Prof. Alan Rozenshtein Quoted in Boston Globe Op-Ed About First Amendment Protection in the TikTok Case

Professor Alan Rozenshtein was quoted in a Boston Globe op-ed piece regarding TikTok’s stance that banning the app violates its users their First Amendment rights to freely express themselves. The commentary’s argument: what if the speech on the platform isn’t truly free, and not because TikTok is owned by a Chinese company but because of the algorithms that dictate what Americans see on the platform? It said this rationale came up in the written opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The judges ruled to uphold the law, but not just for national security reasons. They also expressed concern about what they called the manipulation of information on the platform itself. The court wrote in its decision that the People’s Republic of China “has positioned itself to manipulate public discourse on TikTok in order to serve its own ends. The PRC’s ability to do so is at odds with free speech fundamentals. Understood in that way, the Act actually vindicates the values that undergird the First Amendment.” In other words, banning TikTok may not be just a necessary sacrifice in the name of national security, but a protection of the idea that the First Amendment calls for Americans to have access to information that is free of manipulation or distortion. Some legal scholars, including Prof. Rozenshtein, claim this anti-distortion argument should be brought into the First Amendment limelight as a core tenet of free speech, and they hope the Supreme Court will take that argument into account as it considers the TikTok case. Prof. Rozenshtein said, “The anti-distortion rationale to regulate speech used to be central to the First Amendment. And I think it is about time we bring it back.”