(2024-03-12) Eff Congress Should Give Up On Unconstitutional Tiktok Bans

EFF: Congress Should Give Up on Unconstitutional TikTok Bans. The only solution to this pervasive ecosystem is prohibiting the collection of our data in the first place.

The bill’s sponsors have argued that the amount of private data available to and collected by the companies behind these applications — and in theory, shared with a foreign government — makes them a national security threat. But like the RESTRICT Act, this bill won’t stop this data sharing, and will instead reduce our rights online. User data will still be collected by numerous platforms—possibly even TikTok after a forced sale—and it will still be sold to data brokers who can then sell it elsewhere, just as they do now.

The only solution to this pervasive ecosystem is prohibiting the collection of our data in the first place.

That’s why EFF supports such consumer data privacy legislation. (2023-11-14 EffPrivacyFirstABetterWayToAddressOnlineHarms)

Congress has also argued that this bill is necessary to tackle the anti-American propaganda that young people are seeing due to TikTok’s algorithm. Both this justification and the national security justification raise serious First Amendment concerns

We shouldn’t waste time arguing over a law that will get thrown out for silencing the speech of millions of Americans. Instead, Congress should solve the real problem of out-of-control privacy invasions by enacting comprehensive consumer data privacy legislation.