Montana Just Passed the First State TikTok Ban | Hacker News Reader

Montana Just Passed the First State TikTok Ban

gizmodo.com

31 pointsourmandave14 comments

The bill initially banned TikTok, but amendments reworded that phrasing to ban social media sites that allow data of Montana users to be accessed by foreign adversaries, where social media sites is any site where users can post pics, videos, commentary, etc.

So if I understand...

1. User from Montana says "cool pic" in your blog comments.

2. China, Venezuela, Iran, Russia, or North Korea government agent visit your blog.

3. You will be fined $10,000 everytime one of those adversaries accesses that comment.

That is how this law is worded as far as I can tell. I'm an incompetent non-lawyer so read it [1] yourself, maybe I missed something.

Maybe the bill I was reading wasn't the one that got passed.

[1] https://leg.mt.gov/laws/bills/2023/AmdPublicWeb/?bill=SB0419

> If TikTok or app stores violate the law, Montana’s Department of Justice could slap them with penalties of up to $10,000 per day for the length of the violation. Those fines would apply to entities facilitating TikTok’s download rather than the app’s users.

So Google and Apple each just pay $3.65M/year to the state of Montana and then it's business as usual?

More likely 10,000 per day per instance - so possibly a meaningful number.

Any competent judge will recognize it as a bill of attainder.

Or if not, meet the brand new viral chat company FlickFlock.

> We know that beyond a doubt that TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is operating as a surveillance arm of the Chinese Communist Party and gathers information about Americans against their will.

I sure wish we lived in a world where people making decisions for us, such as Sen. Vance here, had to actually back up the the things they say.

What kind of evidence would you consider reasonable given that the circumstantial evidence is already overwhelming?

I think in defense/strategy circles when planning they never, ever consider intent, only capability.

Literally, any evidence at all. I’d even accept the word of a security agency, but there’s nothing besides the “strong beliefs” of some politicians.

1. China operates the most sophisticated, comprehensive surveillance state in human history.

2. China is well known for running hacking campaigns against foreign adversaries (there are many examples of this).

3. Chinese companies by law are required to act under the direction of the CCP when requested.

4. It is well-established that TikTok harvests personal data way beyond what is required to target advertising or run a social media company.

If you read up on espionage history, and consider the lengths nation states go to gain intelligence (e.g sending nuclear submarines to the bottom of the ocean to tap cables), the idea that China would not make use of one of the largest troves of personal data in human history, from their primary geo-strategic competitor, is ridiculously naive.

Yeah and they don't even need TikTok for any of this. There are millions of apps built by Chinese companies already installed on millions of phones. I also have no doubt that they are also buying data from American companies who are selling it in bulk. If they really have so much power and intelligence, do you really think they'd put all their eggs into one app? They know that a ban of TikTok is totally possible, and have plenty of other things in place to harvest intelligence. I bet they are laughing at how we are all so scared of TikTok and wasting all of our time worrying about it.

Agreed. It would be good to take action across the entire spectrum of threats, but I'm struggling to understand the logic of "because there are a variety of threats, therefore no action should be taken against one of the biggest".

If the issue is the CCP connection, why aren’t all Chinese apps banned? If the issue is the excessive data collection, why isn’t that banned, regardless of who does it?

The most logical conclusion imo is that these reasons are simply bullshit.

What are the reasons for the CCP blocking all foreign media apps?

I sometimes wonder what the long-term impact is going to be of allowing advocates for foreign powers to fully participate in Western conversations, whilst not even Chinese citizens (let alone foreigners) can advocate against their own govt in China.

I’m guessing this violates interstate commerce constitutional rules, we shall see.

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