User 3
Appearances
The Journal.
The TikTok Ban Goes to the Supreme Court
It seems to me that the court does not want to second guess national security concerns that have such widespread support in Washington. The bill that President Biden signed was passed by large bipartisan majorities of Congress after the lawmakers got briefings from intelligence agencies.
The Journal.
The TikTok Ban Goes to the Supreme Court
But I think the court is also very concerned about setting a precedent that would open the door to further speech restrictions in the United States.
The Journal.
The TikTok Ban Goes to the Supreme Court
And I think that whatever the court does decide, whichever side it goes on, it will write its opinion in a way that is as narrow as possible to make it as limited as possible to this particular instance involving this app and this law without saying much more about future regulation of speech in the internet era.
The Journal.
The TikTok Ban Goes to the Supreme Court
We will be fine without TikTok, but I don't want to have to be.
The Journal.
The TikTok Ban Goes to the Supreme Court
He argued that TikTok is a U.S. company, meaning the subsidiary of ByteDance that operates in the U.S. It's not directly run by the Chinese parent company. And that it has First Amendment rights and that it should be able to use the algorithm that ByteDance has to promote this content throughout the U.S.
The Journal.
The TikTok Ban Goes to the Supreme Court
And that it said the government didn't seriously explore less restrictive ways to achieve its national security ends. And he suggested that, say, having disclosure about risks of using the app would be one solution.
The Journal.
The TikTok Ban Goes to the Supreme Court
They were skeptical. They seemed to look at the government's solution, that being divestiture, as being not particularly novel. Divesting assets is a very typical way that the government achieves certain goals. So I would say that he ran into some trouble in arguing that TikTok USA was really so different from ByteDance in Beijing. Yeah, he had a pretty tough row to hoe there.
The Journal.
The TikTok Ban Goes to the Supreme Court
Today was an exciting hearing at the Supreme Court. The courtroom was filled, but no, it was tense and it was interesting and it dealt with some very important issues.
The Journal.
The TikTok Ban Goes to the Supreme Court
Another question that the court really grappled with was whose speech and what is the speech that is at issue in this case? For example, there is not a restriction on what Americans are saying or can say on this platform. And what seems to be the speech is the confidential algorithm that ByteDance uses to serve up videos to TikTok users. users. And so what is that algorithm and how is it speech?
The Journal.
The TikTok Ban Goes to the Supreme Court
And the analogy that the TikTok side gave was, well, try to think of it as like, you know, several floors in a magazine or newspaper offices where you have a collection of brilliant editors who are choosing the content that the publication will have that is just so unique and so well edited and selected that people will want to use it.
The Journal.
The TikTok Ban Goes to the Supreme Court
And so that itself is a form of expression, a form of speech, and that is what is at issue here. And that if TikTok were severed from ByteDance, it could no longer use that confidential algorithm, and the nature of the app and the nature of what people can see will change.
The Journal.
The TikTok Ban Goes to the Supreme Court
And I guess my question is, how are those First Amendment rights really being implicated here? This statute says the foreign company has to divest. Whether or not that's feasible, however long it takes, TikTok still has the ability to use whatever algorithm it wants, doesn't it? No, Your Honor.
The Journal.
The TikTok Ban Goes to the Supreme Court
Well, what's at stake here is the future of TikTok, the viral social media app that 170 million Americans use each month. The government says that TikTok presents a national security threat to the United States if it remains in the control of China, a designated foreign adversary. But TikTok says, no, those threats are overblown.
The Journal.
The TikTok Ban Goes to the Supreme Court
Jeffrey Fisher had a somewhat easier way with the court because he was really representing people who are Americans, and there's no dispute that Americans have First Amendment rights, and suppressing their ability to say things or hear things does run into constitutional problems. The question, though, was were his clients really the ones whose speech was being affected?
The Journal.
The TikTok Ban Goes to the Supreme Court
And a number of justices said, well, you know, if this is ByteDance's speech through its algorithm— a foreign adversary doesn't have any First Amendment rights in the United States, the fact that there are some collateral consequences that some third parties, their interests are also harmed, well, that's just kind of the way it goes.
The Journal.
The TikTok Ban Goes to the Supreme Court
I mean, that happens with all kinds of legal decisions and divestitures and what have you when, you know, ownership changes. And so, you know, how much attention should the court have to pay to the impact on these third parties?
The Journal.
The TikTok Ban Goes to the Supreme Court
And a group of American users of the app also challenged the law, saying that their free speech rights are infringed if the app they love is taken away.
The Journal.
The TikTok Ban Goes to the Supreme Court
The lawyers for TikTok and the creators brought up significant First Amendment questions that really, I think, touched at this court's vigilant defense of free speech in most contexts and its great skepticism of government actions that appear to restrict speech. So those, I think, were effective and the court would not be cavalier in its approach to resolving them.
The Journal.
The TikTok Ban Goes to the Supreme Court
But they had a much, much harder time dealing with the data collection issue.
The Journal.
The TikTok Ban Goes to the Supreme Court
The justices pushed very hard on the free speech question, and they raised a number of precedents and practices from the past which have seen the Supreme Court refuse to endorse restrictions on what Americans can say or listen to, even when they were connected to foreign adversary governments.
The Journal.
The TikTok Ban Goes to the Supreme Court
So Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar had some trouble pushing that line of argument that this really was about ownership rather than content. But she was on stronger ground and got a much more receptive audience on the intelligence dossier angle. The idea that this app sitting on millions of cell phones was busily collecting information for Chinese intelligence that could be
The Journal.
The TikTok Ban Goes to the Supreme Court
exploited in years or decades in the future, that is something that the justices seem to believe was a very legitimate national security concern. And the question being, is this law sufficiently respectful of free speech rights to allow it to go into effect?