TikTok ban: Montana becomes first US state to fully prohibit use of popular China-owned app
- Signed by Republican governor, new law would take effect in January and impose a US$10,000 fine on any entity permitting the app’s downloading
- Company owned by Chinese tech firm ByteDance says bill ‘infringes on the First Amendment rights of the people of Montana’
The law, which is set to take effect in January, will impose a US$10,000 fine on any entity that permits downloading of the platform – TikTok itself or app stores – and add the same amount each day a violation continues.
“Today, Montana takes the most decisive action of any state to protect Montanans’ private data and sensitive personal information from being harvested by the Chinese Communist Party,” Gianforte said in a statement.
While many US lawmakers see TikTok as a conduit for the Chinese government to harvest private data on Americans and deliver content detrimental to young people, the company has insisted it is taking measures to ensure that does not happen.
These include a plan to house US data within a walled-off company jointly overseen by US software provider Oracle, known as “Project Texas”, and accelerated efforts to monitor and delete posts that fuel teen suicide, political violence and other objectionable content aided by a team of 44,000 screeners worldwide.
In a statement issued soon after the Montana vote, a TikTok spokeswoman in the US called the move an infringement of First Amendment rights.
“Governor Gianforte has signed a bill that infringes on the First Amendment rights of the people of Montana by unlawfully banning TikTok, a platform that empowers hundreds of thousands of people across the state,” said TikTok’s Brooke Oberwetter.
“We want to reassure Montanans that they can continue using TikTok to express themselves, earn a living, and find community as we continue working to defend the rights of our users inside and outside of Montana.”
While Republicans have been the most vocal about TikTok’s alleged dangers, many Democrats have also been supportive of restrictions on the app.
Senators Mark Warner, a Democrat, and John Thune, a Republican, have jointly sponsored the Restrict Act, which would to give the US Commerce Department power to ban TikTok and other apps that pose potential national security vulnerabilities. The bill has 25 Senate cosponsors, almost evenly split between the two parties.
The ban on state devices mirrors an executive order by US President Joe Biden in February to ban TikTok on federal government-issued devices, which he followed with another order that TikTok would face a ban in the US if ByteDance did not divest the app.
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But TikTok has some advocates in the US from differing ideological corners.
“With this ban, Governor Gianforte and the Montana legislature have trampled on the free speech of hundreds of thousands of Montanans who use the app to express themselves, gather information, and run their small business in the name of anti-Chinese sentiment,” Keegan Medrano, policy director at the ACLU of Montana, said in response to the signing.
New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat, also expressed her opposition to that move, saying in a TikTok video posted at the same time that a ban would be “unprecedented”.
