The Montana state legislature voted to ban TikTok in the state. The bill would prevent a company from allowing people in Montana to download the app.
https://leg.mt.gov/bills/2023/billpdf/SB0419.pdf
The bill states that the reasoning is because 1) China is an adversary to the U.S. and 2) TikTok promotes harmful behavior and collects data on users.
It was sponsored by a Republican and mostly passed by Republicans. Most Democrats opposed it but were outvoted. It still needs to be signed by the governor, and it would be open to court challenges.
I don't like TikTok, but that's not a promising snapshot for where lawmakers are in terms of software control.
How will they enforce such law? They can't "physically" prevent people from downloading the app (many ways lead to the market). What about the people who has already downloaded the app? You can't ask them to uninstall the app, or stop using the app. Complete waste of tax payers money.
PS: Imagine driving to a neighboring state for the sake of downloading an app. Ha!
App stores could disallow installing the app for users in Montana. Can be circumvented by VPN and/or sideloading. The domain itself could be blocked by ISPs for existing users in Montana. Can be circumvented by VPN.
I mean there's not a whole lot you can do in terms of restrictions that can't be circumvented.
