Lawmakers in US State ‘Montana’ Vote to Ban TikTok

With this historical legislation, Montana has become the first US state to completely ban TikTok on all personal devices

Montana has become the first US state to completely ban short video streaming platform TikTok, after lawmakers voted and passed a legislation requiring a TikTok ban for all personal devices in the state.

Once this ban is fully implemented, TikTok users in Montana will not be able to open the TikTok application on their phone, whereas app stores will also be told to offer the application in Montana anymore.

This historic legislation stands to be yet another pushback for TikTok, who is already suffering from a series of investigations and bans from governments all around the world. Many countries including the USA, Canada, Australia and UK have all banned their government agencies from using TikTok on all government owned devices.

The reason for these detailed probes and investigations are national security threats attached to the application. Western governments believe that the application has connections with the Chinese government and can easily spy on government devices for the Chinese government, if it wants to.

These speculations about connections with the Chinese government stems from the fact that the Chinese State has a small amount of shares in Bytedance, which is the parent company to TikTok.

According to details, the voting in Montana’s House came down to a 54-43, making the legislation to ban TikTok win by over 11 votes thus implementing a state-wide ban on the Chinese application.

While the legislation has been passed with a majority vote count, it is facing severe opposition from not just TikTok but also a lot of activists from the US.

Zamaan Qureshi and Emma Lembke, Co-Chairs from Design it For Us, a coalition of youth activists platform said that “We believe that social media can be good for young people if they are designed for us. Bans like this one forgo a real opportunity to proactively address kids’ safety and privacy concerns on these platforms.”

Not happy about the decision, TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter said that “the bill’s champions have admitted that they have no feasible plan for operationalizing this attempt to censor American voices and that the bill’s constitutionality will be decided by the courts.”

“We will continue to fight for TikTok users and creators in Montana whose livelihoods and First Amendment rights are threatened by this egregious government overreach,” he added.

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