America’s war against Tiktok has intensified. While other countries have decided to ban the popular Chinese social network from their public administrations, the state of Montana has gone a step further and announced a ban on the application for all of its citizens, citing security risks it poses to data. is for Information and its users.
The measure, promoted by Montana’s Republican governor Greg Gianforte, was approved in the local congress with a conservative majority, and considered fines of up to $10,000 a day. However, this ban will not apply to users who download the application, but will go directly to technology companies that offer TikTok in their application stores from January 1, 2024.
“Montana has taken decisive action today that protects private and sensitive information harvested by the Communist Party of China,” Gianforte said after his parliamentary victory, “including WeChat and other Chinese-origin social networks from Russia and Russia.” It also included banning state officials. Wire.
In April of this year, while the regulation was still moving through Congress, Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen asked lawmakers to pass the measure, saying, “Montana has an opportunity to lead. Not interested, but this is an extraordinary situation. This is a business controlled by someone who poses an existential threat to the United States of America.”
However, this initiative has its detractors. For example, the TechNet organization argued about the difficulty of states closing down application stores, and the NetChoice technology lobby ruled that the decision was a “clear violation of the constitution” and freedom of expression. Along these lines, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) affirmed that the measure represents a “practice of censorship” derived from “anti-Chinese sentiment”, as do other networks that collect data from their users, such as Twitter. Or Instagram, not vetted.
For its part, Asian ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, announced that it would appeal the decision before the courts. “We want to assure Montanans that they will be able to continue to use TikTok to express themselves, earn a living or build community” and that it will work to “protect the rights of its users.”
