Montana Governor Greg Gianforte signed a legislation on Wednesday (May 17) prohibiting Chinese-owned TikTok from operating in the state in order to safeguard people from suspected Chinese intelligence gathering, turning Montana the first US state to do so.
Montana will make it illegal for Google and Apple’s app stores to sell TikTok in the state, but will not penalise users who use its app. The prohibition is set to go into force on January 1, 2024, and it is almost guaranteed to encounter judicial objections, reported Reuters.
TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese tech giant ByteDance, did not reply to Reuters over any legal action that it plans to take.
TikTok previously made a statement claiming that the new legislation “infringes on the First Amendment rights of the people of Montana by unlawfully banning TikTok,” and promising to “continue working to defend the rights of our users inside and outside of Montana.”
TikTok, which has over 150 million American users, has received increasing requests from politicians and state authorities in the United States to ban the app statewide due to fears about potential Chinese government control over the platform.
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Teenagers use TikTok the most in the US
The app has grown quite popular among teenagers. According to the Pew Research Centre, 67 per cent of 13- to 17-year-olds in the United States use TikTok, while 16 per cent of all adolescents use the app fairly daily. TikTok claims that the “vast majority” of its users are over the age of 18.
In March, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was interrogated by a congressional committee about whether the Chinese government could access user data or affect what Americans saw on the platform. However, efforts to prohibit TikTok nationwide or to give the Biden administration greater powers to crack down on or ban TikTok have failed to gain traction in Congress.
The bill, according to Gianforte, will advance “our shared priority of protecting Montanans from Chinese Communist Party surveillance.”
TikTok has constantly denied sharing data with the Chinese government and has stated that it would not do so if asked for.
Does the ban curb free speech?
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called the measure “unconstitutional,” noting that it will take effect on January 1 if the courts do not intervene.
“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 a statement.
Several Democratic members of Congress, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and First Amendment organisations such as the American Civil Liberties Union are among TikTok’s free speech supporters.
(With inputs from agencies)
