from the gosh-did-the-alarm-go-off-already? dept

If you happen to’re the President of the US and also you don’t like a legislation, you’ll be able to apparently simply… determine to not implement it for some time? I imply, it’s not alleged to work that method, however for the previous 74 days, that’s precisely what’s occurred with the TikTok ban. Not simply ignoring it quietly — Trump has explicitly declared we’re ignoring it. And at this time, he introduced we’ll preserve ignoring it for another 75 days.

The historical past right here is instructive. First, Trump needed to ban TikTok as a result of teenagers had been imply to him on it. Then Biden needed to ban it as a result of… China unhealthy? Then Congress really handed a ban as a result of youngsters had been utilizing TikTok to precise opinions about Gaza. All through all of this, the ban remained each silly and unconstitutional (sure, regardless that the Supreme Court disagrees).

In some way, this assortment of horrible causes resulted in an precise legislation, scheduled to take impact the day earlier than the brand new administration began. However then Trump, whose stance conveniently shifted after a serious TikTok investor donated to his marketing campaign, merely declared “let’s ignore the legislation for 75 days” whereas floating obscure concepts about “the US” shopping for TikTok.

For 75 days, we’ve largely heard whispers about potential patrons expressing interest. There was some discuss how a deal was “imminent,” although most of the leaked particulars sound suspiciously acquainted — China would retain management of the algorithm, information can be hosted on Oracle servers, with Oracle auditing for security. If this appears like déjà vu, it ought to: this already happened again in 2022. We wrote about it on the time, however apparently that was in a parallel universe, as a result of everybody has been appearing prefer it didn’t occur.

Anyway, apparently that “imminent” deal wasn’t really so imminent. As a result of what’s time, actually?

Once more, let’s be clear, as a result of that is past ridiculous. The President has no authority to only declare “we’re ignoring this legislation for 75 days except you do the factor I would like.” However, that appears to be what a bunch of individuals are simply going with. Astounding.

And, keep in mind, this comes after years of politicians and the media insisting loudly and repeatedly that TikTok was “digital fentanyl” and essentially the most harmful factor on the planet. The explanations would change primarily based on who you had been speaking to, however both it was the Chinese language Communist Celebration spying on all of your telephones (not how this works) or they had been selling pro-China propaganda (whilst US views in the direction of China are in any respect time lows) or they had been selling division (looks like that was cable information really) or they had been selling terrorists (I dunno, man, none of this is smart).

The basic drawback isn’t simply that that is Calvinball policymaking — although it completely is that. It’s that we’ve stumbled right into a world the place federal legal guidelines have expiration dates decided by presidential temper swings. And whereas everybody’s centered on whether or not TikTok will promote or survive (that’s, in the event that they’re not centered on their retirement financial savings being drained by the entire “destroying the economy through not understanding trade deficits” factor), they’re lacking the larger story right here: we’re operating an experiment to see if legal guidelines nonetheless matter when the president decides they don’t. Early outcomes aren’t encouraging.

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Corporations: bytedance, oracle, tiktok


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