Super-trendy Montana legislators become first Reps. to pass bill banning TikTok

Earlier this evening, the Montana House Of Representatives passed State Bill 419—becoming, in the process, the first state legislature in the United States to ban social media service TikTok from their state. (At least, once Republican Governor Greg Gianforte signs the bill into law.)

Stating that “Tiktok may not operate within the territorial jurisdiction of Montana,” the bill specifically targets app stores and TikTok itself for penalties, attempting to ban the app from being distributed in the state. (Nobody’s targeting actual TikTok users, presumably because no one could stand up to their brutal and well-choreographed protests.) Critics of the bill—including spokespeople for TikTok—have derided the measure as censorship, while also pointing out that app stores don’t typically care about whether you’re standing in Montana when you try to download or log in to a particular app.

All of this, of course, is part of the wider chaos surrounding TikTok at the moment, with various government types getting increasingly strident about the relationship between the service’s parent company, ByteDance, and the Chinese government. It’s one of those weird places where the Trump and Biden administrations have had some fairly serious overlap: The former went after TikTok unsuccessfully way back in 2020, and now Biden’s government is pushing back, too, claiming to be worried about the Chinese government’s ability to seize data on American users from the site. At some point, this is going to erupt into some kind of extremely messy federal challenge—possibly kicked off by this very Montana law, which is the kind of legislation that’s basically begging for a trip to the Supreme Court.

In the meantime, though, congratulations TikTok-ers of Montana: You are officially now not just very trendy, but also cool rebels standing up against a draconian government. Certainly, this will not drive god knows how many more people to the service.

Update, 4/15/23: The American Civil Liberties Union has issued a statement this weekend in response to the Montana ban, saying, “Banning TikTok in Montana is censorship, pure and simple. Tonight, Montana lawmakers have chosen fear and bigotry over the First Amendment rights of hundreds of thousands of Montanans who use TikTok to communicate, get the news, and express themselves daily. Targeting one app from one country does not solve whatever problem the Montana legislature thinks they’re solving. We won’t stop fighting against this unconstitutional ban.”

[via NPR]