Why we're suing the federal government

At BASEDPolitics, we believe content moves the culture, and politics flows downstream from that.

For the past three years, we’ve been leaning into the trends of influencer marketing and new media to reach audiences with entertaining content that introduces them to the ideas of free market capitalism and individual liberty. And we’ve been having a lot of success!

Our content has reached millions across multiple social media channels and it’s even led to some policy wins along the way. One of those platforms is TikTok, where we’ve been able to access a unique audience comprised of Americans you simply won’t find elsewhere—particularly Gen-Z.

Last month, President Joe Biden signed unconstitutional legislation that will effectively ban TikTok in a few months. This is a violation of all Americans’ First Amendment rights to free speech, and it’s also severely undermining our company’s mission to spread our ideas through content online.

Some defenders of this legislation insist that it is not actually a ban on TikTok, but simply forces the sale of the app. But, in effect, the legislation is an outright ban on the app, because Bytedance, TikTok’s parent company, is likely legally prohibited from selling the TikTok algorithm by China’s export control laws. And, TikTok without its algorithm is not really TikTok at all. 

The grim reality we face is an effort by the federal government to strip more than 100 million Americans of the platform they use to consume information, advertise their businesses, and express themselves. If enacted, this would constitute one of the most egregious acts of censorship in modern American history, which explains why First Amendment watchdogs ranging from the ACLU to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) have come out against the bill. 

The First Amendment not only guards Americans' rights to say what they wish, it also protects their rights to consume and hear the speech of others. There are very few exceptions when it comes to the government’s ability to impede this exchange of information. Such a blatant restriction of our First Amendment rights could only ever withstand legal muster if the Biden administration could prove that it both serves a compelling government interest and is “narrowly tailored.” It doesn’t—and it isn’t. 

In the federal and state governments, both Republicans and Democrats have become increasingly anti-free speech in recent years. We’ve seen a plethora of bills that have sought to strip Americans and their businesses of their right to free expression, many of them presented as necessary to rein in “Big Tech.” The TikTok ban is merely the latest iteration of this trend.

The truth is that government actors who want to preserve and expand their own power have a vital interest in taking over the tech industry. Of course the government has yet to see a thriving free market industry it doesn’t want to get its hands on. But social media in particular poses a unique threat to the government—which has for decades been able to control the flow of information and the narrative on political issues via its cozy relationship with many in the mainstream media.

We’ve seen the Biden Administration seek to lasso social media in a similar fashion numerous times over the past couple of years thanks to the bombshell reports released under both the Twitter Files and the Facebook Files—not to mention the government-wide conspiracy to shadowban information on our own government’s funding of the Wuhan lab. 

Had these people gotten their way (and they very nearly did as many American tech companies capitulated to their threats) the American people would never have known about our government’s involvement in Wuhan; we could not have pushed back on masking; baseless social distancing would likely still be the norm; and people would be forced to get a vaccine to work.

The obvious point is that government officials do not want the American people to be able to freely share information, especially information that makes them look bad. 

Right now on TikTok people are having important political discussions over our involvement in wars, our treatment of prisoners, the failures of our public school system, and the Federal Reserve’s role in our economy. And unsurprisingly, the government (and particularly the Biden Administration) is taking a deserved beating in many of those conversations.

It is important that BASEDPolitics be able to participate in this dialogue to accomplish our company’s ideological mission. But it’s even more important that the American people have the ability to access and engage in these debates for our country’s interest.

That’s why we are suing the federal government over the TikTok ban with the help of the Liberty Justice Center. We’re taking a stand for our free speech rights as well as those of millions of others of Americans. 

If they can control the flow of information, they can control you. 

We’d appreciate your support in our fight.