With the TikTok ban law passing in the US, a congressional committee has threatened organizations helping TikTok with “investigations”.
Tell me if this sounds like a democratic system: “You either agree with the government or the government punishes you for disagreeing with it.” It sounds like something out of a third world dictatorship type country, but this sort of sentiment has been increasingly the norm in democratic countries.
In 2022, for instance, notorious Liberal MP, Chris Bittle, openly threatened to open up obviously politically motivated “investigations” for anyone daring to criticize Bill C-11. The comments were shocking and worthy of condemnation from all sides. What’s more, at the time, it represented a whole new low for the Canadian government. The optimistic part of me had hoped that this was just an outburst from an irresponsible MP and not the start of a trend where anyone who disagrees with the government has to fear political retaliation here in North America.
You can imagine my profound disappointment when I heard about a US congressional committee making similar threats for anyone daring to offer any kind of help for TikTok in its constitutional fight to not get banned in the US. TechDirt made note of these disturbing developments where the threats were not only being made, but is actually succeeding in intimidating organizations as well:
We already highlighted how a bunch of members of Congress both signed an amicus brief in the Murthy case saying that governments should never, ever, interfere with speech and also voted to ban TikTok. But, would those same members of Congress who are so worried about “jawboning” by government officials to suppress speech also then use the power of Congress to silence voices trying to defend TikTok?
Yeah, you know where this is going.
NetChoice has been the main trade group that has been defending against all the terrible laws being thrust upon the internet over the last few years. Often people dismiss NetChoice as “big tech” or “the tech industry,” but in my experience they’ve been solidly standing up for good and important internet speech policies. NetChoice has been structured to be independent of its members (i.e., they get to decide what cases they take on, not their members, which sometimes means their members dislike the causes and cases NetChoice takes on).
The report highlighted NetChoice’s roster of companies it represented. It showed that, recently, TikTok was removed from the roster following the governments threats. The report highlights a Politico report as well and offers these highlights:
Why? Well, because members of Congress threatened to investigate NetChoice if it didn’t drop TikTok from its roster. Politico had some of this story last night, claiming that there was pressure from Congress to drop TikTok:
“The Select Committee’s brazen efforts to intimidate private organizations for associating with a company with 170 million American users is a clear abuse of power that smacks of McCarthyism,” TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek said in a statement, referring to the House China panel. “It’s a sad day when Members of Congress single out individual companies without evidence while trampling on constitutional rights and the democratic process,” Haurek added. A spokesperson for NetChoice didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The two people told Daniel that NetChoice faced pressure from the office of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) to dump TikTok. A third person said that while no threat was made, NetChoice was told that the Select Committee on China would be investigating groups associated with TikTok and decided to sever ties as a result.
I’ve heard that the claim there was “no threat” is not accurate. As the rest of that paragraph makes clear, there was very much an implied threat that Congress would investigate organizations working with TikTok to defend its rights. I’m also hearing that others, like PR agencies and lobbying organizations that work with TikTok, are now facing similar threats from Congress.
Indeed, despite the “denial” of any threat, Politico gets the “House Select Committee on the CCP” to admit that it will launch an investigation into any organization that helps TikTok defend its rights:
“Significant bipartisan majorities in both the House and the Senate deemed TikTok a grave national security threat and the President signed a bill into law requiring them to divest from the CCP,” a Scalise spokesperson told PI. “It should not come as a surprise to those representing TikTok that as long as TikTok remains connected to the CCP, Congress will continue its rigorous oversight efforts to safeguard Americans from foreign threats.”
Guys, that’s not “rigorous oversight” or “safeguarding Americans.” That’s using the threats of bogus costly investigations to force companies to stop working with TikTok and helping it defend its rights under the Constitution. That seems to be a hell of a lot more like “jawboning” and a much bigger First Amendment problem than the Biden administration complaining publicly that they didn’t like how Facebook was handling COVID misinformation.
It’s one thing to disagree with someone. It’s quite another for a government to make active efforts to silence anyone who opposes their efforts. It’s worth the reminder that we are talking about perfectly legal speech here. You may not like TikTok for whatever reason (racism related or otherwise) and you are totally free to ignore TikTok’s speech, but to step over that and say that anyone who disagrees with your political opinion gets punished by the government is quite a different matter entirely. That alone is way over the line. To then, over top of that, threaten any organization who sympathizes with the cause is absolutely worthy of condemnation.
After all, the US government could have simply looked at the petition, then when called on by the courts to submit documents or testify, simply respond with, “OK, see you in court”. I think that would’ve been perfectly reasonable. This over the top response to threaten organizations who would dare to assist TikTok in their constitutional battle to support free speech is so far over the top and really needs to stop. There is nothing illegal about saying that TikTok has the right to freedom of expression in the US. Yet, that appears to be increasingly a criminal offence. I struggle to find the words to describe how anti-democratic this all is.
What’s more is if the government can pull these ridiculous stunts on TikTok, what is stopping the government from doing the same thing to any other organization it deems a “security threat” or a “threat to national security”? To be clear, there has yet to be any concrete evidence that says that TikTok is a national security threat in the first place. US intelligence organizations had their shot to show this evidence and they ultimately came up empty handed.
I’m just going to go ahead and say it: I don’t like where any of this is going at all. Are we really heading down the road where having the wrong political opinion is an offence punishable by the government these days? That is just messed up for anyone who values a democratic society.
NetChoice is a far right think-tank aligned with the Federalist Society. They oppose consumer protections such as real antitrust reform, and their articles on their sites are often screeds against the Biden Administration doing its job to protect consumers. Seriously, go read the pro-corporate stuff NetChoice posts on their site.
They aren’t an organization worth defending.