The international marketplace of ideas may pose some risk of allowing the American system of government to fufill its potential as a representative democracy, but the officials in Washington face no hazard greater than that. :-)

"The international marketplace of ideas "

Market place implies transparent exchange of ideas. But if the TikTok algorithm is political biased, it is not a honest exchange of ideas anymore. (same goes for X's or FB, or whatever). But personally I am cool with not using those services.

A newspaper's editorial columns aren't the marketplace of ideas, the sum of all newspapers is. If TikTok were as editorially controlled as a newspaper, it would still represent one venue in the marketplace.

In essence, the government wants to ban foreign news sources. TikTok may have been less editorialized than Al Jazeera, but it had wider reach.

For some people TikTok contains all the newspapers.

For others, there is only one newspaper they think is worth reading.

Indeed. But newspapers do not work by hooking up their audience via individually targeted algorithms that make their users addictive.

They do, actually. An editor's job is to pick stories, oftentimes from syndicated networks, which maximize engagement

"individually targeted algorithms"?

With data ranging back years, sometimes even birth of the individuals?

I don't think so.

Newspaper editor edit one newspaper for everyone.

In the days of local papers, editors would learn the names of everybody in town, and would try to print things about them so people would buy the papers.

I am aware. Still, do you think this is the same as TikTok's automated algorithm?

What "social media" companies are doing with "automated algorithms" are no worse than the massive domestic newspaper, radio, television, and entertainment company consolidation that has been permitted over the past several decades.

If FedGov is going to be fixing problems with the domestic news and entertainment industry, they should start by reversing that consolidation of control.

This argument is weak. Editorials are marked as such. The board makeup is known. Tiktok is a platform wherein its impossible to know which content is organically popular and what is being artificially weighted, we have no insight into who is doing the weighting, and which pieces of content are controlled by state media.

In short, you have no idea whether it is more or less editorialized than other news outlets, and that's the central issue here.

Even if TikTok were 100% editorialized - like the most biased newspapers - it would be an affront to the principles of a free society to ban it for failing to encourage people to support the general line. That's on top of the fact that it hasn't even been demonstrated to be editorialized.

I do agree in general.

It is a sign of weakness for a free society.

Ideally in my oppinion, intelligence services would proof the manipulation - and show it to the public. Who then decide on their own to be sceptical of TikTok content.

I am against a direct government intervention.

But it is still a very different situation in terms of impact compared to a single local newspaper.

> Ideally in my oppinion, intelligence services would proof the manipulation - and show it to the public.

Based on the fact that FedGov is presenting evidence to the court under seal, it seems likely that intelligence services have proof (or -more likely- "proof") of manipulation, but are only showing it to the judge.

Does the likely fact that the US government is refusing to provide for public inspection and discussion what they're using as evidence of alleged national-security-relevant Chinese interference in domestic affairs make you more comfortable with the veracity of their claims that the Chinese government not only has substantial control over TikTok, but that that control is so harmful to national security that it must be unilaterally terminated?

Why or why not?