The US state of Montana is being sued by five content creators shortly after announcing a total ban on TikTok. According to TikTok users, the ban infringes on their freedom of expression.
The content creators who are suing use the TikTok app for promotional and entertainment purposes, among other things. In some cases, the makers claim to earn substantial amounts of money with this. A ban on TikTok makes it impossible to “express oneself or communicate with others,” according to those behind the indictment.
The governor of Montana wants to ban TikTok to ‘protect’ citizens, fearing that ByteDance, the Chinese parent company behind TikTok, collects data from American users and shares it with the Chinese government. ByteDance has always denied this.
The law firm behind the charge, Davis Wright Tremaine, was behind a similar lawsuit by TikTok users in 2020 after then-President Donald Trump sought to ban the social media app . The order was then successfully suspended and later rescinded by the current president, Joe Biden.
The ban on TikTok in Montana is to take effect from January 1, 2024. More and more governments are banning the app on work phones of civil servants. This ban already applies in the United States and Belgium, among others.
