the application begins to be banned in the United States, the beginning of the end?

The governor of Montana has taken a radical decision: purely and simply ban TikTok from the American state. A penalty of 10,000 dollars fine will be inflicted in case of downloading. A first in the country of Uncle Sam who is increasingly worried about the Chinese application.

This is an unprecedented fact. An American state has taken the decision to ban TikTok from its territory. This is Montana, a large state located in the northwest of the country. As a result, no more residents will not be able to download the app to their phone.

The bill was approved by Greg Gianforte, the state governor. From 1^er January 2024, Google Play Store and AppStore stores will be required to block TikTok downloads from within borders.

Montana bans TikTok, a first

The bill specifies that each download will be synonymous a fine of $10,000 per day of violation. Here, it will not be the users who will be worried, but ByteDance, the parent company of Tiktok, as well as Apple and Google. On Twitter, the governor justified this decision via a short message:

“To protect the personal and private data of Montanans from the Chinese Communist Party, I have banned TikTok from Montana. »

For its part, TikTok responded via a statement from her spokesperson, Brooke Oberwetter :

“Governor Gianforte has signed a document that violates the First Amendment (note: which defends freedom of expression in the United States) of the people of Montana by unfairly banning TikTok. It is a platform that entertains centenarians of thousands across the state. We want to assure Montanans that they can continue to use TikTok to express themselves, to make a living from it, or to find a community while we continue to defend their rights.”

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The law still has loopholes, such as the use of TikTok directly via Internet browser or the question of applications already installed. Furthermore, there is a good chance that a legal battle will be brought before the authorities of Washington by TikTok in order to overturn this decision.

Anyway, this anti-TikTok law represents a life-size test for the United States, which is increasingly wary of the Chinese application. The question of its prohibition, whether in administrations or for individuals, is not new and Montana, which has a little over a million inhabitants, should act as a laboratory. While banning TikTok sounds like a sensible idea to protect personal and private data, it also raises the question of web neutrality as well as on the power of the State on what we can use or not.