Corruption

Sure, but profit may not be the most important factor for Bytedance here. They say they’re more willing to shut down than negotiate divestment.

It’s a lot easier to scan for very specific code behavior than it is to scan for “anything useful for espionage”. And that still wouldn’t solve the question of what their server software is doing or where the collected data is ending up.

If the code were static and unchanging, sure. But it’s not possible to conduct such analysis every time an update is issued on a continuing basis, without fast becoming a hundreds of millions of dollars or more program.

So the better question isn’t whether it’s possible — it’s whether it’s feasible. And the answer is no, it’s not.

It also can’t track the users nearly as well.

It’s not perceived political messaging that’s at issue, but the potential for sensitive national security data collection by an adversary. That’s what made TikTok an explicit target of the law.

For the record, I don’t have a strong opinion either way on whether the law is good or bad (if you think it’s bad, vote against your congresspeople that supported it). I just don’t see TikTok’s legal argument against it as very strong, constitutionally speaking.

The only freedom restricted in the law is that of Bytedance to own a social media platform in the US. I find it difficult to define that freedom as “speech”. Citizens’ United dealt with a company’s freedom to fund political campaigns — which is at least easier to define as “speech”.

My read of the situation is that this was driven by Google rather than LF (as in I think Google approached LF about the idea first) in an effort to give then an argument that the court shouldn’'t take Chrome away from them (the only way Google would ever give up control over Chrome).

The law in question bans social media (of a sufficient size) being owned by an entity in a geopolitical rival nation.

Its relation to Citizens’ United is pretty thin, really only sharing the concept of a corporation’s First Amendment rights. But there’s a lot of reason to doubt Bytedance’s First Amendment argument holds legal water here, as the law is regulating business operation — not speech.

Funcom (Conan games and an upcoming Dune game) and Grinding Gear Games (Path of Exile) as well.

Tencent likely has a sizeable stake, but is unlikely to hold a majority stake of Discord.