The order was announced as White House officials believed they were nearing a deal for the app’s operations to be spun off into a new company based in the U.S. and owned and operated by a majority of American investors, with China’s ByteDance maintaining a minority position, according to a person familiar with the matter.
But Beijing hit the brakes on a deal Thursday after Trump announced wide-ranging tariffs around the globe, including against China. ByteDance representatives called the White House to indicate that China would no longer approve the deal until there could be negotiations about trade and tariffs, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive details of the negotiations.
If we’re not going to ban it, we should stop talking about it and move on. If we are going to ban it, we should stop talking about it and do it. We do ourselves no favors by keeping it in the spotlight. It’d probably be tough for a ban to survive a challenge on First Amendment grounds (maybe following the example of Lamont v. Postmaster General, 381 U.S. 301 (1965)) but we live in stupid times so it’s not guaranteed.
As for our home-grown (or imported, in certain notable cases) technological Peeping Toms, at least there’s a chance that they could be held accountable. It’d rely on people in power actually growing a pair and giving a fraction of a fuck about their constituents so I’m not holding my breath but they’re not as out of reach as a Beijing bug factory.
The ban had already been appealed all the way up to the supreme court and held.
Given the current administration, that’s not something I’m taking as a rock-solid iron-clad guarantee. Well-paid lawyers can do great and terrible things.