TikTok, a subsidiary of the Chinese group ByteDance, unsurprisingly filed a complaint Monday, May 22 against Montana, the US state that last week enacted a law to ban the application next year.
This ban "violates the Constitution of the United States in multiple ways," says the company, including the First Amendment that guarantees "freedom of expression," argues the document consulted by AFP.
Many U.S. lawmakers believe that the platform of short and entertaining videos, frequented by 150 million Americans, allows Beijing to spy on and manipulate users. The platform has always denied these accusations.
But the Montana legislature passed a bill in mid-April ordering mobile app stores (Apple and Google) to stop distributing TikTok from January 1, 2024, while Congress and the White House are mulling similar bills.
Equity
"TikTok exercises its editorial judgment, a constitutionally protected right, to disseminate and promote content created by third parties," the company's lawyers say. They also argue that the U.S. state does not have the legal authority to ban the app on national security grounds, a matter that falls under federal jurisdiction.
The complaint also refers to a principle of fairness. "Instead of regulating social networks in general, the law bans TikTok, and only TikTok for punitive reasons... based on speculative concerns about data security and content moderation," the lawyers argue.
Montana elected officials also blame TikTok for harmful effects on the health of the youngest (addiction, depression). Some Democratic representatives have retorted that other social networks, such as Instagram, deserve to be regulated on all these subjects.
Censorship
The powerful civil rights group ACLU has also accused the state of censorship. "With this ban, Governor Gianforte and the Montana legislature are trampling on the freedom of expression of hundreds of thousands of Montana residents who use this app to express themselves, find information and promote their small businesses, in the name of anti-Chinese sentiment," Keegan Medrano, an official with the local branch of the ACLU, said Wednesday. quoted in a press release.
Shortly after the governor of this northwestern US state, Greg Gianforte, signed the law into law, five TikTok users filed an appeal in federal court in Montana seeking the reversal of the decision.
With AFP
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