Dangerous Dancing?: TikTok, National Security, and the First Amendment

3:28PM Apr 12, 2024

Speakers:

Anupam Chander

[Participant]

Toni Gardner

Jenna Leventoff

Jennifer Huddleston

Ramya Krishnan

Alan Z. Rozenshtein

[Moderator]

Keywords:

ban

question

tick tock

speech

first amendment

government

concerns

bill

people

law

case

court

china

propaganda

jennifer

data

platforms

tic toc

app

chinese

recording in progress Apps ecosystem system that uses large landing, speaking possible that we ended up

moving over is right now here in a small little gallery. So I think that's probably best for everyone.

It would be a pleasant giant

and welcome to our zoom folks who are trickling in.

I think we're ready to get started. Awesome. Well welcome everyone to the Berkman Kline Center for Internet and Society and our

Well welcome everyone to the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and our Institute for Rebooting Social Media at Harvard University. My name is Toni Gardner and I direct operations for our institutes. And today I have the honor of welcoming you all and our focus on Zoom. RST and panelists and introducing our moderator and organizer for today's event Professor Omnicom candor onfarm Tandur is a visiting scholar with the Institute for rebooting social media and the Scott K Ginsburg Professor of Law and technology at Georgetown, a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School. He is the author of a number of books including a new book on data sovereignty just out from Oxford University Press. He has been a visiting law professor at Yale, Chicago and Stanford and is a member of the American Law Institute over to you. Thank you very much.

Honored to introduce the panel, and before I do that, I want to just kind of bring you up to speed on where we are with TikTok bans past and present. So in 2020, Donald Trump, famously and dramatically banned Tiktok but instead of Trump banning TikTok. by the following spring, it was TikTok that had banned Trump, removing various videos involved in showing his involvement in January 6. So part of the Chinese big tech, big tech company or Chinese origin big tech company, beat the President of the United States on this whole curve. It was the US courts that stepped in to protect his talk. And tiktoks users in particular, the courts concluded the president lacked statutory authority to ban this cross border speech out. There is still a couple spaces up here if anyone wants to come to the front. The ban the government's efforts to convince the courts that national security required the band to go into effect failed to convince two district judges including the Trump appointee, who concluded that they were conjectural and could possibly be met with other measures. But tic TOCs troubles are far from over. It began negotiating earnestly with Cepheus committees of the United States government that reviews foreign investments that presents possible national security concerns to talk to to negotiate with Cepheus offered to place all of this you use us user data inside servers held in the US and controlled and managed by Oracle, a company whose leaders have coincidentally supported Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Tic TOCs algorithm would be monitored and vetted closely by Oracle and others and the Board of Directors of the chip talk data security arm with the arm that held all the data and controlled that algorithm would be approved by the US government. A remarkable kind of landscape for for a speech app in the United States. Those efforts continued to this day and Cepheus hasn't yet ordered again a divested, divestment, sure or accepted tiktoks Texas plan to mitigate risks. Now we're Trump's been failed for lack of statutory authorization. A bill in Congress today will fix at least that deficit. That bill goes by Congressman Mike Gallagher and joined by Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthy would clearly directed bite dance to either sell Tik Tok as other us facing apps will face an effective ban in the United States. While that bill is concerned with both the use of tick tock for surveillance and propaganda. In conversations with the press, Congressman Gallagher has said that he's especially concerned with propaganda from the app. And in November of last year, Congressman Gallagher of Blaine Tiktok for pushing Chinese propaganda and radicalizing Gen Z on the app. An interesting interpretation of recent events. The bill was passed the US House is seemingly record time and with overwhelming margins is now before the US Senate for consideration. Well, but Bill's proponents say it's not a ban. It's only compelling a sale, that can't be sure that it won't lead to the shattering of the app in United States. This is because in 2020, China modified its export controls to add it to the technologies subject to export controls personalization of the algorithms that would make recommendations based on personal information, thereby kind of hinting that it would ban the sale of Tiktok should not arise in Bell.

Now,

Dance also made some prefer to shut down the US market this is not talked about rather than create a future competitor in a at a fire sale price. bytedance itself is has a tick tock app that operates across the world. It will not have to face a difficult situation. Not only having already bifurcated its interfaces now. Do it in but now vibrating Tik Tok. into multiple apps that that tried that with obviously, interoperability questions that would be potentially difficult. Here's coming to the rescue is Trump's former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. See Nicola is assembling a group to buy Tiktok and he has a solution for the Chinese government's veto. He proposes to buy Tik Tok without the algorithm. And so his proposal is to recreate an algorithm in the United States from the ground up. And so now that the Tiktok bill has passed the house and then also note that this is Congressman Gallagher's valedictory next week, he will resign from the US House to join Palantir defense contractor for the United States government that interestingly has, as its first one his first initial investments from the venture capital arm of the CIA, and I kid you not it he would not have expected that is the reality. So our panel considered what happens in the Tick Tock bill has passed since I moved to LA both tick tock and its users will sue arguing that the bill violates the First Amendment. And the bill interestingly, places original jurisdiction over challenges in a challenges to the bill which will will immediately happen in force in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. That is only possible appeal from that original court will be directly to the US Supreme Court. So this is very much an issue that could well be before the court is coming in the months to come. Before the US Supreme Court said so the TIC tock saga is kind of like is I wrote this, I realized it's kind of like a Hollywood drama. Its final scene may well lie at the US Supreme Court. And joining me today to explain the issue so what we're trying to do with this particular conversation is focused on what happens in those courts. Okay, as that particular question, what happens to the First Amendment challenge that will inevitably fire up be filed is tiktoks if the Tiktok bill goes through, so we have some leading experts from across the nation? Joining us here to explain these questions and to think through how the course will reason. This issue. First, to my immediate left is Jennifer Huddleston a fellow at yours to be this happens to be a very nice opportunity to to host Jennifer but I'm also hoping that we've been joined in helping support Jennifer because she'll be running the Boston Marathon. Federal feat, this past marathon or half marathon is possible. Okay? Boulder, enter high or average time is 8 million mile for just shocking to me. I can't do one. To her left is Rania Krishnan, senior staff attorney at the night person Institute and a lecturer in law at Columbia Law School. And finally, to my far left is Jenna Lebenslauf, a Senior Policy Counsel at the ACLU where she develops and advocates for policies relating to protecting free speech. And on screen joining us from Minnesota is it's a lot better in Minnesota, and senior editor at Fat lawfare. Professor Alan Rosen see Alan is a graduate of this very law school and a former fellow at Berkman. So, with that introduction, I wanted to I'm going to go around and ask them questions. And there will be time for questions from the audience. And there will even be time for questions from the Zoom audience. So I want to encourage you to think about your questions. And we're doing this very much for lawyers. And so this is, you know, we are going to focus on the questions that lawyers ask in such a conversation. So I'll begin with a threshold question and the threshold question that a court will ask is what is the standard of review? So in the Montana case, a district court apply intermediate states, finding the Tiktok band to be wanted, even under that standard. It said it needs to decide whether or not that was the appropriate level of scrutiny because it failed under scrutiny with our for sure I feel under six who's been and so I want to ask Jenna first, what is the appropriate standard of review, in this case?

Maybe appropriate standard is actually even more than strict scrutiny. This is a prior restraint. This is stopping the speech of 170 million Americans before they can say anything. And in so many cases that's worse than you know what we traditionally just the tariffs because it's not and that is you're up and then you're punished later. In this case, your view is never getting out there to begin with is the most hurt, excuse restricted thing that you can possibly do. And so and so can't learn is lifted. Prior strengths like this. Again, you're stopping speech before it starts. They say they're gonna presumptively fail. Additional analysis right? The government has to go so far above what it normally goes for. So they have to show that there's an immediate, they have to show that harm is extremely serious. And then not only doesn't need to be narrowly a narrowly tailored solution, but it pretty much needs to be necessary. It needs to be unnecessary solution, right? Like, is this the only thing that you can do to actually solve the problem? In this case? Nobody does that. This is not going to meet that analysis because I think the government has yet to put forth any public at it is that there is a real harm, but alone in immediate one, but even if we got to that point, right, like even if the government came out, I know I'm in Congress are talking about doing a public briefing many members of Congress and private briefings about what the potential harms are, and if you ask a lot of those members, they'll say, I haven't heard any data that I find particularly about in harm. This seems theoretical, but some numbers do seem convinced there is real harm. So even if that comes out, we're gonna fail here on these bands is being the least restrictive thing. What is this doing is shutting down the app, essentially. And there's really no way to do that, in an honest like that a straight speech restrictive in and of itself. And there's so many other things that we can do to target any of these times. We could pass up privacy though, right now. Like let's say the concern is that China is accessing our data right? Well, China can still access our data, even though tick tock is banned. They can get data from a data router, they can't hack into Facebook's system like every other app and web sites Alexa see and data is so we're not doing very much here to like, actually solve the problem. Okay,

so Alan, I'm gonna come to you. Janice says this is even more than strict scrutiny is it's obviously a prior restraint. But starting off with this speech, incredibly important speech platform, or something like 170 million people in the United States and EU before coming to the substitute of that, applying whatever the center of review is, what is that appropriate center of review from your perspective?

Sure. So to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure I feel like you can argue it many different ways and you know, it's a common problem in First Amendment jurisprudence is the sort of endless arguments about what the appropriate standard of review is. So let me say two things. So first, with respect to what the actual standard of review is, I think, again, you can make arguments sort of up and down the spectrum. So we just heard the argument for a prior restraint, and it's very plausible, on the other hand, and there are lots of potentially analogous cases where we wouldn't apply that kind of standard. So for example, an FCC denial of a license, right, I don't think you would apply necessarily a prior restraint. Standard, right, that would keep someone for example, out of the communications market. So again, I think it just depends exactly sort of how you characterize the issue and there's a lot of play in the doctrinal delivery. You could potentially characterize it as viewpoint based if your concern is that the Chinese Communist Party is pushing a particular viewpoint, then you might characterize this ban or this law that way and that would obviously be a high level of scrutiny. You could just characterize it as a content based law which is to say the content is Chinese propaganda. That's a way to characterize it, and that would be strict scrutiny. Or you could characterize it the way that the Montana Court did, as a more neutral, something analogous to time, place and manner, in which case you have intermediate scrutiny. And then of course, we haven't even talked about the national security implications. which I think week all of these fears of scrutiny, or at least how the courts analyze them. So I think this foundational question is very much open. But the second thing I want to say is and not to get sort of to legal realist five minutes into the conversation. I'm not sure that I'm not sure the the fight over the tiers of scrutiny here will ultimately matter in the long term. I think these sorts of distinctions are quite when lower courts are trying to say. well established body of First Amendment law. But I think there are two reasons why that's probably not the case here. First, although this isn't souI generous, or as I'm sure we'll talk about later on the conversation, there's a long history. And we can sort of debate the specific parameters that history of restrictions on foreign ownership of platforms. This sort of move is, I think, quite unusual. There's not a massive amount of case law here. In addition, as you pointed out on this litigation will start in the DC Circuit and then it will almost certainly I would imagine to be reviewed by the Supreme Court this is such an important issue. That is hard to imagine the Supreme Court, which I think to its credit in the last few years has shown a real willingness to engage with a whole host of Internet related platform issues that it's generally not in the past that we'll take on and once get to the Supreme Court. I don't think the tears of scrutiny play any role whatsoever. I think it screams policymakers who are going to be balancing the various equities here, as they see it. And so, you know, while again, I think the asking the tears of scrutiny question is is a good place to start. At the end of the day, I don't think that this is that that's going to be determinative of how the doctrine ends up playing out in this litigation.

I love the idea this people design policymakers balancing various interests as a as a judge this and it reminds me of Justice Kagan, formerly Dean Kagan say that they are hardly the nine most brilliant people about expert people about the Internet. So fascinating to imagine. Okay, so let's turn to one of these questions that has already been mentioned. Many of the defenders of Tiktok Bill argue that it doesn't actually impose. It simply requires bytedance to find new owners, ones without ties to a nation that has been identified as a foreign adversary. But this is a little about national security question. hours as such, of course, the bill would impose bed bytedance doesn't do this. Does it matter for the first one analysis? That bill isn't the immediate ban order but rather divest or if you don't invest, then you're Jennifer and the country first?

Yes, it does matter. In part because it's going to go back to the are they're less important it means to achieve but so so clearly a forced sale or domestic terror while very concerning for many reasons that I'm guessing we'll have some time to go into from a speech point of view, is a very restrictive means a full out ban would be a more restrictive, the question is What else exists on that? Spectrum before you get to something like it's for sale or divestiture, and I also think it matters how this for sale or divestiture must occur. Because we're talking not just about a small company that doesn't have many users. It's a small transaction or something like that. We're talking about a very large transaction, a very short period of time, but also have some clear some additional regulatory hurdles, not only because likely at the sides of the transaction, but because of what else is in the bill. It has to be proven that this satisfies that This alleviates concerns about the the foreign interest. So are there certain buyers that the government might potentially strike down there are all sorts of other components of how this divestiture must occur? That does not mean that it's as simple as sometimes advocates of this will make it out to be up like, tick tock they just go down to the on the corner and offer itself a complicated business transaction that there's only going to be certain people that can potentially participate in. Now, why this matters for a First Amendment analysis is a lot of us can sit here and think well, what else could be done? If we do say that the government has a national security interest? Is this the least restrictive means on speech or are there other steps that could be taken? We've seen some of these play out in courts at a state level as well with regards to for example, getting kicked out from government devices or government so the idea that if there is a national security concern, it shouldn't be on government devices. It shouldn't be on government networks that has generally withstood the challenge in the Texas courts. I know. And in many cases, we haven't seen as much challenge to that kind of thing. And that's much more narrowly characterised particular situation. On the other hand, you'd have something like the Trump executive order, that's a much more flat out band, but you also have you mentioned project Texas, that would be an example of something that would perhaps be less restrictive. We could think of something where Congress, for example, could mandate a warning label that says this app is known to have ties to China. Again, there are many First Amendment concerns with such a proposal, but it's probably less restrictive than a forced divestiture. We can think of other steps that could have been taken so I think it will matter when it comes to identifying if this is the least restrictive means to achieve Congress's Oh, which is not always clear what even that national security circuits.

The way that the privacy bills set up as those in Congress do actually have a disclosure requirement for data transfer to China. So this latest bill that is in Congress, like a bipartisan bill that was proposed last year, so there's an interesting alternative. That's before Congress right now, Ron, yeah, any thoughts on the pasture where this is a bill that says, at best? If you can't, if you can't do that, for some reason, then you're banned, as opposed to now right then how does that change or affect that analysis or justice?

So I'm gonna get a little bit realistic like Alan here. I'm not sure in practice how much distance there is between and the odor to divest or be banned and a flat out ban because we know that China would have to approve any deal. And it is on record that it will very likely certainly oppose any such deal. That's what its commerce spokesperson said when, last year. The Committee on Foreign investment in the United States if yes, when it's when it told to tick tock to divest will be banned. It's those who came out and said, well, actually we're going to have a problem with this and that's when they know that also that they would have to keep the export of by dances are really the algorithm that tick tock runs on. And so that's what that's why analysts have said that it's very, very unlikely that a, that a divestiture deal will be accomplished here. And so what we're staring down the barrel of is almost suddenly a ban. The other thing that I would mention, it's just a matter of sort of First Amendment doctrine, is it generally speaking, government is not meant to be able to do indirectly what it can't do, directly. And here, the government would be using the threat of the ban in order to accomplish a divestiture and anything that that should matter. For the purposes of the analysis. There is this threat of a band being held up a company in order to achieve the divestiture if I could just sort of respond though, to something that that Jennifer said that I related to that question, but and how we should look at so less restrictive alternatives. Like for example, the the many state laws we've seen that have imposed, a ban on state employees accessing tic toc on state owned or operated devices are a little bit self interested bias here because as one of the litigators who litigated that, that Texas case that case challenging the application of Texas's state employee ban to public university faculty engaged in teaching and research and so I just do want to highlight that, at least, you know, the application of those kinds of bands to the public university context, I think does raise serious First Amendment concerns. There are all faculty that are engaged in the study of tick tock, many of them focus on the very privacy and security risks that the states have said they care about and have offered as a reason that they have had passed this baton in the first place students interested in learning about one of the most popular communications platforms is also implicated. And so I would just want to sort of push back against the idea that those fans never raised First Amendment consent. I think they do.

If I can just clarify really quick I am not saying that they do not raise First Amendment concerns it is more of a when we're thinking about what are less restrictive means we've already seen some of those less restrictive means play out there certainly are First Amendment concerns and many of the things that I mentioned, for example of warning label or even some of the data localization requirements, there could be certain other concerns related to that, but I think it's important that when we see what a sizable ban would be, I think we both agree that that is a significantly more restrictive means than what we've seen play out so far.

Well, it doesn't matter how the bill is styled as a outlawed ban versus diabet, where the order coupled with a ban is that Asscher doesn't occur.

I think it does. I agree with both Jennifer and Remy here sort of simultaneously and so I'll try to explain why so I agree with Jennifer that it does matter. Right? It there's just a difference between saying this thing is banned versus this thing might be banned. But it might not also not be banned. If there's a divestment. The other hand I think Romeo's correct that based on everything we know, but the sort of geopolitics of this. If this law is passed, and the president you know, there then identifies Tiktok sort of under the law, this will likely lead to tiktoks ban. And I do think that defenders of the law have to be prepared for that and so I think you do have to accept that possibility. Nevertheless, though, I actually meant option is clever for another reason, which is that if China refuses to divest, were allowed by dance to divest. I think that actually then strengthens the national security case for the law itself because it shows how valuable the Chinese government perceives tiktoks role in the United States is now so at the end of the day, I think Romina is correct that, you know, if this is gonna be defended, it's gonna have to ultimately be defended as a ban. But I also think Jennifer's correct in that there's a lot of cleverness in adding the divestment option.

Great, thank you guys. I do think by the way, there is something that someone we haven't mentioned yet. Just add a little editorial commentary quickly. When Twitter asked Hans from from the shareholders and all that before to Ilan leadership, that made a big difference. And so Twitter's content changed. The divestiture order itself, should have we should think about it as having personal implications, even before we get to and beyond so it's not just a ban that you can't use this, but that it has to be run by someone else. That's a pretty substantial First Amendment. intrusion in my personal view, okay. Anyone else respond to that if you want to sorry, so I don't get the last word. Quick last word here.

Well, the only other thing I would point out about this is we keep talking about this in the context of tick tock and I think that's because tick tock is named in the bill that has this lesser advanced division and that you mentioned, but if you look at that, legislation, it's actually broader than just tic toc. So we have to think, not only what is this mean for this current debate, but what does this mean more generally, for apps that could be determined by the government to fall under this category and what is that mean more broadly? For the way we see not only government interaction in this market, but also government intervention into potential speech apps?

Just to kind of clarify what you were saying, which is what this bill says is that the President can unilaterally decide that if there is another app that is owned by a foreign adversary, the president can end it. There is no due process because it has to give notice to Congress and notice to the public. That is it. There. There is no fi when it's when the bill set talks about foreign controlled apps. It means an app that has ownership that are 20% or more that originates from a foreign country that is labeled an adversary. That doesn't mean that the that the government of that country owns part of that out, it means that they are Chinese citizens that might have plenty percent ownership of the app. And so that's the way so in other words, wide swath of companies that might actually come into the scope of being born controlled apps, and as soon as wins out that the President can unilaterally declare those apps to be a threat the United States. It's very limited challenges available to us very limited publication of what the rationale is very little scrutiny of what is the basis for that that thing and a few challenges that might be held for that designation.

Let me move on to a conversation between the congressman and PBS news. The Congressman says we would never have allowed CBS to be owned by the Soviet Union, when ICANN 60s Back to the radio act and the Communications Act, Alan already references in his remarks. We've had restrictions on foreign investment in broadcasting. How will this history of restraints and foreign investment affect the analysis on the military Do you first or

so I think it should affect it somewhat, but not too much.And what I mean by that is just because we've been doing something does not by itself, make it constitutional. There are lots of things there in American history that were done for a long time until the courts came in and said, That's not a constitutional thing to do. So I don't overstate the importance of the history here. On the other hand, I don't think it means nothing. You know, I think really good work has been done on this by Ganesh citta Rahman is law professor at Vanderbilt who had a wonderful paper on foreign control of platforms in the Stanford Law Review, quite recently. And he goes through this history in a lot of detail. And what's notable, I think, from that history is that US restrictions on foreign control of platforms are pervasive, not just in the communications industry, but also in banking and transportation. And then within the communications industry, they go back quite a long way more than 100 years back to sort of the original radioactive 1912 And then through the various communications revolutions of the 20th century radio, telegraph, telephone, and, and so on. Now, I think, you know, well, again, I don't want to overstate the importance of that history. I think it's important for at least two reasons or at least limpid this way. I think it strengthens the case for the for this law in ways. First, do think that the way the constitutional provisions are interpreted by the political branches is a important thing for courts to take into account, it is a kind of pulse. exists in a certain way with judicial precedent. And I think courts should be appropriately cautious, not overly scared about interpreting constitution in a way that will not only strike down law passed by the political branches, but with strike would have the effect of declaring potentially 100 years of I think we're not particularly controversial restrictions as unconstitutional. And so something for the courts to think about, you know, these are the consider judgments of the political branches for over 100 years. The second reason I think the history is important is because I do think it shows that restrictions on foreign control of ownership of communications infrastructure in the United States is compatible with a robust communications industry and robust public sphere in the United States. Now, I think you could respond to that by saying yes, but actually would have been a good thing would have been a better thing. If had the Soviet Union wanted to buy CDs in the 1960s or 70s. We would have allowed because that would mean a better communicative fear. I happen to disagree with that, but you could make that argument. But nevertheless, I think the fact that our communications despite a history of foreign ownership restrictions, I think, further tells you something about this law, though, again, I want to emphasize I don't view the history here as in any way, clinching one way or the other. So the constitutionality of a bill like this.

I think it's an interesting comparison because I also think it shows another element of this discussion that's often under appreciated. That is what this bill would signal for the regulation of the Internet and technology more generally, because network television has been regulated much more heavily. The Internet to the points that Alan just made, because we saw spectrum as a scarce resource. We saw the airwaves as a scarce resource. So it did not have that full first amendment right. There were more restrictions. There were more regulations on certain elements of broadcast television as well as on certain elements of broadband today. But when it comes to app to the Internet ecosystem, when it comes to the kind of different platforms that we've had for speech online, we haven't seen those same restrictions. And that's part of what actually allowed the US to be a leader in the Internet revolution was the fact that we didn't put any restrictions on the ability to come up with these creative ideas, if anything, we supported forums and enabling more opportunities for users speech, and that's why the Internet has been such a positive tool, users speech and my concern about when we started here comparisons to broadcast television, is what that's actually doing is opening the door not only in this particular case, but more generally, to placing much more heavy handed regulation on the Internet and particularly on online speech, which had been such a critical tool for so many people who in that broadcast era couldn't have their voices heard.

I just Yes, jump jump in there. I mean, I have no other relevant point of distinction is that generally those other freight loads, they were ex ante they will sector why they generally, you know, involved requiring compliance with six wide regulatory standards and a reason I think that that matters is sort of the intent behind the screen wax and I think that it's been clear for an unemployment you made this point clear from statements made by the bill sponsors, the bill's supporters, that a big motivation for them is that they don't like how tick tock is currently being moderated. And they think that an American company would moderate the app differently. You know, they've made something that made specific statements about concerned not necessarily grounded in in evidence, but suggesting that, that the app is sort of artificially amplifying pro Palestinian content at the expense of pro Israel content, and they would anticipate that and make a different decision. And that that is generally that kind of content based purpose viewpoint based purpose is, is one that we consider anathema to the First Amendment and I think sort of distinguishes this case and this bill from some of those other frameworks.

You know, now, let's get to the heart of the matter. Would this bill survives The challenge, let's imagine that it's just tested on a public scrutiny. And I hear Alan say, you know, Paul Allen say the level of scrutiny doesn't matter in practice, but let's let's imagine that the form of an opinion will follow the particular standard of scrutiny. In any case, when a tick tock law passed intermediate scrutiny in that context, that is, does it advance important governmental interests, unlimited, the suppression of awkward and substantially more speech than necessary to further those interests, and leave ample alternative channels of communication? In this context, I think you know, we have to keep in mind the possibility of project Texas as one of these alternative approaches that might be relevant to that question. So I'm going to ask Alan to lead off there.

Sure. So I think it would, though, I don't pretend that this is any sort of obvious call. Let me distinguish between the two grounds on which this law generally is defended. The first being data privacy, the second being you can call it propaganda, you can call it this kind of information control. I do I'm not a fan of the data privacy rationale for this law for reasons that I think mostly, which is that the lack of any sort of data privacy protections we have at the federal level means that I do think that if the Chinese Communist Party wants data on US citizens, they will get that data whether or not bytedance owns Tiktok. And I will say before I was a law professor, I worked in National Security, the Department of Justice and I'm the proud owner of multiple lifelong paid for subscriptions to identity protection services courtesy of the federal government, because China so thoroughly sold mine and millions of others of my colleagues data. So I don't find the data protection argument particularly compelling I think it's a compelling interest. I'm not convinced, given the real speech stakes here, which I certainly don't deny that that would work. So that's why I think the law is best defended. And I think that frankly, folks in Congress should more explicitly defended on these grounds and I think they are increasingly doing so as avoiding the information space, frankly, I do think that that is a compelling interest. And I do think that this is quite substantially related to that divestment. Talk which is owned by bytedance, which although is a private company, given everything we know about the way that Chinese government operates means that bytedance is ultimately under the control of the Chinese government in particular, Xi Jinping is an enormously important source not just fun cat videos, but of information of news for millions and millions of Americans, including young Americans. Now, again, that obviously raises profound speech issues, but I think it also very clearly shows the real geostrategic and national security implications of that. We can talk about Project Texas, I think it's an important issue. And I do think that that's there's have not given enough discussion to and I think that if Congress if the Senate takes this up, and there's some reporting that they might actually despite a month of sort of being very quiet on the issue, there needs to be a record explaining more detail than was the case in the house. Why project Texas something like that would be insufficient? I think there are things you can complain about Project Texas and then there are even ways in which project Texas given how much actually US government involvement it would introduce into the day to day workings of tick tock is in some sense, creates its own First Amendment concerns in a way that just having sort of a tick tock or tick tock competitor cleanly run by a US or not by China or other foreign countries of concern doesn't propose I just I don't want to I don't want to concede that project Texas sort of unambiguously the right alternative solution here. But I do think that at the end of the day, the concern over the Chinese control over a profound infrastructure is certainly compelling. And I do think this is a reasonable way of dealing with that with that problem.

Come back to Robin.

So I mean, I completely agree with Alan on the data privacy point. I think that reliance on data privacy as the rationale is very weak. protecting Americans privacy is in the interest of the highest order, but the way that you protect that interest is by passing a comprehensive data privacy rule, not a tick tock ban, which is frankly not just unnecessary, but but the net effect is in actually achieving that interest in the region is the one that Alan mentioned, that the Chinese government simply doesn't need to top in order to be able to purchase for access American sensitive data, it can easily get that data from data brokers and data aggregators on the open market. That's a real big problem. And I really takes off that problem by bypassing the Privacy Rule but a tick tock band isn't going to do very much there. On on disinformation. You know, again, I think that a ban on tic toc is going to be ineffective. The truth is that foreign governments trying to include it don't need to own or own platforms in order to be able to spread disinformation. Many foreign governments have had run disinformation campaigns on a variety of platforms, including American owned ones. Obviously, that was the case with the 2016 Russian campaign on Facebook. So so I'm not sure that banning tick tock is really going to be effective in addressing that interest, even if it was a permissible one thing could have Israel question mark over that. You know, the reason I mentioned before, which is that generally we don't like the government, the public's access to ideas including app ideas and information and media from from abroad. And the other thing that I would mention is I guess I have some trouble with this assumption that fine foreign speech is uniquely manipulative and you know, domestic speech can be just as manipulative, just as pernicious, but we generally wouldn't accept restricting domestic domestic speech on those grounds, because we would rightly see sort of the potential for government abuse, the potential for the government to to use that as a cover to suppress ideas that it doesn't like. And this sort of like prospect of distortion on one of the major sort of channels of communications that, you know, Americans rely on. I mean, I acknowledge that it's, it's a sort of, it's a wavy concern, but it's not one that's limited to tick tock off long ago that people were talking about is that a company like Facebook could swing an election right.

I mean, there was a study, I think back from 2010, where it was an internal experiment run by Facebook along with researchers at a university and they ran an experiment on on 61 million people, they showed them variations of a clickable eye vote button and the result of that study was that they concluded that they had gotten an additional 350,000 I think it was Americans to the polls, which is, you know, a significant match and, and could be sort of the, the sort of like margin of victory and the kind of close elections that we're having. So, you know, this this isn't a an issue that is limited to tic toc. I mean, just from having a centralization of power in a handful of you know, sort of, for profit companies but I don't think you know, we would accept the governments of imposing a dynamical ban or flat out ban on on any of these companies, simply because they control affordance channels of communication. I think that there are other better policy responses that we get at this sort of underlying problem of concentration of power in a handful of platforms over our public discourse.

I agree with most of what you said, I think ultimately, are those verbal battles, immediate scrutiny or spiritual or anything? That's affected you if that is not effective to solve any of the problems that this bill is purporting to solve? We've talked at length about how every other social media company, the same problems are present and so bad at tick tock and tick tock alone is

Can I say something when just very quickly? So I agree with with Rania, that this would not fully solve the problem. And I agree with Romina that other platforms have this problem as well. But I do think it's important to distinguish between the scale of the problem something like tick tock, which again is controlled by bytedance, which can be controlled completely if it wanted to be by the or if the Chinese Communist Party wanted it to, and a platform like Facebook or x or YouTube or whatever, which, while it has potential to be a vector for disinformation, is not potentially under the control of a foreign government. And so I think just the scale of what you're potentially looking at, is profoundly different. And I don't think that a law has to completely solve the problem at issue to pass constitutional muster. And so I just I do think it's important to keep the scale of what we're talking about. With tick tock versus other platforms in mind.

So let's go to questions. Argument, courts, when reviewing this question in the tip top bands that we've seen, have, and the dominance in all those cases submitted secret evidence that has not been made public to us, but the courts have repeatedly concluded the government's claims were hypothetical, conjectural and often conjectural. Claims of harm are not enough to justify free speech burden. And so I'm just wondering how this will play out. In this case, you've got the government's claims of possibility. Alan just said, you know the scale of possible manipulation of the information environment in the United States by China by the TIC tock out should potentially justify this and so I want to come back to the Alan, but I think that that is suppose in the could possibly happen. And it were the government hasn't yet seem to show that this is in fact occurring. Even though the did mention Congressman Gallagher does believe it's actually occurring today. Let's go to Jenna.

Yeah, I think we have not seen any evidence of a real threat right now. It is all hypothetical. Hypothetical is not going to be enough to survive our mystery, but I think what was really clear to me about this is that the government wants to go after it. They perceive that as being politically popular, they like going after China is how they're going to talk about the absence of society to China, therefore, we will talk and that's how we win our elections. That's going to backfire. I think half of the country uses Tik Tok and I read an article recently that said it's actually the the best lobbyists for Tik Tok because they go and they beg their parents not to ban this app fees for so many protected speech activities. But yeah, we just simply don't have evidence that any of these threats are real, let alone rising to you know that imminent and Tampere standard that we think they'll rise to to pass a prior restraint analysis

strikes me that, you know, I'd love to know how much how many people in the audience have tick tock on their phones. Who has tick tock in phones. So I'd say a distinct minority, maybe a third of you, tick tock on your phones.

So fascinating. So our hypothetical you pose a hypothetical. Is that enough to get through this substantial intrusion upon expression?

I think it depends on what you mean by hypothetical. I fully concede that area that is motivating supporters of this bill that does appear to be hypothetical, which is of course what you would expect right? If your concern is that this has kind of a ticking time bomb that China could use at a moment of high tension. You would expect China to wait to use that. But then you are accepting that that is hypothetical, and that is of course, a weakness in the government's case. On the other hand, if you look at I think the component pieces of that concern there anything but hypothetical, so for example, we know that the Chinese government is extremely, extremely Prickly, let's say for lack of a better term, about how, you know, a prickly in terms of trying to control the kind of community communications environment not just within its own country, but outside, right, so whether this is you know, Hollywood changing how it makes movie so that it can then play them in the Chinese market or the Houston Rockets getting banned from Chinese television after the general manager's tweet. It's just, I think what's definitely not speculative is again, China's willingness to throw its weight around to to change how other countries view it. The other thing that's not speculative is the Chinese government's willingness to really in an extremely heavy handed way, control hits major private companies. So Jack Ma, the Chinese billionaire and head of Alibaba, which is a huge tech company. He basically disappeared for a while, after saying some not nice things about Chinese government control over the economy. During this disappearance, the Chinese government Huskie forced off forced the sale of a bunch of Alibaba as assets. Jack Ma has now reappeared, and he seems to be happy with everything. So those things are not speculative. And so the question is, given what's not speculative, what's kind of the margin of additional speculative it to the nightmare scenario? And again, I don't have I don't have an answer here. But you know, it's not an either or that this is or is not a speculative threat. There's going to nuance there. It's important.

Come back to the propaganda question, which seems to be the one that I think everyone agrees is most likely to, to be of greatest concern here. In ICANN, 60s, we have a Supreme Court precedent. And that is the case Lamont, the Postmaster General. There the court you ruled unanimously that regulations infringe that restricted the receipt of information from China infringed the recipients first amendment rights. That is Mr. Lamont had the right to receive Chinese Communist propaganda, literally the beaking review at the top. So Tik Tok users have a First Amendment right to receive foreign propaganda and worst case scenario, as as you've described it I'm going to come back to Rania to delete us all.

I mean, I think the answer is obviously obviously yes, based on on the case, Lamont which is a case for the the height of the Cold War. So in that case, you had a regulation that required Americans who wish to receive information that the government considered to be communist propaganda, communist propaganda from abroad that they had to send in a an often con to the post office saying yes, please, I'd like to receive Communist propaganda and, and, and but quote, so through this registration work I'm in for what it was, which was a very significant burden on the First Amendment of Americans to receive ideas, engage with those ideas, you know, from abroad, and it wasn't even though this registration requirements fell short of a ban, and the court understood that a requirement that the requirement at issue would exert a very powerful chilling effect on Americans in this country and their right to here, and so it struck down the law and so I think if you know, faithfully applying Lamont here, but you know, the Tick Tick Tock bat is actually a more onerous. Obviously, there's the prospect to the ban, it wouldn't just be you wouldn't just be registering with the government to sort of engage on tick tock, though, obviously, that would be very, very serious First Amendment concerns, and the government doesn't on okay, this is disinformation. Yes, it argues that China could one day hijack tic TOCs algorithm to to push this information as as as a an unsubstantiated claim and to say the government has evidence of that it should share it with the insured share with the public and I and this brings me to my I think the central point here, which is that even leaving to one side, generally speaking, you know, the Court has held that suppressing the suppression of speech is not a permissible response to the problem of disinformation and that there are less restrictive means that the government to use before it goes there. And you know, and Jonathan mentioned one of these before disclosure and that that requirement, the disclosure requirement that the switches Registration Act, requires it requires agents of foreign powers to register and the court said, you know, that kind of requirement, requiring you certain media to label themselves with propaganda, yes, it does raise First Amendment concerns, but it is a less restrictive alternative to a flat out ban. And so if the government has, you know, evidence that tick tock is being used in the way it says it could be, it should engage in some kind of speech. You know, generally speaking, the court has said that access to bad speech is good speech. It's not enforced. And so it's not at all clear to me why you would throw away that basic principles simply because we're dealing with foreign speech, and I think LeMans stands for the proposition that we shouldn't do that.

Because of what the 60s and then in the 80s and 90s with the bourbon amendment in particular and in the 60s with Lamont, you have this sense that, that the people who want to allow this speech are very confident in the American people. That is we can receive foreign propaganda and manage it. So and this is what freedom means. It includes the freedom to receive public support propaganda, there is a kind of brittleness that is suggested now. Now, Rania, you did mention, you know, well, we can get people out to the polls. With these kinds of algorithmic shifts. But that's also different getting people to the polls is different than getting them to pull a particular lever for one candidate or another. And so So, you know, and and become some of our anti communist I don't I just kind of sense of manipulation is pretty easy to do. And, in that there might not be other means to respond to that manipulation that we shouldn't consider. But I'm going to turn to Jennifer to pick up on this question.

So a lot of what Ronnie I said, I want to in some way to say plus one. I get a lot of what she said. But I also think it's important to reframe this conversation in the speech rights of TiC TOCs users. Oftentimes when we hear this debate about banning tick toss, it's seen as a debate over staining a social media company. And in fact, I would argue, that's one of the problems with our debate over technology and technology policy in general right now, is that we're thinking about these as large companies and not thinking about the millions of users who have found opportunities to have their voice in this way. That particularly particular platform. Users have chosen that platform for a reason. They have many choices, and they find that this is the one they like best whether it's because of how they connect with an audience, whether it's because of the nature of how they consume content, there can be any reason that an individual user chooses one platform over the other. And many if not most users are using multiple platforms for their different speech needs. So I think we have to think about how this impacts users speech, particularly in this context. And traditionally, our response as Americans, as was discussed, has been that the answer to speech that we're concerned about whether it's propaganda or disinformation or anything else, is to engage in more speech to trust that our fellow Americans will ultimately land on the truth, and that we have those conversations that we don't ban the speech itself.

Ellen,

so I love to respond. And Jennifer made so with respect to to Romeo was arguing so I agree that the case stands for the proposition that a blanket ban on foreign propaganda would be unconstitutional. I just wouldn't push that proposition farther than I think the court meant it. This is not a blanket ban on Chinese propaganda. This does not ban the Peking review. It does not pose any obstacle to the Peking reviewer. It gets hauled to Beijing review these days. If there really was a bill that tried to ban literally banned Chinese propaganda, that would be blatantly unconstitutional, and I would very much oppose that. But I just don't think that's what this is. This is a bill that would potentially ban Chinese control of a communications platform. And I think that control is actually much more insidious than straight up propaganda itself. Because the whole point is, and I think, you know, wherever you fall on this debate, I think we all agree at this point that the power of social media to shape how self is profound. And so, you know, when you think about what the First Amendment value underlying Lamont is, right, which is that we want more speech, because that in the marketplace of ideas, presumably will lead to more truth and you know, people some people might agree with their propaganda and other people might disagree and that will sharpen their own understanding of what's right. I think if you take the concern of control over the medium itself and the ways that the social media algorithms and content moderation can manipulate perception without people even realizing it. I don't think that you know, the principle of Lamont gets you anywhere near this case, though, obviously, it's it's irrelevant as to the point that Jennifer made about framing this as this the speech interest of Tiktok users I completely agree with that and I do think that's something that gets lost frequently. And here I think you have to sort of make a guess frankly, about what would happen if tick tock was banned think that a lot of people who are on tick tock tick tock they would find that extremely disruptive.

I think that the kind of content creators on tick tock who have created a lot of content have invested a lot of that that would be a huge blow to them. And I don't want to minimize that. But I don't think that tick tock is irreplaceable. I think that the idea of short form video content with sort of algorithmic curation is well understood, very standardized. You have competitors. I think Instagram reels is basically a competitor for tick tock. I just I don't see a realistic possibility that the sorts of affordances that tick tock provides would not be fairly quickly replicated again. With disruption. I'm not denying that fact. But I do think when you're thinking about, you know, how would this leave the speech interest of us social media users, I think that within a fairly short time, you would have just as much social media content as before.

So when it turned out to the audience for your questions, I'll turn to this gentleman up front first. There is a mic

both of you mentioned that the law all those insulation, Eric also singles out Tik Tok explicitly in the text of the law. Does that itself raise a constitutional question that it is not a generic act, but that it singles out one corporation?

So let's take a couple of questions. And we'll go the women were here the blues

eat?

Yes. Thank you. I didn't think I would ever asked the question but I have to what is the difference between prohibiting us from screaming fire in a crowded theater? The other thing that will produce a lot less harm to the society and basically, I would have a much bigger nature.

Let's, let's ask the question.

Well, thank you. I actually have to question the census in 2020 active balance to slash between India and China India immediately so suddenly, you know banned you know the detox I just wondering is our panelists can compare between you know, the US the tenants of their respective about picked up those first question the second question is, there are speculations there in aftermath of that time, to us my sense of target as some other Chinese ad lady, she knew and she, which are the two most influential like Professor Chandra mentioned Gen Z style ecommerce platform run here in the United States, from China as well. So if that were the case, what would be the possible ration now in the US, just one

let's we'll take some more another do another round. And let me begin with Alan. Alan, would

you like to respond to any of those questions? singled out tick tock. This is like this is much worse than fire in a crowded theater if we can regulate that question that that general processes will add, but then we should certainly go and do this. India ban Tiktok. What does that teach us? And is this just the first app to roll other other heads? That will roll as well?

Sure, soI won't I won't. So Jeff, CASA is a friend of mine, and he would break up with me is friendship if I did not address this fire in a crowded theater. I mean, the whole point of that issue is that sometimes you can yell fire in a crowded theater. Sometimes you can't yell fire in a crowded theater. The whole question is I think I mentioned this because that's in a sense, a lot of what we've been talking about here. I tend to think that the magnitude of that harm would be enormous potentially if I wanted to use the controller has over Tiktok. But again, as we've talked about, in a sense, that is somewhat speculative, right, more speculative, let's say then what would happen if you literally yelled fire in a crowded theater and caused a stampede? And so the question here and I don't pretend I have an opinion, but I don't pretend to have an answer. Is is this threat to speculative? Right. I don't think it is because I think when you disaggregate it, it's no longer particularly speculative. But to be to be honest here. It is, in fact, the case that the nightmare scenario is still speculative. That's the last question about is this the only communications platform that might be affected? No, right? I mean, this could potentially apply to a bunch of other Chinese owned or Chinese controlled apps. I do think there is. Let's have each case somewhat separately. You have to ask questions like, what is the potential for whether it's data privacy infringement or for misinformation? That may be different for Tiktok, then for WeChat, and for an E commerce platform, you have to ask questions to Jennifer's point about the rights of users. What are the alternatives here right again, I tend to think that there are much more richer alternatives to something like let's say Tik Tok, than perhaps do something like WeChat, which really is one of the main ways in which Chinese Americans communicate with Chinese, let's say family members back in China. So I do think you would have to identify you'd have to analyze that each case a little bit. It's on its own. And so I don't want to I don't want my argument in defense of this bill as applied to tick tock to necessarily be extended to every other possible sort of Chinese owned or Chinese controlled platform.

Solid

eight

question that I want to answer is about banning other apps. And like I said earlier, what this bill does is it says that the President can unilaterally ban other apps are born, that are partially owned by foreign adversaries. Right. And that is ripe for abuse. I imagine a President Trump coming in, and if a president of a company says something that he doesn't like about them, he is going to ban that company in the US. And therefore any you know, anytime a US user relies on a company picked on, you know, quickly, because they've done something to anger the president. I think this just puts too much control and the power of the president with no one else again, there's no due process here. There's like no way to fight this. There's there's notice and that's it. Right. And so I think that's something that we should be concerned about. Those are really abroad, the powers that were bestowing you know, just kind of at the end of a bill that's purportedly about tick tock

Yes.

Are they in response to the sort of mentioned as India's I think that real concern that a lot of us have about this ban on tick tock is that it's going to that if passed will be a real gift to authoritarian regimes around the world that will use this as as precedent to ban foreign media in their countries, you know, in previously, the US has has criticized has been rightly vocal when when other countries have banned their citizens access to foreign media, foreign social media in those countries, and I think it would no longer have the credibility to do that. Going forward. I mean, we've already you know, seen obviously India has already banned Tik Tok. But they're very recently I mean, I think Israel is planning to ban Al Jazeera on the ground. As examples, sort of raise this sort of broader concern about investing just sort of our reach and national security discretion in the executive, even if you trust the current executive, imagine a future executive that you might not trust.

Yeah.

I also kind of want to pick up on the two questions about India or other countries having banned this app as well as what this might mean, more broadly, I think in addition to what's already been said about the concerns that this has of what this means for countries that are looking for an opportunity to perhaps divest or ban on other media apps, including particularly American media apps and some scenarios, you know, how would we feel about an authoritarian regime using this as an excuse to ban American apps? I also think it's important to recognize that the First Amendment is largely unique but we will not tolerate with regards to government intervention and his speech is distinct from other countries views of three cent that matters a lot. I think that's a good thing. But it also means that we can't just say Country X did it and it didn't have legal scrutiny there. Therefore, why is it a problem in the US? Because we do have this standard of the First Amendment that requires different elements when it comes to government intervention in speech addition to what's already been said about how this does best broad power in the executive. I think it's also important to note that this isn't just a China though, either. So there are other countries that are named in the bill and other countries that could be added to the foreign adversary list. And so this also not only has to be thought about what is this mean for the for some of the apps that were mentioned, but what does this mean more generally for the way the US may interact with with other countries?

So one of the apps that I watch that I think gets very little attention United States is, is Telegram, which has, is Russian really popular in certain parts of the United States. And I'm gonna go further than what Jenna said to worried about it, too. But I think, you know, Telegram often skews to the far right, you can easily imagine, rather than on the other side, say this is, you know, kind of supercharging hate speech, etc, in the United States and therefore should be and and therefore a threat to national security in some way. So I think there's there's that and I certainly want to plus one to the idea of borrowing from India's example. India's response was in a context of a literal battle of the Himalayas, where Indian soldiers fell to their doubts. And so I think that was a totally unique environment in which to, to respond. respond in this what the minister at that time called a digital strike against China, which is much better than a kinetic strike against China. So let's say that was actually a moderate response in those kinds of circumstances. Okay. Now, I'm gonna try to guzo and give a Florida Gusa to ask questions. Online AUDIENCE

Yes, many, many callers with questions here. We're going to try to run through a few so you can have an idea of the commentary that is popping up online. First, in regards to like the homework of the government. Any any stance on why the Committee on Foreign Investment in United States never ended up assigning public servants as board members of the United States Digital Service as part of product tech to Texas, in that sense, is there. What is your view on an effort of the organda in manipulation more evidence, space, more show showing that case? Another question in regards to that as well is how does how is this different from the Committee on Foreign Investment 14 Chinese company can learn divestment or Grindr in 2020. Other questions go about the idea of this the theater. Can you explain a little bit better on how what's the difference between of banning free speech if you have other options to express your free speech online using other apps and other mechanisms as well? Another question here is how would the Supreme Court cases like net neutrality and Chevron contribute to the evidence on these arguments? Mean public safety and health and Fitness expression?

This is reallyYeah, I think this is a good picture of of the entire day.

Thank you for summarizing very, very typically, five big questions. So let's just summarize those questions. Again, very quick way. Question be? Well, Cepheus never followed through on certain aspects of project Texas where there might be public servants that are assigned to monitor white USDS US data services that Tiktok are on that controls the data at algorithm, and maybe that might have mitigated some of those propaganda concerns that have been described. That transpire that way and essentially kind of largely address those concerns or at least mitigate the censors. In 2018, the US government ordered the divestiture by equivalent of the dating app, Grindr, and a year later, Grindr did in fact was sold to another company. So maybe that's a precedent that should be that serves. How's that this different than what's going on here? The buyer in a crowded theater question and in there being other alternatives to express yourself in this, then the news tick tock, so perhaps it's not such a huge burden. After all, what is what are we can we what is the net neutrality? Debate each it's about the question and what about the public sector? Let's take tick tock. So many of you watch the show two hearings, many that people said this is leading our kids to drugs and, and other ills. And so this is kind of one way ratchet that the Chinese government is leading our kids like the pied piper, to their doom. And so, so I'll open up those many questions. Interesting questions to all of you. Let me begin with Jenna.

Sure. I will tackle a couple of them quickly. One is I don't think tick tock is that easily replaceable? I've talked to a lot of small business owners who say that they were never able to get their small business up and running, but it didn't work the same. They weren't able to reach the same audience. So for so many people, this is their actual livelihoods at stake. And you know, like earlier, Alan was saying, Sure, this would be a hit for people when their income is hit. That is not something that you can easily recover from, even if it's only a temporary hit, having no income per month as the difference between having a home and having someone on the table and not right. So we really can't underestimate the fact that tick tock is not so easily replaceable, especially for the people who are relying on income. The second question I want to tackle is net neutrality question because that's the other thing I spent my whole week working on. It's also part of my portfolio, either I think in both cases what net neutrality does is it says the Internet service providers cannot treat different Internet traffic differently. They can't decide what is set up what is slowed down. They can't block some things. And we mustn't say right, the reason that net neutrality is happening is to protect the ability of users to go on do what they want to do online. And this is the same right now half of the country wants to use tick tock and so to ban tick tock that's really going against the core of net neutrality, which is to make sure that users get access to the information online that they want to access. And the differences for net neutrality is what Internet service providers are dictating. In this case, it's the government which is obviously has an even bigger implication for the First Amendment. One other question that I wanted to enter Oh, hard because so you know, I think one thing that because I also heard a lot of things on my safety is what the government is not talking about the actual benefits of social media to kid. All of the harms that exists. Ultimately, social media has changed the game for kids in a lot of really positive ways. Do you know I know the ACL year we have a bigger focus on equity. We have a whole team that focuses on LGBTQ issues. One thing you'll hear a lot is people who say the Internet had existed when I was a kid, I wouldn't have felt like the only gay kid in the world, right? Kids who live in places where there aren't others like them and be able to find that information, find resources or store themselves, find a sense of community, not feel so alone. kids who are bullied will often say the Internet is what they turn to because that's where they find friends. That's where they find people have this horrible risk for kids. I'm sure these times I Will not you know, they exist. They absolutely exist, but there's a lot of good that happens as well. And you know, I think policymakers jump to regulating the Internet because that's easier, right? It's much easier for them to regulate the Internet, and to invest money in education and digital literacy than to invest money in law enforcement to go after people that are selling drugs and abusing children. Like there's so many other things that the government can do that are bigger and harder and that's why it's easier for less hold Facebook tick tock Instagram accountable here for every harm that's ever happened.

Thank you, Rob. Yeah.

So why am I tripping? Take one of the questions that hasn't already been addressed. The first one should be yes. And potentially getting the US government more involved in, in audit, auditing, having oversight over tic TOCs algorithm as a way to protect against the possibility of you know Chinese co optation. And so I'm not sure why that

proposal didn't quite work out, but I'm pretty glad it didn't. Because, you know, I think the prospect

of having really close US government entanglement. In you know, in sort of reviewing and how we have a veto power over the content, moderation, sort of like policymaking, but also your algorithmic decision. So the social media company are a little bit concerning, you know, third party oversight, like ameliorate some of those issues, but but Bruce Schneier made in his affidavit in support of a lawsuit challenging the application of Texas's Tik Tok ban to the public university faculty context is actually researchers if they had access to this data. Would pretty quickly realize that the Chinese government were involved in such a monumental effort to to sort of hijack tic TOCs algorithm to push this information so that could act as a significant bulwark against that kind of effort. And so transparency would have a lot of you know, we've all sort of uses that as one of them.

I always say, possibility of research or access to data that can help us determine whether or not propaganda is being pushed would seem to be one of the measures that might mitigate these risks. So always is that that is one of the things to fold out as a first approach to these questions. Jennifer,

I want to turn to the recipient question a little bit and then also get to the kids question. So with CPS and put together with CPS and Grindr, I think there's also shows what another kind of unusual element of this bill and that there was a process in place for considering these questions. So CPS process has been ongoing that should be you know, weighing the potential risk considering what these alternatives are and building a case if any steps are learned about national security and this foreign investment. That's a little bit distinguished from what we do distinct from what we have here which are as we talked about, in some of the other elements of this panel, what are very vague national security concerns. So with the case of Grindr, there were some very specific elements about with with regards to the LGBTQ community that were discussed in that decision. This it's kind of more much more amorphous about what the concern actually is, as we've already said, several times on this panel, which in some ways, segues to this question about kids online. And I think we have to recognize that the Tick Tock debate while there is a tick tock debate going on, it's also part of a broader debate. And like Jenna, I'm very concerned with some of what we're hearing in terms of age verification, age appropriate design codes, all sorts of calls to ban children from social media when there are so many beneficial uses. Are let alone clear definitions of what harm we're trying to solve when we say we want to keep kids safe online. The end of the day when it comes to kids online safety, I think it should be parents not policymakers making those decisions. Is there going to be so many different options in so many different households? That are going to fit so many different situations? Because we don't necessarily agree on what the problem is. And that makes it a bad place to try and have a one size fits all policy?

You know, Alan

I know we're out of time, so I'm happy to cede my time.

Okay, thank you. Well, I think we actually covered all those wonderful questions.Thank you all. Please join me in taking our seats.We will post this on YouTube andthank you all very much.

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