May 20, 2023, 05:33

On Wednesday, Montana governor Greg Gianforte didn’t only ban TikTok state-wide. He also accused Telegram, WeChat, and the shopping app Temu of being “tied to foreign adversaries” and directed that they and similar apps be banned from government devices and all state business. Gianforte also cited TikTok owner ByteDance’s CapCut video editor and Lemon8 as examples of offending apps.
With this ban, Gianforte largely seems to be targeting apps with ties to China, given that ByteDance, Temu owner Pinduoduo, and WeChat owner Tencent are all based in the country.
Telegram is the exception: Gianforte’s letter claims that the app was founded in Russia and that the Russian government uses the app to “monitor users and obtain personal, sensitive, confidential information,” perhaps referencing Wired’s February report. However, Telegram spokesperson Remi Vaughn tells The Verge that “the legal entity controlling Telegram at launch was located in the British Virgin Islands.” Telegram is currently headquartered in Dubai. Vaughn also said that “Telegram has never provided user data to the Russian government” and that the app’s messages are “securely encrypted and cannot be intercepted.”
Montana’s new policy will be in effect on June 1st. The list of devices that can’t have the apps includes “all state-issued cell phones, laptops, tablets, desktop computers, and other devices which connect to the internet.” And the ban won’t just apply to government employees: Gianforte says that “any third-party firms conducting business for or on behalf of the State of Montana shall not use these applications.”
ianforte had already blocked TikTok on government devices or devices connected to the state network as of December, so this expands that policy to a suite of other major apps. WeChat and Telegram Messenger are widely-used for chats, for example, and shopping app Temu is currently the most popular free app in the US in the App Store and Google Play. If the offending apps are currently downloaded on any devices, Gianforte has instructed them to be “immediately removed.”
Despite Gianforte’s claims it’s “well-documented” that TikTok provides personal information and data to the Chinese Communist Party, it’s unclear if owner ByteDance actually relays that data back to the government. But as we reported in March, Congress doesn’t seem particularly interested in the answers — many have already made up their minds.
They can't ACTUALLY block anyone downloading it and these crooks admit they won't prosecute anyone for using it.
It's similar to India which blocked TikTok, but then allowed the Great Satan's competing app to be used.
The end of dollar hegemony means the West now has to worry about their BALANCE OF PAYMENTS, just as they used to all those years ago, for those of us old enough to remember watching it on the news.
The worst hit will be the Great Satan and poodle who haven't had a trade surplus since 1975 and 1982, respectively. In fact, these useless genocidal parasites, Rudyard Kipling's "white man's burden", now have to generate a trade surplus as they're history's worst ever debtors.
It also serves as another "reds under the beds" hatemongering to shift the blame for the impoverishment of the sheeple and justify to the amerikan taxsucker the military/industrial complex ploughing their noses in the trough.
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