TikTok Banned in Montana
Montana has banned TikTok, making them the first state in the nation to block access to the app amid growing data privacy concerns. The Republican legislature voted to ban TikTok in the state. Republican Governor Greg Gianforte signed the bill prohibiting the app on Wednesday. “To protect Montanans’ personal and private data from the Chinese Communist Party, I have banned TikTok in Montana, ” said Governor Gianforte on Twitter.
The TikTok ban will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2024, if courts don’t act to stop the law. The Montana Department of Justice will be able to fine app stores or ByteDance — TikTok’s parent company — $10,000 for each discrete violation and $10,000 for each day that a violation continues.
Numerous organizations and people have scrutinized the new Montana law. In a statement on Wednesday, TikTok wrote: “We will continue to fight for TikTok users and creators in Montana whose livelihoods and First Amendment rights are threatened by this egregious government overreach.” A majority of Montana Democrats in the House and the Senate had opposed the bill. Small business owners also voiced issues about the new law, claiming the ban would hurt marketing and limit customer reach of their business.
There has been a national effort to ban the app, that has since stalled after Senator Rand Paul (R-KY.) and Progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Cori Bush (D-M.O.) opposed this idea of a national ban. Rep.Ocasio-Cortez on the potential national ban; “To me, the solution here is not to ban an individual company, but to actually protect Americans from this kind of egregious data harvesting that companies can do without your significant ability to say no,” Rep Cori Bush (D-M.O) issued a similar statement to Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, “I have concerns about the potential privacy and misinformation risks posed by TikTok, but I also have similar concerns about Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and other for-profit social media companies.”
