If I had to identify one paragraph as the key to the majority opinion in TikTok v. Garland, I think it would be this:
In this case, a foreign government threatens to distort free speech on an important medium of communication. Using its hybrid commercial strategy, the PRC has positioned itself to manipulate public discourse on TikTok in order to serve its own ends. The PRC’s ability to do so is at odds with free speech fundamentals. Indeed, the First Amendment precludes a domestic government from exercising comparable control over a social media company in the United States. See NetChoice v. Moody (2024) (explaining that a state government “may not interfere with private actors’ speech” because the First Amendment prevents “the government from tilting public debate in a preferred direction”). Here the Congress, as the Executive proposed, acted to end the PRC’s ability to control TikTok. Understood in that way, the Act actually vindicates the values that undergird the First Amendment.
Agree or disagree with it, but it seems to me the heart of the argument.
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