April 15, 2023 Updated: April 15, 2023
The TikTok app logo is seen in this illustration taken on Aug. 22, 2022. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)
The GOP-majority
legislature in Montana voted Friday to ban TikTok, a popular Chinese-owned
video-sharing platform, sending the bill to Gov. Greg Gianforte’s desk.
Montana’s legislature
gave the bill final approval after the Montana House voted 54 to 43 in
favor. If the bill is signed, Montana will become the first U.S. state to
impose a complete ban on the platform.
The legislation prohibits
downloads of TikTok in Montana and would fine any “entity” such as an app store
$10,000 a day for each time someone is given access to the app. Users don’t
face any penalties. If signed, the law wouldn’t take effect until January 2024,
unless Congress passes a national law overriding it, or if TikTok cuts its ties
with China.
A representative from the
tech trade group TechNet told state lawmakers that app stores don’t have the
ability to geofence apps on a state-by-state basis, so the Apple App Store and
Google Play Store would not be able to adhere to the law if it takes effect.
Ashley Sutton, TechNet’s
executive director for Washington state and the northwest, said Thursday that
the “responsibility should be on an app to determine where it can operate, not
an app store.”
But Montana Attorney
General Austin Knudsen has said that apps for online gambling can be disabled
in states that do not allow it, so the same should be possible for TikTok.
Knudsen, whose office
drafted the state’s legislation, said on Twitter Friday
that the bill “is a critical step to ensuring we are protecting Montanans’
privacy,” even as he acknowledged that a court battle looms.
TikTok
Threatens Lawsuit
Nearly half of U.S. states,
Montana included, as well as the U.S. federal government, already prohibit
TikTok on government-owned devices and/or networks.
TikTok is owned and
operated by ByteDance, a Chinese company based in Beijing, but moved its
headquarters to Singapore in 2020.
Gianforte last year banned the app on
state government devices, citing “grave security concerns” and that use of
TikTok on state devices posed a “significant risk” to sensitive state data.
TikTok “harvests
expansive amounts of data from its users’ devices, much of which is unrelated
to the app’s purported objective of video sharing, and offers this information
to the Chinese Communist Party,” Gianforte wrote in a December 2022 memo to
some state officials.
The governor declined to
say Friday whether he plans to sign the bill into law. Gianforte “will
carefully consider” all bills the Legislature sends to his desk, reads a
statement via spokesperson Brooke Metrione.
TikTok spokesperson
Brooke Oberwetter said a legal challenge over the measure’s
constitutionality would follow if the bill is passed, calling the legislation
an “attempt to censor American voices.”
The company “will
continue to fight for TikTok users and creators in Montana whose livelihoods
and First Amendment rights are threatened by this egregious government
overreach,” Oberwetter said.
National
Security Concerns
The FBI and Federal Communications Commission last
year issued warnings of possible threats TikTok poses to U.S. national
security, including that user data obtained by the app—such as browsing history
and location—could be shared with the authoritarian Chinese regime. Concerns
were heightened in late 2022 amid media reports that staff of
ByteDance used the company’s access to TikTok user data to improperly track American journalists.
While TikTok has
previously said that all U.S. user data is stored within the United
States, it has also since admitted that this was not true. In a September
2022 congressional hearing, TikTok executives refused to commit to
stopping the flow of American data to China.
A TikTok spokesperson
previously told The Epoch
Times in an emailed statement in December 2022: “We believe the concerns
driving these bans are largely fueled by misinformation about our company. We
are always happy to meet with state policymakers to discuss our privacy and
security practices. We are disappointed that the many state agencies, offices,
and universities that have been using TikTok to build communities and connect
with constituents will no longer have access to our platform.”
TikTok rose in popularity
in the United States in 2017 after ByteDance acquired Chinese-owned social
media company Musical.ly and paired its Santa Monica office with TikTok. At the
time, TikTok did not inform U.S. officials about the Musical.ly–TikTok merger
despite both companies’ ties to China, independent investigative journalist
Geoffrey Cain previously told EpochTV’s
“American Thought Leaders.”
Casey Fleming, a
cybersecurity expert and CEO of strategic advisory firm BlackOps Partners,
previously told The Epoch Times, “All
of your data on that phone, everything you do, and everything that you have
stored on your phone is being sent out of the country, possibly to be used
against you.”
Besides national security
concerns, many have raised concerns about TikTok’s content and its potential
harms to the mental health of adolescents. In December 2022, the U.S. state of
Indiana filed two lawsuits accusing
TikTok of sending user data to the CCP and also of falsely claiming that
its product was safe for children.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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