this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2025
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It matters whether the government can do things like this at all, because if they can do it to TikTok, they can do it to anyone and anything else. TikTok may or may not be a good platform, that doesn't matter at all.
It's actually in the legislation. The executive branch can literally just declare your corporation to be social media that's controlled by a foreign adversary. And while there are some limits on who can be a social media corporation there are no limits on forcing the sale. They could literally drop a binder with 400 fully redacted pages as "evidence". (That's pages where it's just blacked out text, nothing visible)
And just like that your Lemmy instance has to be sold or shut down. Your video game group forum. But even more, the independent ones like discord are extremely vulnerable. Discord is partially owned by a man born in Kharkiv Ukraine. All they have to do is assert that he has improper Russian connections and Discord is on the selling block for Meta, X, and Alphabet to fight over. It doesn't matter if it's not true.
They have demonstrated over the past year that they aren't required to show evidence. It's been a refrain of "trust me" from the executive and legislative branch. And public reporting hasn't turned up anything supporting the accusations of Chinese government interference.