Montana is the first US state to ban TikTok
Montana’s governor signed a bill Wednesday banning TikTok, marking the start of a legal battle that has reached Washington.
Illustrative image.
AFP
“To protect the personal and private data of CCP users, I have banned TikTok in Montana,” tweeted Greg Gianporte, the Republican governor of the northwestern state of more than a million people.
TikTok is owned by Chinese conglomerate ByteDance, and many US lawmakers believe the short, entertaining video site frequented by 150 million Americans allows Beijing to spy on and manipulate users. The app has always denied it.
In mid-April, the Montana legislature passed orders to mobile application stores (Apple and Google) not to distribute TikTok starting January 1, 2024. Companies involved will be fined $10,000 per day for each violation, but users will not. to worry about.
A spokesperson for TikTok responded Wednesday that the law “violates the rights of Montana citizens” based on freedom of expression, referring to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. “The constitutionality of this text will be decided in the courts. We will continue to fight for TikTok users and creators in Montana,” he said before the vote.
Youth Health
In addition to the issue of data and misinformation, elected officials accuse TikTok of harming young people’s health (addiction, depression). Some Democratic representatives have responded that other social networks, such as Instagram, deserve to be regulated in all these respects.
The ACLU, a powerful civil rights group, has accused the government of censorship. “With this ban, Governor Gianforte and the Montana Legislature are trampling on the free speech of hundreds of thousands of Montana residents who use this app to express themselves, find information and promote their small businesses on behalf of anti-Chinese sentiment,” Keegan said. Medrano, an official with the local branch of the ACLU, said in a statement Wednesday.
If TikTok is acquired by a US company (or a country that is not an adversary of the US), the law will be invalidated.
The White House has encouraged TikTok to seek this kind of solution if it wants to stay in the country. Joe Biden’s administration has been discussing several bills with Congress aimed at banning the application, while his predecessor Donald Trump’s orders in this direction have already failed.
AFP
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