I was having a conversation with my Stanford colleague Diego Zambrano, and this perspective on the TikTok case emerged. I'm not positive it's a sound perspective; but I thought I'd pass it along and see what people thought about it.
[1.] Let's imagine for a moment that there was a social media platform, HamHom, that was run by Hamas. Hamas is a designated foreign terrorist organization, so the federal material support statute outlaws "knowingly provid[ing] material support or resources" to it. That includes providing "communications equipment" and general "facilities" or "service[s]." It seems to me that it would therefore be illegal for, say, Google and Apple to carry the HamHom app in their app stores, or to provide internet hosting services for HamHom.
And this application of the material support statute to HamHom would be constitutional, given Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (2010). Holder upheld parallel provisions of the material support statute that banned providing "training" and "expert advice or assistance" to designated foreign terrorist organizations.
