Imagine, for example, an extremely convincing book is authored that convinces anyone that reads it that the United States government should disolve itself and its citizens should pledge fealty to China.
Quite credibly, the book could be described a national security threat to the US.
However, I would still argue that the book should not be banned, and that any country that wants to honestly describe itself as "free" could not ban the book.
Being a free country means giving citizens the right to engage with ideas that might not be aligned w/ the interests of its government.
I don't think a social network is like a book. It's more like the postal system. TikTok is not saying anything themselves. They are transmitting communications that other people are saying to each other (in the form of short videos).
If users had to address their videos to each other and they were delivered FIFO without priority, I would agree that they would be neutral.
But TikTok (and all social networks) are using algorithms to promote some content and demote others. This algorithm is an extremely powerful voice.
In 2016-2018, everyone was concerned about foreign countries influencing the election by running bots/ads on Facebook. Following the election, there were many policies put into place to try to prevent this bad behavior [1]. Fast forward to 2020 and there is documented proof of a foreign country controlling a social media algorithm and we aren't concerned?
I think the it's a bit different to compare the medium of a book. It's a one directional medium with ideas. In America, we treasure speech and don't fear ideas.
But in a two directional medium, that allows an entity to soak up information .. well that's already a problem in the US. Europe saw it as so much of an issue they implemented GDPR (for better or worse) and California has similar legislation.
Information is way different, and we've already seen cases where TikTok has been caught reading clipboards (could just be to scan for tiktok links, but it could have also been harvesting additional data).
The US does not allow certain things to be imported/exported to other nations. We've seen that for decades with Cuba and various other embargo. If you get a book from an embargoed country, it's not illegal to have to distribute it (granted it doesn't contain illegal/obscene content). The Federal government can legislate foreign commerce.
Imagine, for example, an extremely convincing book is authored that convinces anyone that reads it that the United States government should disolve itself and its citizens should pledge fealty to China.
Quite credibly, the book could be described a national security threat to the US.
However, I would still argue that the book should not be banned, and that any country that wants to honestly describe itself as "free" could not ban the book.
Being a free country means giving citizens the right to engage with ideas that might not be aligned w/ the interests of its government.