Montana Governor Greg Gianforte (R) has signed legislation to ban the Chinese-owned TikTok from operating in the state. It’s the first state to enact a ban encompassing private citizens—and is expected to trigger first amendment legal fights.
The legislation would make it unlawful for Google or Apple’s mobile app stores to offer TikTok for download to residents of the state of Montana. However, it does not impose any penalties on individuals who use TikTok within the state’s borders or reside within the state and access any TikTok services. The ban is expected to take effect on January 1, 2024 if it doesn’t encounter any legal resistance—which is highly unlikely.
TikTok itself invoked Americans First Amendment rights when issuing its rebuttal response to the legislation. TikTok says the new law “infringes on the First Amendment rights of the people of Montana by unlawfully banning TikTok.” The company says it will continue to defend the rights of its users in Montana and will seek to have the legislation challenged all the way up to the Supreme Court if necessary.
TikTok’s Chinese ownership has raised serious concerns among U.S. officials, especially FBI Director Christopher Wray. He has highlighted how the app’s algorithms can be used to suppress content China wants to hide (like crackdowns on Hong Kong protestors) or push content in certain regions (Tide Pods challenges). The company has repeatedly denied that ByteDance employees can access U.S. TikTok user data, but several reports suggest the opposite.
Both BuzzFeed News and Forbes interviewed people familiar with the inner workings of TikTok who confirmed ByteDance employees could access U.S. user data. A new lawsuit filed in San Francisco also alleges a senior U.S. engineer was aware of backdoors providing ByteDance access to any TikTok data.
Montana has a population of just over one million people. TikTok will face fines for each violation and additional files of $10,000 per day if it violates the ban as written. Apple and Google could also be subject to the $10K a day fine if they continue to make TikTok available for Montana residents to download after January 1.
“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 about the ban.