Montana Governor Greg Gianforte signed into law Wednesday making Montana the first U.S. 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 US government previously banned the app on federally owned cell phones. The government also threatened to ban TikTok at the national level unless the app’s Chinese owners sell their shares. Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump already tried to ban TikTok in the US in 2020, but the court then stopped it.
The app has also been banned for government employees in several other Western countries. The app has over a billion users worldwide and is widely used in the US and Europe. There are fears that Chinese authorities and secret services could use the app to collect information from users or to influence users. The company has rejected such allegations.
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