If TikTok (China) Has the Rights of American Persons, Then ByteDance Can be Sentenced to Death
Corporate personhood is a lie, a fiction. It's a way to ascribe or grant to any private company of a private person a licence to kill, pollute and so on with total impunity.
A censorship giant now pretends to be a person and demands "First Amendment" (free speech basically). Aside from the fact that this giant is Chinese, since when is censorship a form of "speech"? This sort of goes back to Social Control Media court battles, where they attempted to equate censorship ("moderation") with "speech".
There are sayings along the lines of: "If corporations are people per Citizens United, why do the federal “death” penalty and sentencing guidelines applied to humans not apply? Shouldn’t they be removed from society if their crimes cause harm?"
Well, sayings like these predate Citizens United and inhabit the domain of philosophy, not just law.
So, in summary, one thing people must remember is that TikTok - like Julian Assange - does not enjoy any protections of the First Amendment and since it's not a person it would lack these protections as an American company, too. Add on top of that the fact that TikTok is controlled by a fervent ideological opponent of the First Amendment, which actually robs Americans of their First Amendment protections.
This SCOTUS case should really be a "slam-dunk", but the person who isn't even president reportedly contacts (or invites to his home where no transparency exists short of FBI raids) Justices. It seems like the fate of ByteDance (or TikTok) is in the hands of a convicted felon and insurrectionist who is accused of sexual misconduct by at least 27 women. Maybe ByteDance can censor/shadowban his critics for him or do his biddings (like "Meta" and "X", Facebook and Twitter) if he lets the censorship giant off the hook... as long as it censors for him, too. Deal of the century? █