“Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase
a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
– Benjamin Franklin –
The Bottom Line
1787 believes the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the ban on TikTok is not only inconsistent but dangerous because now the decision can be used as a legal basis for censoring all kinds of speech, simply by citing “national security” concerns.
Suppressing speech is not an acceptable means of countering misinformation. Although concerns about fake news and distorted information are legitimate, the best way to fight propaganda is by countering it with truth, not censorship. Please believe us when we say this is not a thread we should pull on.
Instead of Whack-a-Mole, Congress should pass comprehensive data privacy regulations. See 1787’s Plan of Action for here.
The TikTok ban feels like something that would only happen in repressive regimes. The United States is at our best when we show the world that we are an open, democratic country that cherishes – and would never put at risk – our constitutional rights.
In April 2024, Congress passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which required TikTok, a social media platform, to stop operations in the U.S. unless the Chinese company behind the video-sharing app, ByteDance, sold it to a new owner by January 19, 2025.
The fear seemed to be that, because TikTok was owned by the Chinese, the sensitive data belonging to its users was at risk of being abused or misused (even though they can cite no specific evidence, U.S. officials have long believed that Chinese companies must turn over data to the Chinese Communist Party on demand). Members of Congress also openly expressed that at least part of their intention was to protect Americans from what a House committee report called “misinformation,” “propaganda” and “divisive narratives.”
One month later, TikTok sued the U.S. government, claiming the potential ban was an “unprecedented violation” of the First Amendment: “For the first time in history, Congress has enacted a law that subjects a single, named speech platform to a permanent, nationwide ban, and bars every American from participating in a unique online community with more than one billion people worldwide.”
In December 2024, the D.C. Circuit Court upheld the law, concluding that “the government had offered persuasive evidence demonstrating that the Act is narrowly tailored to protect national security” – accepting the government’s argument that TikTok could compromise U.S. national security by collecting users’ “precise locations, viewing habits, and private messages,” and that the government was acting “solely to protect” First Amendment rights “from a foreign adversary nation.”
This ruling effectively agreed with the premise that the United States government has the right to protect Americans from foreign manipulation by restricting their access to foreign-controlled media, even if that means that their speech is also restricted. In other words, far from being censorship, Congress (in its mind) was doing the American public a favor by banning TikTok and was actually “vindicating the values that undergird the First Amendment” by protecting the public from possible Chinese-government influence – ensuring that the information Americans absorb will be less distorted and manipulated.
On January 17, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the TikTok ban and less than two days later, over 170 million American TikTok users lost access to it. Twelve hours after that, then President-elect Donald Trump said he would issue an Executive Order after his inauguration the following day to delay enforcement of the Supreme Court’s verdict. Within hours, TikTok’s app was back in action in the United States. President Trump signed the Executive Order after his inauguration.
1787 believes the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the TikTok ban is not only inconsistent but dangerous because now its decision can be used as a legal basis for censoring all kinds of speech, simply by citing national security concerns.