https://archive.ph/9Medp

Montana lawmakers on Friday approved a first-of-its-kind bill to ban TikTok across the state, setting the stage for future court battles that could determine the fate in the U.S. of the popular, Chinese-owned social media app.

The Montana House voted 54-43 to send the bill to Gov. Greg Gianforte’s desk. The governor’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on whether or when he might sign the bill.

The bill said the ban would go into effect on Jan. 1, 2024. It would prohibit TikTok, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd., from operating within the state, and would also bar app stores from offering TikTok within the state. It would fine any entity violating this law $10,000 per violation. It is unclear how some elements of the legislation would be enforced.

The bill’s authors ahead of the vote said they expect legal challenges that could ultimately reach the U.S. Supreme Court should Gov. Gianforte sign the legislation. Before the vote, the Republican governor’s spokeswoman declined to comment on the governor’s position, but noted he has previously banned TikTok on government-issued devices and had urged the state university system to do the same.

Critics including the American Civil Liberties Union said the bill amounts to censorship and violates free-speech rights protected under the First Amendment.

A TikTok spokesperson said 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.”

App store-providers Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lawmakers who opposed the bill say it is unclear what would happen if TikTok users employed a workaround to download the app, such as a virtual private network that makes it seem their devices are logging in from outside Montana.

Friday’s vote in Helena was the latest setback to TikTok’s campaign to remain operating in the U.S.

Despite Montana’s relatively small population of a little more than one million people, the company had hired Helena-based lobbyists and recruited local TikTok creators to appear in newspaper ads to fight the bill. Some TikTok leaders were concerned a statewide ban in Montana could trigger a domino effect that could lead other states—and perhaps Congress—to follow suit, The Wall Street Journal reported last week.

Helena has become the latest demonstration of the bipartisan and nationwide momentum to ban TikTok over national-security concerns. In Washington last month, Democrats and Republicans at a congressional hearing grilled TikTok’s chief executive over his company’s ties to China. A Pew Research Center survey a week later found that 50% of Americans supported a TikTok ban, with 22% opposed and 28% indicating they were unsure.

The Biden administration recently asked TikTok to separate itself from its parent company ByteDance or to face a possible ban, the Journal reported last month. Some Congress members and Biden administration officials said they’re concerned that the Chinese government could force TikTok to spy on its 150 million U.S. users or to distribute propaganda.

TikTok said it would refuse to comply with such a request—and that it has proposed a $1.5 billion plan to the Biden administration that would silo its U.S. operations from China’s influence.

The debate over banning TikTok in Helena mirrored the conversation in Washington. Republican state Sen. Shelley Vance said she introduced the bill—which was written with the help of Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, also a Republican—over the national-security concerns. The Montana Senate approved it last month, 30-20, with bipartisan support.

The bill’s detractors also came from both parties. Just as liberal Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and libertarian-leaning GOP Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky have raised concerns about congressional efforts to ban TikTok nationwide, like-minded Montana lawmakers from both parties did the same in Helena.

won't work, but good on them for trying

I’d love Instagram, FB, & Twitter banned too.

Social media is the death of society

so dumb

TikTok is absolutely China spying on us. But lol at the hypocrisy of our government banning an app to spy on us when they themselves are using our devices to track us.

None of this means anything. They're just banning it from "state devices"

What is funny is how the US govt and various big tech companies spy on everyone, but Tiktok is being singled out because muh China even though all American Tiktok data goes through Oracle.

"Government knows best" when it comes to this idiot.

Agreed

Who are you calling an idiot, broke boy?

The politicians be like, "Spying on you is Google's job!" as they take their big fat bribe from Google. Then Google sells it's spy data to China.

He is saying its pretty retarded for ppl to rely on the gov to tell them what they can and can't/SHOULDN'T use.

MT is full of fhaggets.


The votes to let babies who survived attempted abortions just die.


See sig.

You, fuking government dependent fanboy.

Certainly dumbed it down a lot. A group of tik tok kids came from LA down to Carlsbad last week and filed themselves playing chicken across the train tracks. One dumb fuc7 didn't make it across.

Would be nice if it worked, but all you have to do is vpn to download. It needs to be taken off the App Store entirely in order for it to work

I hope Biden bans it just to lol at the zoomers who voted for him

Its because their google overlords dont own it. if they did it would be mandatory for people to use it.

Social media is cancer and TikTok is the worst... it would be best for society if they were all gone in the long run... outside of Twitter.

That said, the ban the government has cooked up is bull **** and Patriot Act 2.0.

I don't even know if I can get behind it, even if I think it is best for society, as I am pro-free speech and it would make me a hypocrite to dictate that dancing around like a moron with ****ty music in the background isn't protected.