Two tech organisations on Monday, joined TikTok in its lawsuit to stop the use of the short-form video sharing app in Montana before it becomes law on January 1st, 2024.
In a joint court filing, Chamber of Progress and NetChoice, a national trade association with major tech platforms, claimed that Montana’s attempt to isolate Montanans from the world’s TikTok users “ignores and undermines the structure, design, and purpose of the internet.”
The Chinese internet giant ByteDance, which owns TikTok, filed a lawsuit in May to challenge the nation’s first state-level ban on the app, claiming it violates both the company’s and its users’ First Amendment rights to free speech.
On October 12, there will be a hearing about TikTok’s request for a preliminary injunction.
Over 150 million Americans use TikTok, but there have been increasing calls from lawmakers in the US for a national ban due to potential Chinese government involvement.
According to TikTok, it “has not shared, and would not share, U.S. user data with the Chinese government, and has taken substantial measures to protect the privacy and security of TikTok users.”
According to the IT groups, if the ban is allowed to go into effect, “if allowed to take effect, the ban will usher in a balkanized internet where information available to users becomes regionally divided brd on local politicians’ whims or preferences.”
They continued, “the internet, as a whole, will become fragmented and its value to humanity diminished.”
The state of Montana has the authority to punish TikTok $10,000 for each infraction. There are no sanctions for specific TikTok users under the legislation.
More than a third of Montana’s 1.1 million residents, or 380,000 users, according to TikTok, utilise the video service.
In 2020, former President Donald Trump tried to stop new TikTok downloads, but a slew of court rulings prevented the ban from going into effect.
