Montana must pass a law this Friday to ban TikTok, a text that is difficult to apply but that increases the already strong pressure in the United States against the popular platform of the Chinese group ByteDance.
The lower house of this northwestern US state, with a Republican majority, voted this Thursday with 60 votes in favor and 39 votes against the SB419 law that “bans TikTok in Montana.” The final vote is scheduled for Friday; the Senate had already approved this text in March. Once ratified by the Governor, it must go into effect on January 1, 2024.
“It is time to face the Chinese and ban TikTok,” launched representative Brandon Ler after an accusation against China that “wants our data and our intellectual property” and a dangerous application for “the health and safety, especially of the youngest “.
multiple charges
From Montana to the White House, many elected Democrats and Republicans accuse the short, entertaining video app of being used by the Chinese government to spy on and manipulate users.
The United States Congress is working on bills to banish it from the country. TikTok, which has always denied these accusations, has spent several years trying to reassure the authorities, to no avail.
“This law constitutes an outrageous violation of the rights of Montana residents to free speech” and a “disastrous precedent,” Vanessa Pappas, TikTok’s chief operating officer, reacted after the Senate vote in early March.
The text “will exclude Montana from a community of 150 million people in the United States,” he insisted. The law prohibits app stores, which are essentially Google (Android) and Apple (iOS), from distributing TikTok to Montana users. Apple and Google did not immediately react to AFP’s requests.
The text mentions fines for offending companies, but not for users. It is also specified that the law would be invalidated if TikTok was bought by a company from a country “not considered an enemy” of the United States.
Several independent experts noted that the law would certainly be challenged in court and was unlikely to be enforced.
“SB419 perfectly sums up the absurdity and bigotry of the Montana Assembly,” Keegan Medrano, an official with the local branch of the powerful ACLU civil rights association, tweeted Wednesday.
“The TikTok ban is unconstitutional in terms of free speech, impractical since it exempts Internet service providers and VPNs (virtual private networks), and is driven by anti-Chinese bias.”
Source: BFM TV
