Senator Rand Paul blocked a TikTok ban in the Senate. The discussion argues that TikTok's data-gathering mirrors what domestic tech companies do, and warns that draft legislation could give the president sweeping power to ban companies from adversary countries, functioning as preemptive censorship.
Senator Rand Paul.
So we still have a tick tock. Well, the ban has not gone forward in the Senate because Senator Rand Paul, out of all people, stopped it.
Every accusation of data gathering that's been attributed to tick tock could also be attributed to domestic big tech companies. In fact, one of the bills they're looking at doing is is broad enough that the president will be given the power to designate whatever country he sees fit to be an adversary and whatever company underneath that definition. It would basically be a limitless authority for the president to ban speech before banning Tik Tok. These censors might want to discover that China already bans Tik Tok. We really want to emulate Chinese speech bans. Aren't we the ones that say it's wrong for China to ban speech? So we're going to be just like China and ban speech?
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