Regardless of how a federal court would have viewed a retroactive unwinding of the deal if the Trump administration chose this path, a CFIUS review still would not have satisfied the principle of legitimacy. Banning Americans’ free access to an entire social media platform to protect political information is a significant step that embeds assumptions about the ability of Americans to intelligently consume news. Closing off America’s traditionally open information space also has implications for U.S. efforts to keep authoritarian information spaces open (see, e.g., Russia’s threats to block Twitter and the Chinese ban on Facebook).

Of course, competing national security interests could very well outweigh these concerns. But weighing these competing values or deciding which side is the most appealing in the tradeoff should involve the American people as much as possible, not just a president and a cadre of bureaucrats. Lawmakers need to prepare a procedure that grants shared powers to the president and Congress (potentially just a relevant subset of intelligence and foreign policy experts) to quickly enact bans on foreign social media platforms. To reiterate, in addition to the principle of security, it is vital to uphold the principles of accuracy and legitimacy while fighting disinformation. Without these values, the fight could perpetuate more distrust and may undermine the very thing individuals seek to protect: democracy.

Daniel Brickhill is a senior at Harvard College. He has previously interned at the American Enterprise Institute and with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence through the Virtual Student Foreign Service.

Image: Reuters