What Montanas TikTok ban means for the popular social media app and its users

Posted by Fernande Dalal on Sunday, July 21, 2024

Bobby Allyn, NPR:

No, there's really no precedent for this.

And when I have talked to cybersecurity and tech experts, they were really stunned that this happened at all. I mean, if you think about it, it's going to be really, really hard to enforce, because the way that this technology operates is, if you take out your phone, and you pull up TikTok, it pings a cell phone tower that then talks to TikTok servers.

Just imagine you're in a border town, say, in Wyoming or Idaho, and you're near Montana, and you pull up TikTok, and it's pinged to the server, and you can't access it because of this ban. That's going to put you in a pretty weird and awkward situation. So there's a lot of technical — like, it's just going to be a really hard thing to really enforce because of that.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7sa7SZ6arn1%2Bjsri%2Fx6isq2ejnby4e9ahmK1lnaS7ta3NmqpmrJmgwbC3jJuYp2Wdmq6vv4yfpqtlpJ2ybrzOqaylmaJiwLCvyJqjZqWVmbaiecCpp2aZnpl6qsDSZqysnaKo