A federal judge has recently blocked Montana’s previous ban on TikTok, claiming it unconstitutional. According to Billboard, the social media platform was blocked this past Thursday, November 30. The judge’s ruling was a temporary win against Montana’s conservative ruling and how the state legislature went “completely overboard” over the ban on TikTok. A final ruling discussing the state’s ban on TikTok will be announced in the near future. Many content creators and attorneys seeking to defend the social media platform have begun to argue against Montana’s ban on TikTok since the 12th of October.
Donald Molloy, the U.S. District Judge, discussed his views on the TikTok ban. He described the ban “oversteps state power and infringes on the Constitutional right of users and businesses.” He has also discussed how the Montana legislature focused on China and its role in TikTok. The legislature also created a separate law discussing protecting consumers’ digital data and privacy.
The law banning TikTok in Montana was made in May of this year. The law was passed as an effort to completely ban the app, given that the Chinese government was able to access a user’s information from TikTok. The company that made the app was Bytedance, whereby its headquarters located in Beijing, China. The ban was supposed to take effect on the 1st of January of next year. Terms of the law include a prohibition of downloading the app in the state. There will be a fine of $10,000 each time a user accesses or downloads the app. No penalties will be given.
The spokesperson of the social media app, Jamal Brown, recently responded to the statement of Montana’s previous ban on TikTok. Brown described his upvote for the judge’s block of the social media app and that everyone who lived in Montana could enjoy the app. However, Austin Knudsen, the Republican spokesman for Montana’s Attorney General, responded to the judge’s action to block Montana from banning TikTok differently. His spokesperson, Emily Cantrell, discussed Knudsen’s potential efforts to defend Montana’s law to protect its people from the Chinese government from having their data stolen and used.
Montana is not the only state that has made efforts to ban TikTok. In response to the state’s ban on the app, Bytedance has responded to the bans as “political theatre[s].” The company has also discussed that they are making active efforts to protect data in the U.S, ultimately storing the data into Oracle servers. Bytedance also reaffirmed that they had not received any data from users from the Chinese government and would not provide any data if they were prompted to.
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