Thinking Citizen Blog — Wow! Unanimous Supreme Court Decision in Tik Tok Case!
Thinking Citizen Blog — Saturday is Justice, Freedom, Law, and Values Day
Today’s Topic — Wow! Unanimous Supreme Court Decision in Tik Tok Case!
In a unanimous but unsigned (that is “per curiam”) decision, the Supreme Court has upheld the law banning TikTok as of tomorrow, Sunday January 19th.
What will Trump do when he takes office on Monday? Was the Court right to defer to Congress and downplay the issue of First Amendment rights? What would your decision have been? Who cares? who should?
Do you use TikTok? Will you miss it if is banned? why? What was the best TikTok video you ever saw?
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
DOES “CULTURAL IMPACT” MATTER? WHO CARES OR SHOULD CARE ABOUT 170 MILLION USERS?
1. In general, consequences matter.
2. What weight should the “cultural” impact of a judicial decision have in the thinking of a Supreme Court judge?
3. What expertise does a Supreme Court justice have in such matters?
NB: Is this a time for deference?
“With the guillotine hovering over TikTok’s neck, users are bracing for a cultural void. For all the criticisms levied at the app, many say TikTok created a system that made them feel nurtured and uniquely empowered. Some users worry they could lose their home on the internet, one they fear other apps like Instagram and YouTube can’t or won’t replace.”
“No platform in recent memory has had as story or impact quite like TikTok’s. The app was at the center of ferocious political debates. It ruined many nights of sleep with its seductive and sometimes vaid doom scroll. TikTok increasingly sucked news, entertainment and social life into the vortex of its powerful but fickle algorithm. But it also fuelled thousands of small businesses — TikTok says more than seven million businesses use TikTok and that it helped to drive $15bn in revenue for these US businesses in 2023.”
“TikTok filled billions of idle hourse with entertaining, informative content. It offered opportunities for activists and artists at a moment of increasing opportunity. In just a few years, TikTok rewrote the playbook for social media companies and changed countless lives.”
“A third of US adults and the majority of teenagers are on TikTok, and globally, the app has been downloaded nearly five billion times. According to an analysis by Know Your Meme, more of the internet memes gathered by its encyclopedia came from TikTok, starting in 2022, than anywhere else. Without a doubt, TikTok is THE hub for online culture.”
CONCURRING OPINIONS: SOTOMAYOR AND GORSUCH
1. “Justice Sotomayor wrote in a concurring opinion that the Supreme Court should have given the First Amendment more consideration, but that she would have upheld the law anyway.”
2. “Justice Gorsuch wrote that he was pleased that the court had not relied on the government’s second justification: that divestment was required to address potential Chinese disinformation. “One man’s “cover content manipulation” is another’s “editorial discretion.” Journalists, publishers and speakers of all kinds routinely make less-than-transparent judgments about what stories to tell and how to tell them….”
3. “Speaking with and in favor of a foreign adversary is one thing. Allowing a foreign adversary to spy on Americans is another.”
NB: “The government had submitted classified information in the appeals court to buttress its arguments. The Supreme Court said its decision was based solely on the public record. Justice Gorsuch welcomed that, too. “Efforts to inject secret evidence into judicial proceedings present obvious constitutional concerns.” (Gorsuch)
WHAT COMES NEXT? WILL XIAOHONGSHU (“LITTLE RED BOOK”) BE BANNED TOO? SHOULD IT BE?
1. “If the platform becomes unavailable on Jan.19, TikTok will lose its users and creators in the United States. Many current and would-be users and creators — both domestically and abroad — will migrate to competing platforms, and many will never return even if the ban is later lifted.” (TikTok brief)
2. “Indeed, a rival platform, Xiaohongshu, was the most downloaded free app in Apple’s US app store on Tuesday. More than 300 million people, mostly in China, use the app, which many Americans call “Red Note.””
3. Trump “is exploring the possibility of an executive order that could allow TikTok to keep operating despite the pending ban. But the challenged law gives him limited room for maneuver, as it allows the president to suspend eh law for 90 days only if he certifies to Congress that there has been significant progress toward a sale documented int “relevant binding legal agreements.”
NB: “Mr. Trump has other alternatives. He could instruct the Justice Department not to enforce the law for now. He could urge Congress, now controlled by Republicans, to enact new legislation. Or he could try to persuade the owner, ByteDance, to comply with the law — by selling TikTok.”
What dies with TikTok? As a ban looms, Americans face a cultural void
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/us/politics/supreme-court-tiktok.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TikTok_v._Garland
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
For the last four years of posts organized by theme:
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
Four special attachments below:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
#4 Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned in the last week related to justice, freedom, the law or basic values.
Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to justice, freedom, the law, or basic values.
Or just some random justice-related fact that blew you away.
This is your chance to make someone’s day. Or to cement in your mind something that you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply about something dear to your heart.
