On Wednesday, Montana Governor Greg Gianforte didn’t Just ban TikTok statewide. He also accused Telegram, WeChat and the shopping app Temu about “connections with foreign adversaries” and directed that these and similar apps be banned from government devices and all state-owned enterprises. Gianforte also cited TikTok owner’s CapCut and Lemon8 video editor ByteDance as examples of offensive apps.
With this ban, Gianforte appears to be largely targeting China-related apps, on condition that ByteDance, owner of Temu Pinduoduo, and owner of WeChat Tencent are based within the country. Telegram is an exception: it was founded in Russia, but now it’s based in Dubai. Gianforte’s letter claims that the Russian government uses the app to “monitor users and procure personal, sensitive, confidential information,” possibly referring to Wired February report.
Montana’s recent policy will go into effect on June 1. The list of devices on which the appliance can’t be installed includes “all state-owned mobile phones, laptops, tablets, desktops and other devices that hook up with the Internet.” The ban is not going to just apply to government employees: Gianforte says that “any third party corporations doing business for or on behalf of the state of Montana may not use these apps.”
Gianforte has already blocked TikTok on government devices or devices connected to the state network since Decemberso this extends this principle to a collection of other major applications. For example, WeChat and Telegram Messenger are widely used for chats, and the Temu shopping app is currently the preferred free app within the United States on the App Store and Google Play. If malicious apps are currently being downloaded to any devices, Gianforte has beneficial their “immediate removal”.
Despite Gianforte’s claims that it’s “well documented” that TikTok provides personal information and data to the Chinese Communist Party, it’s unclear whether ByteDance’s owner is definitely providing this data to the federal government. But as we reported in March, Congress doesn’t seem particularly involved in answers — many have already decided.
