The TikTok Ban Is a Blueprint for More Social Media Censorship
TikTok is in trouble: In April, President Joe Biden signed bipartisan legislation that forces ByteDance, the popular social media app’s Chinese parent company, to sell its majority stake to a U.S.-based firm. If it fails to do this, the app will be banned in the United States.
Various dubious arguments have been deployed against TikTok, but Congress’ stated prime motive to force its divestiture is that the app’s Chinese owners are beholden to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and thus having their tech on so many Americans’ phones is a dire national security risk. The CCP is an authoritarian menace, and there is some evidence the Chinese government pressures TikTok to censor content about Tiananmen Square and the religious sect Falun Gong, and criticism of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Of course, the U.S. government has also pressured American tech companies to censor content on social media. Thanks to the Twitter Files, the Facebook Files, and other independent investigations, we know that multiple federal agencies instructed social media platforms to take down content relating to Hunter Biden, COVID-19, and other subjects. When 
President Biden decided the companies had been insufficiently deferential to his pandemic-related diktats, he accused them of killing people and threatened to take action against them.
If Congress really wanted to do something about government censorship of content on social media, legislators could rein in the feds. Instead, they are singul
Article from Reason.com
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