The US government wants to break links between Tiktok and the Chinese government, by threatening to ban the application from use in the US. From what I can divine, the concern is the sharing of private user information with the Chinese government, and that government using the service’s recommendation engine to point users at given postings (a sort of automated editorial function).

if Tiktok is a publisher, isn’t this tantamount to a First Amendment violation? otoh: perhaps Tiktok is not a publisher, in the same way that other tech companies that act as outlets for user postings are not under the Section 230 rule that’s attracted some discussion recently.

If the issue is privacy, don’t we get to prosecute the company under existing criminal law for capture and inappropriate use of user information, just like any company that abuses user privacy? If the issue is selectively pushing users to state-sponsored media, isn’t this something that any US-government publisher like Radio Free Europe does?

It sounds like the government is fine with abuse of user privacy or manipulation of the recommendation engine, but not if the Chinese government are doing it.