Montana bans Telegram, WeChat and TEMU from government devices

On Wednesday, Montana Governor Greg Gianforte did not Only Ban Tiktok in the entire state. He also accused Telegram, WeChat and the shopping app Teemu to be “tied to foreign adversaries” and directed that they and similar apps be banned from government equipment and all state businesses. Gianforte also cited TikTok owner ByteDance’s CapCut video editor and Lemon8 as examples of the offending apps.

With this ban, Gianforte is largely 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: it was founded in Russia but is currently Headquartered in Dubai, Gianforte’s letter claims the Russian government uses the app to “monitor users and obtain personal, sensitive, confidential information,” perhaps in reference to Wired’s february report,

Montana’s new policy will take effect June 1. The list of devices that cannot have the apps includes “all state-issued cell phones, laptops, tablets, desktop computers and other devices that connect to the Internet.” And the ban won’t just apply to government employees: Gianforte says that “no third-party firm doing business for or on behalf of the state of Montana will use these applications.”

Gianforte already blocked TikTok on government devices or devices connected to state networks until December, so it extends that policy to a suite of other major apps. For example, WeChat and Telegram messengers are widely used for chat, and shopping app Teemu 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 instructs them to “remove immediately.”

Despite Gianforte’s claims that it is “well documented” that TikTok provides personal information and data to the Chinese Communist Party, it is unclear whether owner ByteDance actually passes that data back to the government. But as we reported in March, Congress doesn’t seem particularly interested in answers — many have already made up their minds.