwhelming evidence is that they do; then you can argue the merit of allowing a foreign platform to exist as a domestic vehicle for information uncontrolled by the USG.  This is also the essential argument that exists within communication platforms like Telegram; not coincidentally another platform targeted by the same USG.

TikTok may be garbage, I think it likely is.  However, in the era where we have a documented history of our government controlling the content on social media platforms, I can make an argument that their lack of control within TikTok is really the bigger part of the USG opposition to it.

TikTok is also a target for the European Commission who recently blamed the platform for an election outcome in Romania that Brussels did not like.

[Read Trump Amicus Briefing Here]