Agreed. TikTok allows people to speak into the app, and to receive speech, but the act of organizing and strategically disseminating the speech is not speech -- it's societal scale hormone regulation and should be controlled for the health of the national body. It's wild that so many people are up in arms about TikTok when it is a Chinese app that is banned in China, where apps are heavily restricted.

For anyone who does consider these algorithms speech, I challenge you to share a single person at any social media company who has taken direct responsibility over a single content feed of an individual user. How can speech exist if nobody is willing to take ownership of it?

Because there is no "TikTok" ban and never has been.

There is a "TikTok cannot be controlled by the CCP" law. TikTok is completely legal under the law as long as they divest it. However, in a great act of self-incrimination, Bytedance (de facto controlled by CCP) has decided to not divest and would rather shutdown instead.

> it's about banning dissent

On the contrary, I think it is about banning a propaganda and social engineering vector that is under the thumb of an adversarial foreign government. That, for me, is enough of a reason to ban it and justify it under our constitution.

The fact that I am in favor of banning all social media should tell you that it is not ideological, but rather that I think social media is extremely addictive, and has huge negative externalities.

> Given the mismatch between public sentiment and the reporting on all things Luigi Mangione, the establishment is really scared

Polling numbers (actual gauge of public sentiment) show a net disapproval for Mangione: https://stratpolitics.org/2024/12/unitedhealthcare-poll/

If anything, the news media has been trying to push the Mangione debate and controversy at every chance, like the above article that was selectively written to highlight demographic groups that showed higher approval of Mangione first.

Thinking that “the establishment” is a collective of all major companies that act in unison is conspiratorial thinking. Don’t think for a second that the news media wouldn’t hesitate to push and profit from the controversy.

> Secondly no, it's not illegal to spread misinformation, no matter the motive. The First Amendment absolutely guarantees that right.

Again, does NOBODY know what the first amendment covers???

If you yell FIRE in a crowded theatre (misinformation) that is not covered by the 1st amendment[1]. Please stop talking confidently about something you don't understand.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States

Edit: Schenck v. United States was largely overturned by Brandenburg v. Ohio but not completely, only limiting the scope. There are also many other examples that could be used to show that spreading misinformation is not blanket covered by 1a (defamation for example).

> Secondly no, it's not illegal to spread misinformation, no matter the motive. The First Amendment absolutely guarantees that right.

Not accurate, no, assuming that by misinformation you mean information that the author knows to be false. To name just two quite legally clear examples with no inherent connection to foreign states, US defamation law and US product liability law often create civil liability and occasionally even criminal liability for certain categories of knowingly false statements.

But, sure, spreading misinformation is not always illegal, and a blanket ban on that would indeed violate the First Amendment even though more targeted bans have been upheld as passing the relevant judicial tests for laws affecting First Amendment rights.

> … if you say TikTok is being banned for the possibility of "weaponized propaganda", then it is information being suppressed

Eliminating weaponized propaganda is not even a little bit close to suppressing freedom of speech. Your argument falls apart there, like completely.