Montana Governor Greg Gianforte signed legislation on Wednesday prohibiting Chinese-owned TikTok from functioning in the state in order to safeguard people from suspected Chinese intelligence collection, becoming Montana the first U.S. state to do so.
Montana will make it illegal for Google and Apple’s app shops to sell TikTok in the state, but will not penalize users who use the software. The prohibition is set to go into force on January 1, 2024, and it is almost guaranteed to encounter judicial challenges.
TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese tech giant ByteDance, did not reply to a Reuters inquiry about legal action.
TikTok previously made a statement claiming that the new legislation “infringes on the First Amendment rights of the people of Montana by unlawfully banning TikTok,” and promising to “continue working to defend the rights of our users inside and outside of Montana.”
TikTok, which has over 150 million American users, has received increasing requests from politicians and state authorities in the United States to ban the app statewide due to worries about potential Chinese government control over the network.
The software has grown quite popular among teenagers. According to the Pew Research Center, 67% of 13- to 17-year-olds in the United States use TikTok, while 16% of all adolescents use the app fairly daily. According to TikTok, the “vast majority” of its users are over the age of 18.
In March, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was interrogated by a congressional committee about whether the Chinese government could access user data or affect what Americans saw on the platform. However, efforts to prohibit TikTok nationwide or to give the Biden administration greater powers to crack down on or ban TikTok have failed to gain traction in Congress.
The bill, according to Gianforte, will advance “our shared priority of protecting Montanans from Chinese Communist Party surveillance.”
TikTok has constantly denied sharing data with the Chinese government and has stated that it would not do so if requested.
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