Montana’s Impending TikTok Ban Is A Dangerous Tipping Point
Montana legislators voted 54–43 today to ban TikTok from operating in the state and ban app stores from offering to download it.
The legislation is likely to become law, making Montana the first US state to ban the popular social media platform, a move that could spark a constitutional battle and jeopardize digital rights.
People who already have TikTok on their devices would not be breaking the law, which will now go to Greg Gianforte, the Republican governor of Montana.
The move comes after years of amorphous claims by the US government under two presidential administrations that TikTok, which has 150 million American users, is a threat to national security because its parent, ByteDance, is a Chinese company.
Gianforte is expected to sign the new bill, which would take effect on January 1, 2024. In December, he banned TikTok from Montana government devices, a step that other states have also taken in recent months.
In announcing That ban, Gianforte said, “I also encourage Montanans to protect their personal data and stop using TikTok.”
However, a state ban is radically different from a government device embargo and blanket stimulus. It has implications for the speech and hearing ability of Montana residents, rights protected by the US First Amendment.
“We are under no illusions that this is not going to be challenged,” Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen said The New York Times On Wednesday.
“I think this is the next frontier in First Amendment jurisprudence that will probably have to come from the US Supreme Court and I think that is probably where this is going.”
Shortly after today’s vote, TikTok condemned the bill on both First Amendment and logistical grounds.
“Proponents of the bill have admitted that they do not have a workable plan to operationalize this attempt to censor American voices and that the courts will decide the constitutionality of the bill,” TikTok spokeswoman Brooke Oberwetter said in a statement. .
“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.”
An earlier version of the bill would have required internet service providers to block connections to TikTok in Montana, a task that ISP representatives said was not feasible.
A trade association representing the companies that run mobile app stores, namely Google and Apple, also told the Montana legislature that it would be virtually impossible to stop TikTok downloads in Montana.
Google declined to comment. Apple did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
Riana Pfefferkorn, an academic researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory, says Montana Attorney General Knudsen’s claims about a “next frontier in First Amendment jurisprudence” are overblown, particularly given the attorney general’s comments during the recent Times interview.
In it, Knudsen specifically noted that his office was motivated to seek an outright ban on TikTok after hearing protests from parents that TikTok posts included discussions of drug use, pornography and suicide.