In a statement issued soon after the Montana vote, a TikTok spokeswoman in the US called the move an act of censorship.
“The bill’s champions have admitted that they have no feasible plan for operationalising this attempt to censor American voices and that the bill’s constitutionality will be decided by the courts,” said TikTok’s Brooke Oberwetter.
“We will continue to fight for TikTok users and creators in Montana whose livelihoods and First Amendment rights are threatened by this egregious government overreach.”
While Republicans have made banning TikTok a priority, many Democrats have also been supportive of such a move.
Senators Mark Warner, a Democrat, and John Thune, a Republican, have jointly sponsored the RESTRICT Act, which would to give the Commerce Department power to ban TikTok and other apps that pose potential national security vulnerabilities. With 25 Senate cosponsors, bipartisan support has been growing.
Meanwhile, in addition to American president’s order to ban the app on federal government-issued devices, the Biden administration said in an executive order last month that TikTok would face a ban in the US if ByteDance did not divest the app.
Some US lawmakers have backed the argument that blanket bans on TikTok or any other similar platforms amount to censorship.
[embedded content]
Last month, US Republican senator Rand Paul of Kentucky blocked a move by Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, a vocal critic of Beijing and fellow Republican, to get unanimous consent for a TikTok ban bill. Paul cited concerns about free speech and uneven treatment of social media companies.
“I think we should beware of those who use fear to coax Americans to relinquish our liberties,” Paul said on the Senate floor.
“Every accusation of data gathering that has been attributed to TikTok could also be attributed to domestic big tech companies.”
New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat, said in a TikTok video posted at the same time that a ban would be “unprecedented” and added: “It just doesn’t feel right to me.”
