Montana's governor just signed the country's first law completely
banning TikTok.
It goes further than any other state's moves to ban that social media app.
The ban is expected to face some legal challenges,
potentially determining the fate of the app in the country.
>> That's right, the governor of Montana signed an all out ban
on TikTok that will go into effect on January 1st 2024.
Now, what does this mean exactly?
How is this gonna be implemented and enforced?
Well, according to the ban, the ban would punish Byte Dance,
which is of course, the parent company of TikTok, and
any app store that makes TikTok available to people in the state of Montana.
Now specifically byte dance.
And the app stores would be fined $10,000 for
every day that TikTok is available to use or download.
Individuals who downloaded it onto their phones will not be punished.
Now here's what the governor of Montana had to say about this.
The Chinese Communist Party using TikTok to spy on Americans,
violate their privacy and collect their personal,
private and sensitive information is well documented, by the way.
It's also well documented documented that every app does the exact same thing.
But nonetheless, today, Montana takes the most decisive action of any
state to protect Montana's people in Montana their private data and
sensitive personal information from being harvested by the Chinese Communist Party.
We found a way to use Chinese Communist Party twice in the same statement.
Now, it's unclear how this is gonna be enforced.
Like, there's a lot of questions surrounding this.
For instance, what if someone from out of state has TikTok on their phone and
they travel within the state of Montana?
How do you enforce this, right?
Doing it on a state by state basis seems a little weird.
Cybersecurity experts say that other than avoiding the fine,
there's nothing incentivizing the companies involved to comply and
it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to adequately enforce the law.
I've got more details on this, but so far I'm curious what you think, Cenk.
>> Yeah, so this governor once body slammed a reporter, literally,
and then back that's when he was running for Congress.
And then the Republicans elected him easily.
They're yeah, violence against reporters is AOK, right.
And he's complaining about the Chinese Communist Party because of their
oppression of what?
Freedom of the press.
And guys, I want you to just note this propaganda.
I want to get a note it a couple of times.
Everyone used to say China.
Now all the Republicans started saying China Chinese Communist Party.
Now the press is repeating Chinese Communist Party almost every time instead
of just calling the name of the country.
I got no love for the Chinese government.
They run concentration camps, right.
But understand where the propaganda is coming from and why, right.
All of a sudden we hate China.
By the way, we owe China trillions of dollars.
And so now all of a sudden we hate China and
we're trying to start hostilities with them.
And then the Republicans say, hey, let's not pay them back.
Let's squelch on the debt ceiling situation and not pay our debts.
So there's a lot of propaganda happening here.
And it's not just from the Chinese government.
It's also from American politicians like this governor.
Look, asking questions about where the data is going from TikTok is it
going to the Chinese government is a totally legitimate question.
Banning TikTok is not at all legitimate.
There's 1000 things you could do before you get to a ban.
You could make regulations.
I know Republicans pretend they hate regulations, right?
>> Right. >> But there's like 12 different
regulations you could do before you go to basically a death penalty and saying,
I'm banning it, right.
Because this isn't about actually protecting your data and privacy.
Republicans don't care about that.
Almost no one in Congress cares about that when American companies do it.
No, this is about an attack against China and propaganda against China, etc.
And so, look,
we did this when the Republicans were doing at the national level.
I'll do it here too.
We have a petition on it.
Get your hands off of TikTok.
And so go to tyt.com/petition/handsofftiktok
if you can use the hashtag handsoff TikTok.
Because there's a second part of this that is really important to it's,
not just against the Chinese government.
Much more importantly, TikTok has tons of young voters.
And those young voters are very progressive and
they're trying to put that genie back in a bottle.
And they don't want any kind of media that allows a progressive voice.
And TikTok at this point is probably the largest platform that has
progressives flourishing on it.
That's why they're attacking it.
>> So I wannna go to this video because the press has been analyzing this.
And one of the biggest issues is, all right, if you're serious about this
ban of TikTok, I mean, you need to be able to enforce it.
Are you gonna be able to do that?
So NBC and CBS both brought on legal analysts to break down the ban.
Let's take a look at that.
>> It leaves itself open to a number of different challenges, most notably
the First Amendment and something called the Dormant Commerce Clause.
Basically, an individual state can't unnecessarily or
unduly burden interstate commerce.
But what exactly that means is a little hazy.
And it's moved a lot over the years.
Even in the last decade or so, it's been redefined.
And then perhaps most importantly is that traditionally the Commerce Clause dealt
with things like widgets, tangible items that are sold in a particular state.
It's a totally different thing with this modern use of the Internet and
apps like this.
Because where is it sold, where is it used?
>> First Amendment is not absolute.
We have carve out to it.
That's why I teach a whole semester on the First Amendment if it was absolute,
it would be a one day class.
One of those carve outs is for national security.
Potentially immediate threats to national security.
I'm not sure that the evidence is there that indicates that TikTok does present
that kind of threat.
>> No, I'm not a lawyer, but
what both of those legal analysts said definitely makes sense.
I just don't really see a real mechanism in place to enforce this.
I think it's weird to have one state do it.
I do agree with you that there are ulterior motives here.
Guys, I'm guaranteeing it to you right now.
The ulterior motive, the Chinese propaganda.
Propaganda against the Chinese government is appetizer.
The entree is shut down those progressive voices,
they're getting killed by younger voters in elections.
Now, before, justice was on its way.
Now justice is almost here.
And so they lost Wisconsin because of young voters.
They lost the Biden Trump election because of young voters.
Republicans are in a cold sweat panic, and they're saying,
where are all the young voters who are agitating for progressive change?
They're mainly on TikTok ban it.
I mean, I'm really worried about national security.
Cybersecurity, I just read yeah, that's the ticket.
Cybersecurity, no, they're used to controlling almost all of media.
It's driving them crazy that they can't control young progressives on TikTok.
And I love it.
Hands off TikTok.
Don't let them touch it.