This is the start of a legal battle that could lead to Washington. The governor of Montana promulgated a law on Wednesday May 17 banning the TikTok application in this American state. “To protect the personal and private data of users from the Chinese Communist Party, I banned TikTok in Montana”tweeted Greg Gianforte, the Republican governor of this Northwestern state, which has just over a million inhabitants.
TikTok is owned by Chinese group ByteDance, and many US lawmakers believe the short, entertaining video platform, frequented by 150 million Americans, allows Beijing to spy on and manipulate users. The app has always denied it. The US Congress is considering banning the app nationwide.
The Montana Parliament had adopted a text in mid-April which orders mobile application stores (Apple and Google) to no longer distribute TikTok from 1er January 2024. The companies concerned risk fines of 10,000 dollars (9,200 euros) per day for each violation, but users will not be worried.
Freedom of expression “trampled”
This law “violates the rights of citizens of Montana” in terms of freedom of expression, reacted a spokeswoman for TikTok on Wednesday, referring to the first amendment to the American Constitution.
In addition to the issue of data and misinformation, elected officials accuse TikTok of harmful effects on the health of the youngest (addiction, depression). Some Democratic representatives have replied that other social networks, such as Instagram, deserve to be regulated on all these subjects.
The powerful civil rights association ACLU has also accused the state of censorship. “With this ban, Governor Gianforte and the Montana Legislature are trampling on the freedom of speech of hundreds of thousands of Montana residents who use this app to express themselves, find information and promote their small business, on behalf of anti-Chinese sentiment”said Keegan Medrano, an official with the local branch of the ACLU, quoted in a press release on Wednesday.
The law would be invalidated if TikTok were to be bought by an American company (or a country not enemy of the United States). The White House has urged TikTok to seek such a solution if it wants to stay in the country. The administration of Joe Biden is discussing with Congress several bills aimed at banning the application, while the decrees already issued by his predecessor, Donald Trump, in this direction had failed.