My dog is a dog. He doesn't see anything wrong with pooping on the floor, so he won't be fazed if I do it too: threatening to poop on my own floor is not going to get him to stop doing it. If I follow through with my threat, not only will I be doubling up on the problem of poop on the floor, I'll also be behaving in a way that is far more improper and unacceptable for a me than it is for my dog, because we do not hold human beings to the same standards of behavior and hygiene that we expect from dogs.
China is an authoritarian dictatorship. Their government does not see anything wrong with violating the rights of their citizens, so they won't be fazed if we do it too: threatening to restrict access to social media in the US is not going to get them to stop doing it in China. If we follow through with our threat, not only will we be doubling up on the problem of illegitimate political restriction on public discourse, we'll also be behaving in a way that is far more improper and unacceptable for the US than it is for China, because we do not hold constitutional republics to the same standards of rule of law and respect for individual rights that we expect from authoritarian regimes.
I think you're perpetuating a false equivalence, though.
The Chinese government kicks out foreign social media because they want to censor a laundry list of topics and have near-direct control over discourse.
If we assume poor intent, the US wants to kick out TikTok in order to prop up the market share of US/Western-owned social media companies.
But if we assume better intent, the US wants to kick out TikTok in order to deny the Chinese government the ability to run unfettered political/social influence campaigns on US citizens. (Instead they'll have to play cat-and-mouse games on Western-owned platforms.)
Even if both intentions are there, I think this is much better justification than what the Chinese government does.
You're talking about intent, but I'm not sure I understand the relevance of intentions here. We're evaluating behavior, which remains the same irrespective of what intentions motivated it. I think it goes without saying that the Chinese government and the US government will invoke quite different rationalizations to explain their behavior, but I'm not sure that any rationalizations are sufficient to justify behavior that is bad in itself.
Or, more simply: no, intent does not matter -- you are responsible for the damage that proceeds from your purposeful actions regardless of what ideas were in your head at the time. Ends are not sufficient to justify means.
And yet you conveniently leave out the part where clearly the Chinese government desires that TikTok continue to operate in the US (under their control). Denying someone something they want is nearly the definition of punishment.
The analogy only works if the US response to banning US social media was to do something similar like banning Russian social media that had no impact on China.
As for whether the ban is legitimate or not, The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that it is. We’ve banned foreign governments from owning television stations for decades.
So, by your way of thinking, if there was a chance that pooping on the floor myself might discourage my dog's bad behavior, I should go right ahead?
It's not quite correct to say that the Supreme Court ruled that the ban is legitimate. It narrowly ruled that the immediate first amendment challenge wasn't sufficient to invalidate the law under intermediate scrutiny. The only thing they were evaluating was whether the impact of the ban was biased toward any particular content, which it isn't.
They didn't rule on the overall constitutionality of the act, whether its first section amounts to a bill of attainder, whether the forced divestiture would amount to a fifth amendment taking, whether it violated the broader freedom of the press under the first amendment, or anything else. Those questions might well be evaluated later.
>whether its first section amounts to a bill of attainder, whether the forced divestiture would amount to a fifth amendment taking, whether it violated the broader freedom of the press under the first amendment
The petitioners made those challenges as well. 3 lower courts denied them, and SCOTUS chose not to overturns the law based on those challenges, thus upholding the constitutionality of the law.
Based on your the argument, because SCOTUS didn't rule on the constitutionality of the ban with respect to the 2nd amendment, they didn't actually declare that it was legitimate.
So yes technically you are correct, but SCOTUS certainly choose not to declare the law illegitimate, which is the most legitimating thing they are ever going to do.
>So, by your way of thinking, if there was a chance that pooping on the floor myself might discourage my dog's bad behavior, I should go right ahead?
It's just a bad analogy. Come up with a better one.
> So, by your way of thinking, if there was a chance that pooping on the floor myself might discourage my dog's bad behavior, I should go right ahead?
No, I think the way of thinking is that it's irrelevant whether or not China (the dog) does it. If you want to deny the Chinese government the ability to use a Chinese-owned social media platform in a certain way, then you ban it. This isn't a tit-for-tat situation at all; the US is doing something it believes is beneficial for itself; it's not simply pooping on the floor which would serve no benefit.
The overall point is that your analogy doesn't fit the current circumstances, so stop using it to argue against the TikTok ban.
The role of the US government isn't do things it believes are beneficial for itself. It's to administer the law consistently with the constitution. When it behaves in arbitrary way and implicates the rights of its own people in order to pursue geopolitical ambitions on the global stage, it is metaphorically pooping on the floor.
The constitution explicitly gives the government the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations. Nothing about this is arbitrary, it is merely the government catching up with new technology and bringing regulation of that technology closer in line with regulation of existing technology. Foreign governments or companies controlled by foreign governments have been prohibited from holding radio licenses since 1934.
China is an authoritarian dictatorship. Their government does not see anything wrong with violating the rights of their citizens, so they won't be fazed if we do it too: threatening to restrict access to social media in the US is not going to get them to stop doing it in China. If we follow through with our threat, not only will we be doubling up on the problem of illegitimate political restriction on public discourse, we'll also be behaving in a way that is far more improper and unacceptable for the US than it is for China, because we do not hold constitutional republics to the same standards of rule of law and respect for individual rights that we expect from authoritarian regimes.