TikTown Town Hall With RFK Jr.: Banning TikTok Violates Our Constitutional Rights

Last month, I joined TikTok creators for a virtual town hall about the TikTok Ban and our first amendment rights. To my knowledge, this was the first time a presidential candidate has held a town hall on TikTok without any mainstream media pundit pre-selecting the questions and mediating the conversation.

Lindsay Taylor asked me how the TikTok ban will impact the economy and whether creators have a legal case to challenge the ban. My short answer is, “Yes!”

The 59,000 jobs TikTok supports and their $24.2 billion addition to our GDP in 2023 (including over $5 billion paid in taxes) are contributions Americans can’t afford to lose right now. I plan to litigate on the illegal first amendment constraints posed by the ban, which also violates our 5th amendment rights to due process and just compensation before a business can be shut down.

What we are seeing is basically a campaign by large social media companies like Google and Meta to derail an upstart competitor. There should be a diversity of information sources and economic outlets for Americans, and banning TikTok takes us in the opposite direction.