TikTok filed a lawsuit on Monday in a Montana (USA) court against a law enacted last week that prohibits the use of the application in the state, the first that has imposed a veto of this type.
The popular social network, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, said in documents filed with a Montana federal court that the ban is “unprecedented” and “unconstitutional.”
“We are filing a lawsuit against the unconstitutional ban on TikTok in Montana to protect both our business and hundreds of users,” the company wrote on its Twitter account.
In the lawsuit, lawyers representing the social network, which has more than 150 million users in the US, stress that the state law violates the first amendment of the country’s Constitution, which protects freedom of expression, and who meddles in federal affairs.
Montana Republicans, who control both houses of the state Congress and the governor’s office, are leading the move and accuse Tiktok of collecting user data with the intent to provide it to the Chinese Communist Party.
In its lawsuit, TikTok defended itself against these accusations, which it called “unsubstantiated speculation”, and maintains that it “has not shared and will not share user data with the Chinese government.”
He also assured that “it has taken important measures to protect the privacy and security” of those who use it.
This lawsuit is in addition to another filed last week by several “influencers” against the ban on Tiktok in Montana.
The new law will go into effect on June 1 and will penalize mobile application services (such as the Apple App Store or Google Play) that allow users in Montana to download TikTok with fines of at least $10,000.
Montana’s ban is the toughest approved so far by a US territory and goes beyond the ban that the federal government and half of the country’s 50 states have implemented so that public officials cannot have TikTok on their cell phones.
The FBI, members of Congress and state authorities have raised concerns that TikTok could be used by Beijing for spying, as the app is owned by a China-based company. EFE