Many of the world’s largest consumer technology companies will closely monitor a federal court hearing in Montana on Thursday that could decide whether TikTok will have to stop operating in the state next year.
The popular video-sharing app is suing Montana to stop a state law, the first of its kind, that would ban TikTok in the state on January 1. The law was drafted by Montana’s Republican attorney general and signed by its governor in May. TikTok is asking the court to block the ban through a preliminary injunction.
Montana is at the forefront of a crusade by state Republican officials to rein in Big tech. Republican governors, attorneys general, lawmakers and conservative political groups say internet platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Snap are undermining conservative family values and preventing parents from protecting their children from harmful and predatory content online.
Many also believe that such platforms censor conservative political views and that TikTok, whose parent company, ByteDance, is based in China, poses security risks to American users.
Republican state lawmakers have introduced several first-of-its-kind state bills that would regulate popular social media apps, such as TikTok, and adult sites, such as PornHub. Focusing on issues such as giving parents control over their children’s online activities and stopping the moderation of online content, states have significantly outpaced their Democratic counterparts in setting rules that tech companies have called aggressive and legally dubious.
Civil rights groups have warned that new social media laws that give more control to parents could curb young people’s access to sexual health information. inhibit your ability to organize protests and cut them of LGBTQ communities.
Since 2021, state legislatures have passed at least 38 bills regulating social media content moderation, children’s use of social media, children’s use of social media, and technology-and-communication/2023-consumer-data-privacy-legislation” title=”” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>consumer online privacy and online pornaccording to data from National Conference of State Legislatures, a bipartisan policy research group; he Free Speech Coalition, a group representing the adult entertainment industry; and other organizations that track state bills.
Of these laws, states with Republican governors and Republican-controlled legislatures passed 21 (or 55 percent) of the measures. At the same time, Democratic-led states passed just 10, or 26 percent, of the laws. States with split Republican and Democratic control enacted seven laws, or about 18 percent.
At least 32 states, most of them led by Republicans, have also banned TikTok on government devices or state networks through new laws or state orders.
On Tuesday, Utah sued TikTok, accusing the company of misleading parents about the safety of the platform. This followed the state’s passage of a landmark law in March that would require parental consent for anyone under 18 to sign up for social media accounts and would allow parents to view their children’s posts and messages. .
“This is about parental rights, about ensuring that parents and families can make the best decisions for their children,” Gov. Spencer J. Cox of Utah, a Republican, said in an interview this week.
“I think it won’t be long until we see Democratic states doing exactly what we’ve done,” the governor added.
On Wednesday, New York lawmakers introduced a bill that would prohibit minors from using “algorithm-based social media” without their parents’ permission.
TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek said Montana’s ban was “unconstitutional” and that TikTok had “industry-leading safeguards for youth,” including prompts for users under 18 to log out after 60 minutes and checks. parenting for adolescents.
Antigone Davis, Meta’s global head of security, said the problem required “a comprehensive approach.”
“Teens move interchangeably between many websites and apps, and social media laws that hold different platforms to different standards in different states will mean that teens will be inconsistently protected,” he said in a statement.
Snap declined to comment.
Republican lawmakers have for years accused social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter of being biased against conservative views. But Republican state lawmakers stayed away from new laws regulating the companies.
That began to change in 2021, when some platforms banned former President Donald J. Trump following the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. That year, Florida lawmakers passed the first state law allowing fines for social media platforms that permanently ban candidates from running for public office in the state. Texas soon followed, passing a law allowing private citizens to sue platforms if their posts were removed because of their political views.
The new measures have encountered obstacles. NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association, lobbying groups representing Google and Facebook, sued to block both laws. A federal judge in Florida temporarily blocked the state law from taking effect, and an appeals court largely upheld that ruling. But a Texas appeals court overturned a lower court judge’s decision that had blocked the law. The Supreme Court, which often intervenes in disputes between appeals courts, recently agreed to hear the cases.
More recently, federal judges in Arkansas, California and Texas blocked three other new technology laws, saying they likely impeded free speech rights.
A report published last year by two conservative think tanks, the Center for Ethics and Public Policy and the Institute of Family Studies, was a catalyst for laws targeting online pornography and social media, according to Republican state lawmakers in Utah and Louisiana. The report, “tech-five-policy-ideas-for-states” title=”” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>Protecting teens from big tech”, provided a plan for states seeking to give parents more control over their children’s Internet use.
The report’s recommendations included requiring age verification for pornography websites and social media platforms and requiring social media platforms, such as Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram, to give parents access to accounts created by children under 18. The report also recommended that states require social media companies to block minors’ access to their accounts by default from 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m.
“tech companies do not have the right to speak to children over or against the authority of their parents,” he said. tech-five-policy-ideas-for-states” title=”” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>Clara Morell, author of the report and senior policy analyst at the Center for Ethics and Public Policy. “We are trying to restore parental authority and supervision.”
TikTok, in particular, is a sore point for lawmakers. A handful of Republican-led states filed lawsuits against the company and banned the app in their states.
Montana’s ban is radical. If enacted, it would fine TikTok and app store operators, such as Google and Apple, for violations. It drew fierce criticism from online content creators as well as the American Civil Liberties Union and technology trade groups.
Supporters of the new law include 18 other Republican state attorneys general, led by Jason S. Miyares of Virginia. Last month, they submitted a document asking the court to reject TikTok’s request to block the law.
They wrote that TikTok had harmed children in Montana and its states through dangerous “challenges” and noted that states had long had the power to protect their citizens from deceptive and harmful business practices.
Austin Knudsen, Montana’s attorney general, told The New York Times this summer that he believed his Republican colleagues in other states were closely watching the case to evaluate how to proceed with TikTok and that he anticipated it would eventually reach the Supreme Court.
A bipartisan coalition involving more than 40 state attorneys general investigate whether TikTok’s design and practices have caused or exacerbated physical and mental health problems among teens and children. That investigation is active. But Utah went ahead and sued TikTok on its own this week.
“We didn’t want to wait,” Governor Cox said. “We wanted to get going.”
