Comment by dns_snek
4 days ago
But this isn't about banning social media, it's about banning dissent.
Would you feel the same way if the US government banned all mainstream media organizations except the ones you ideologically oppose?
4 days ago
But this isn't about banning social media, it's about banning dissent.
Would you feel the same way if the US government banned all mainstream media organizations except the ones you ideologically oppose?
> it's about banning dissent
On the contrary, I think it is about banning a propaganda and social engineering vector that is under the thumb of an adversarial foreign government. That, for me, is enough of a reason to ban it and justify it under our constitution.
The fact that I am in favor of banning all social media should tell you that it is not ideological, but rather that I think social media is extremely addictive, and has huge negative externalities.
> I think it is about banning a propaganda
The problem of allowing government banning propaganda is it allows government to ban anything they label as propaganda. There is no law defining what's propaganda, so you just end up with the government being able to ban any information they don't like.
Imagine the government drums up for another illegal war like Iraq using fake evidence, and we ban all counter evidence as "foreign propaganda". Do you not see how dangerous that gets?
>That, for me, is enough of a reason to ban it and justify it under our constitution
The Supreme Court has explicitly ruled in the past foreign propaganda is protected speech under First Amendment.
You cannot strip American citizens' rights to receive foreign propaganda if they choose to do so.
You left a few words off in my first quote. I did not say anything about banning propaganda! I am talking about the system of dissemination, not its content.
> The fact that I am in favor of banning all social media should tell you that it is not ideological,
I'm not accusing you of being ideologically motivated, I just think that your (otherwise understandable) support for banning social media is inadvertently helping a bad actor in stifling freedom of speech.
Could China be using TikTok to spread propaganda in the US? Sure, but I haven't seen any evidence supporting this and if there was concrete proof I'd support the ban. Meanwhile the US government is labeling truthful discussions about Israel's genocide "antisemitic propaganda" and using them as motivation for the TikTok ban.
On one side we have vague communist boogeymen, on the other there's expressed desire to take control of unpleasant narratives. That tells me that they're really just trying to take away people's ability to discuss their dissenting ideas.