Federal judge seems to side with ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation that ban is unenforceable and unconstitutional
A federal judge appeared skeptical about Montana’s TikTok ban in a hearing on Thursday, telling representatives of the state that their argument for restrictions on the app “just confuses me”.
US district judge Donald Molloy heard arguments in a case filed by TikTok and five Montana content creators who want the court to block the state’s ban on the video-sharing app before it takes effect 1 January.
Molloy called the impending ban “paternalistic”, according to the Washington Post. After an hour, Molloy ended the hearing without ruling on the request for an injunction on the digital prohibition.
Because your suggest requires federal legislation that requires all of the big carriers and cell manufacturers/importers to fundamentally change how their platforms share and control data. All of which are currently monetized by those companies and thousands more. It’s definitely the right direction but that’s not what this court case is about and is too big of an ask. The court case is trying to protect users by disallowing a state from banning entire platforms of expression.
And besides, even if such regulation went through, that doesn’t mean that apps like TikTok couldn’t still weaponize the data you willingly give them: view history, engagement history. To do that you’d need to regulate apps wholesale and when someone like TikTok (and honestly, Google and Apple as well) say “no” the only answer would be to delist them from stores which gets us right back to here. And if something like TikTok were banned across app and play stores? A LOT of people would very quickly learn how to sideload apps, anyways.