Still think it's a baited headline given their stated intention to go to court to fight the "unconstitutional ruling". I'm not so sure the constitution gives foreign companies many legal rights so in that regard they'd perhaps be more protected if they were an American company. Whoops.

TikTok's 80% of investors who aren't ByteDance won't pass up billions of dollars in cash either if the alternative is that they forever get zero from the American market.

They've been investing heavily in the US market for the last couple years too, so I doubt they are in the black.

They've just all around played politics the American way very poorly. I can't really comment on whether that's good or bad but I'm blown away this Shou Chew CEO dude still has a job after this came down.

[–] crispyflagstones@sh.itjust.works -1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

They're probably going to find themselves having to explain what it means that a social media platform is itself engaged in speech, instead of functioning as a platform for others to speak. TikTok users, whose voices are allegedly curtailed by the ban, aren't exactly prevented from going to another platform.

If they say that it's Tiktok's speech that's curtailed, they're going to have to explain carefully how they're not a foreign influence operation.

The language of the first amendment is pretty stark, but the courts have always understood it has various limits.

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