Montana Is First State to Send TikTok Ban to Governor’s Desk

Montana law may soon include a total ban on TikTok, as governor Greg Gianforte decides whether to sign a first-of-its-kind prohibition approved by the state’s House of Representatives on Friday. The legislation would also seek to prevent app stores doing business in the state from carrying TikTok. Gianforte will also have the option to veto the proposal, or take no action for 10 days after the bill hits his desk, in which case it becomes law without his signature. Such a ban would likely be challenging to enforce at the state level. Blocking users from TikTok has gained bipartisan support at the federal level, though efforts to pass nationwide legislation have failed.

In Montana — the first state to go beyond banning TikTok on government devices to target consumers — the measure “was approved 54 to 43 in the last of two votes in the State House,” reports The New York Times, calling the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature “an unlikely battleground” between the U.S. and China, enmeshed in a growing technology feud.

A Forbes article about why the Big Sky state’s TikTok ban is “probably unenforceable” explains that “Montana residents could disguise their location with virtual private networks to download TikTok, and the bill does not specify how residents with Internet connections based outside of the state could be affected.”

The bill specifies “a $10,000 fine will be issued per day to any app store that still allows TikTok to be downloaded and to any ‘discrete violation,’” which means “any time a user accesses TikTok or is ‘offered the ability’ to do so,” according to Forbes.

Dating back to the Trump administration, federal lawmakers have taken issue with the fact that TikTok’s Beijing-based parent ByteDance is susceptible to data-sharing demands by the Chinese government or spread propaganda.

The Biden administration banned TikTok on government devices. In December, bipartisan companion bills to unilaterally ban TikTok were introduced in the House and Senate. In January, the House advanced the Terminate TikTok on Campus Act of 2023.

Some rights groups are pushing back on such a ban due to free speech concerns, writes Voice of America (a view that is embraced by TikTok).

Democrats fear a ban would deteriorate their support among young voters, a concern that is not unfounded, according to Reuters, which quoted House member Jamal Bowman (D-New York) saying “why the hysteria and the panic and the targeting of TikTok? Let’s do the right thing here — comprehensive social media reform as it relates to privacy and security.”

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