TikTok filed a federal lawsuit against Montana on Monday after the US state passed a law banning the app last week.
“We oppose Montana’s unconstitutional TikTok ban to protect our company and the app’s hundreds of thousands of users in the state,” TikTok said in the suit.
Greg Gianforte, the governor of Montana, signed into law last week making Montana the first US state to ban TikTok. The law makes it illegal for Google and Apple app stores to offer the app from Chinese technology company ByteDance in the state. Residents who use the app will not be penalized. The law must come into effect on January 1, 2024.
“The state has taken these extraordinary and unprecedented measures based on nothing more than baseless speculation,” TikTok said in the indictment. There are fears that the Chinese authorities and secret services could use the app to collect information from users or to influence users. For that reason, the app has already been banned for government employees in several Western countries.
The app is also banned on federal government devices in the US. In his announcement about the new law, the governor of Montana also referred to interference from the Chinese state. TikTok has always denied such allegations.
The app has over a billion users worldwide and is widely used in the United States and Europe.
Free unlimited access to Showbytes? Which can!
Log in or create an account and don’t miss a thing of the stars.
#TikTok #files #lawsuit #Montana #ban