.... if the owner of a platform prevents you from using it, that isn't an infringement of your free speech.

If, however, the government prevents the owner and you from using or offering the platform, it is an infringement of both your freedom AND the platform owner's freedom of speech.

The government has no business interfering with either the platform or its users.

The government has every right to impose regulations on businesses.

I like and support regulations; the government has sanctioned a lot of businesses for for failure to meet regulatory standards.

* Freedom of Speech
* Freedom of the Press
* Right of Assembly

Speech platform. I had speech before Tik Tok. I'll have freedom of speech after Tik Tok.

I had freedom of the press beforeTik Tok. I'll have freedom of the press after Tik Tok.

I don't tend to assemble on apps on my phone, but I had freedom to assemble beforeTik Tok. I'll have freedom to assemble after Tik Tok.


You don't get to assemble in my living room; I am not denying your right of assembly denying you access to it. Likewise, you don't get to assemble in the Skiff Room at the U.S. Capitol. Them denying you it's use is not an infringement on your first amendment rights.

No one is stifling anyone's speech.

.... Whether you can or can't or have exercised your freedom of speech elsewhere has no bearing on whether the government can limit it otherwise. If I want to use TikTok rather than Facebook that's my decision, not the government's. If I want to speak out on DU rather than FreeRepublic, that's up to me, not the government. Whether or not I could have or did tweet before bluesky, if I want to bluesky, that is not the government's decision - it is mine.

If you want folks to assemble in your living room, the government has no right to prevent it. If TikTok, or, say, DU, want folks to assemble on their platform, the government has no right to prevent it.

If the government establishes a forum for public speech and assembly, for instance, a pavilion in a public park, or an auditorium in a public school, they cannot deny its use based on the content of the speech or the reason for the assembly. A SCIF is not established as a forum for speech, so the example is not relevant.

In my opinion, what you are advocating is wrong, is dangerous, and would enable authoritarian oligarchs in their quest for power over the people.

Freedom of Speech is simply not one of them, though. Freedom of speech guarantees the right to say what you want without being arrested for it.

... not simply that. The constitution says that the government cannot take action "abridging the freedom of speech". Obviously there are more ways to abridge the freedom of speech than being arrested. One such way would be to confiscate the means one has to freely exercise speech. If we smash your printing press, we haven't arrested you. Or, say, conducting an IRS audit because the we don't like what you are saying about us.

And, of course, abridging the freedom of one platform is, in effect, abridging the freedom of all platforms. Because it says "you could be next".

The constitution very clearly supports a robust and full protection for freedom of speech.

The owners of TikTok have no interest in complying with our privacy laws, or in protecting American users from privacy breaches.

..... You name it. How is TikToc behaving differently from any of the others?

Which privacy laws, specifically, are they violating? And if there is evidence to show that they are, why not prosecute and fine them for that?

The reason is, they are complying with our privacy laws. There isn't anything that they have done that could be proven in a court of law. This is just yet another moral panic that is directed at yet more erosion of our liberal democratic values.

I am at at loss as to why DUers, in particular, would want to put the power to harass people for free speech in the hands of repubs and MAGAs.