Montana becomes the first US state to ban TikTok

Montana has become the first US state to ban TikTok. Governor Greg Gianforte confirmed on Wednesday that he has signed the bill banning the popular video-based social media app within the state. The bill was passed by the state’s legislature about a month ago. The ban is to take effect on January 1, 2024, but legal challenges may delay it.

“To protect Montanans’ personal and private data from the Chinese Communist Party, I have banned TikTok in Montana,” Gianforte tweeted on Wednesday evening. Once effective, the law prohibits TikTok from operating “within the territorial jurisdiction of Montana”. It also requires app mobile app stores such as the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store to remove the app for users in the state or block them from downloading it.

Montana won’t impose any penalties on residents using TikTok. But the law, SB 419, states that app stores could face a fine of $10,000 per violation per day. It defines an individual violation as “each time that a user accesses TikTok, is offered the ability to access TikTok, or is offered the ability to download TikTok”. As pointed out by The Verge, the doesn’t have a provision that holds app stores liable for providing updates to users who already have TikTok installed on their devices. It also doesn’t mention the web version of the platform. The ban is only on the TikTok app.

However, Montana lawmakers will probably ban everything TikTok in the state once the law is effective at the beginning of the next year. That said, there certainly will be legal challenges to this decision. If a court blocks the rule, Montana residents won’t lose access to TikTok on the first day of 2024. Moreover, the law has a provision that immediately voids it if TikTok switches ownership. In other words, the firm has to cut ties with its Chinese owner ByteDance and move to a new location. The new location shouldn’t be in a “foreign adversary” nation, though.

TikTok argues that the Montana ban is unlawful

TikTok has been having a hard time in the US for a few years now. American lawmakers have suggested that ByteDance allows the Chinese government access to its US users’ data. It poses a serious threat to national security and user privacy. The app is already banned on government-owned devices in most parts of the US. Montana has now made history by blocking everyone within the state from accessing TikTok.

Meanwhile, ByteDance has always argued that these decisions are unlawful. The company claims that it stores all data of American TikTok users within the country. But US lawmakers say these efforts don’t go far enough to address their privacy and security concerns. To make things worse for TikTok, it self-admittedly spied on a few US-based journalists. A former ByteDance executive also recently said that the company had backdoors for the Chinese Communist Party, the sole ruling party of the country.

All this hasn’t helped TikTok’s cause but it still doesn’t concede any wrongdoing. “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,” the company said in an official statement. “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.”