TikTok's Free Speech Lawsuit Has a Logic Problem
Unfortunately for the ByteDance-owned social media app, there’s no law against silly laws.
Shou Zi Chew, chief executive officer of TikTok Inc.
Photographer: Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg
My great uncle, a brilliant scholar ultimately imprisoned during the McCarthy Era for his politics, first came to the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation because agents couldn’t find his printing press. In 1941, Uncle Alphaeus was printing flyers urging Negro citizens to register to vote. According to his FBI file, the Bureau wanted to figure out where the subversive literature was being produced so that they might shut down the “underground” printing operation.
This strange story comes to mind in the wake of the lawsuit filed by ByteDance, owner of TikTok, aimed at preventing enforcement of the unhappily titled Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. The Act says unless the Chinese parent company finds a US buyer for TikTok, the app will be banned from these shores. (Literally; the ban applies “within the land or maritime borders” of the United States.)