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Chinese-owned social media giant TikTok has filed a lawsuit against the US state of Montana over last week’s move to ban the app’s use entirely in the state.
Montana, a Republican state, is the first state to enact a blanket ban on the app, though it is now banned on many state and federal government devices. Following the first wave of bans last year, many countries, including Australia, followed suit.
No other US state has yet announced such a broad ban, nor has any other country.
“We are challenging Montana’s unconstitutional TikTok ban to protect our business and the hundreds of thousands of TikTok users in Montana,” TikTok said on Twitter.
TikTok believes that the ban is unconstitutional, as only the federal government can regulate foreign commerce.
TikTok also said the ban is “unconstitutionally shutting down the forum for speech for all speakers on the app and singling these speakers out for disfavored treatment with the content-based rationale that videos on TikTok are harmful to minors”.
However, TikTok also claims that the ban is entirely too “punitive”.
“Rather than regulate social media companies more generally, the ban banishes TikTok, and just TikTok, from the state for purely punitive reasons, as evidenced by the state’s decision to single out plaintiff for harsh penalties based on speculative concerns about TikTok’s data security and content moderation practices,” the complaint reads.
The lawsuit names Montana Attorney-General Austin Knudsen as the official enforcing the ban, but a spokesperson for Knudsen said the A-G is fully prepared.
“We believe our legal challenge will prevail based on an exceedingly strong set of precedents and facts,” said Emily Flower, a spokesperson for Knudsen. “We expected legal challenges and are fully prepared to defend the law that helps protect Montanans’ privacy and security.”
TikTok’s parent company is ByteDance, a Chinese technology company with possible ties to the Chinese Communist Party. The CCP’s possible access to TikTok user data, and the amount of data the app tracks, is at the heart of many jurisdictions’ issues with the app.
TikTok has been proposing to keep US user data on-shore data centres built in partnership with Oracle to allay any fears of its misuse, but so far, the work is progressing slowly.
Professor Matthew Warren, director of the Centre for Cyber Security Research and Innovation at RMIT, believes Australia could well make the same move to ban the app.
“TikTok poses a risk for all Australians due to the excessive data collection by the TikTok app, which can lead to cyber risks,” Warren said via email. “Montana’s ban of TikTok is part of a global trend due to global security concerns and is a key step as it is banning the use of TikTok by everyday citizens.”
“The Australian and the Victorian state government have banned TikTok for all government employees. It is a natural next step now to ban TikTok completely as they have a duty of care to protect all Australian citizens against all risks, including cyber risks,” Warren said.
“However, any ban won’t remove the apps from users’ phones if they already have it installed.”
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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