United States: Montana is about to pass a law to ban TikTok

United States: Montana is about to pass a law to ban TikTok

Montana must pass a law on Friday to ban TikTok, a provision that is difficult to enforce but increases already strong pressure in the United States against the popular platform of Chinese group ByteDance.

The House of Representatives in this Republican-majority northwest state voted 60-39 on Thursday in favor of bill SB419 that would “ban TikTok in the state of Montana.”

The final vote is scheduled for Friday – the Senate had already approved that text in March. Once ratified by the governor, it should go into effect on January 1, 2024.

“It’s time to stand up to the Chinese and ban TikTok,” actor Brandon Lear launched after an indictment against China that “wants our data and our intellectual property” and a dangerous application to “health and safety, especially the little ones.”

From Montana to the White House, several Democrats and Republican-elect are accusing the app of using short, entertaining videos by the Chinese government to spy on and manipulate users.

The US Congress is working on bills to banish them in the country.

TikTok, which has long denied the allegations, has tried in vain to reassure the authorities.

Vanessa Pappas, TikTok’s COO, responded after the Senate vote at the beginning of the walk.

She insisted that the text would “exclude Montana from a community of 150 million people in the United States.”

Courts follow up

According to a spokeswoman for the app contacted Thursday, the authors of this law “admitted themselves to the lack of a realistic plan to implement this attempt to censor American votes.”

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The constitutionality of this text will be decided in the courts. “We will continue to fight for TikTok users and content creators in Montana,” she added.

The law prohibits the two app stores, namely Google (Android) and Apple (iOS), from distributing TikTok to users in Montana.

Apple and Google did not immediately respond to requests from AFP.

The text mentions fines for violating companies, but not for users. It was also specified that the law would be invalidated if TikTok was purchased by a company from a country that is “not considered an enemy” of the United States.

Several independent experts have indicated that the law will almost certainly be challenged in court, and is unlikely to be enforced.

“It raises many thorny questions, and it is not clear how the state will be able to defend itself and win,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond.

“Montana wants as little regulation as possible,” he said. “We certainly can’t take their firearms away from them.”

‘anti-Chinese prejudice’

“SB419 perfectly embodies the absurdity and bigotry of the Montana House,” Keegan Medrano, an official with the local chapter of the powerful Civil Rights Union, wrote on Twitter Wednesday.

“Banning TikTok is unconstitutional in terms of freedom of expression, impractical because it excludes ISPs and virtual private networks (VPNs) and is driven by anti-Chinese biases.”

At the end of March, the head of the app, Xu Qiu, faced attacks from elected officials of a US parliamentary committee during a hearing that lasted several hours.

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White House spokeswoman Karen Jean-Pierre spoke in the wake of “ongoing negotiations with ByteDance” and explained that the government “strongly supported” the Restriction Act, one of the bills meant to ban TikTok.

Unless ByteDance finds a US buyer for the platform in “three to six months,” “TikTok will likely be banned by the end of the year,” then estimated analyst Dan Yves of Webdush Securities.

The service is already blocked on the smartphones of civil servants and employees of many organisations, from the European Commission to the Canadian, British and US governments.

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About the Author: Hermínio Guimarães

"Introvertido premiado. Viciado em mídia social sutilmente charmoso. Praticante de zumbis. Aficionado por música irritantemente humilde."

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