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Comment by Andaith | Hacker News Reader

"and demands mobile app stores make the app unavailable for Montana residents."

Oh so now they've made an enemy of Google & Apples legal teams? Because those two aren't going to want to set a precedent for all sorts of bans across random jurisdictions.

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They already do? Plenty of apps are banned in various countries, if I recall correctly.

It's usually the publishers who choose what countries they appear in rather than the store itself.

There's many country level bans by the store and have been for years.

But no sub-national level bans, that are enforced, at least from what I've heard.

At a technological level there is no difference. If there's a reliable mechanism for geo-walling content they can carve up the map however they wish. Nothing says it can only follow national borders.

These are states… should there be city level bans too? Where does it end. Now they need 50 different app stores just for the US customers? Does DC get its own? How should we handle US territories… I think Apple and a Google have plenty reason to fight this.

States are sovereign except for specific roles and powers explicitly reserved for the federal government or otherwise restricted from the states. These aren't provinces, theyre more like European countries in the EU.

Interstate commerce is specifically the power they don't have.

They already did when they geoblocked content in European and Asian countries to appease their authoritarian leaders in order to profit from their large markets.

YouTube being a direct competitor to TikTok, I doubt Google will object

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