Good morning John.

So I have found myself in a very peculiar position that I did not ask to be in and do not particularly want to be in, which is that I live in the state of Montana which is the first state to pass a TikTok ban. And also, I am the person in the state of Montana with, I think I don't know, more TikTok followers than anyone else. It’s like a list. So that means that reporters have been calling me and the TikTok people have been calling me, TikTok like comms people. They're like, “Would you like to comment on this?” Also local reporters, and I really like to talk to reporters, like I think that it's a good thing to do, but at this point it's kind of weird that I haven't talked about it. It's like weird that I wouldn't.

I don't know what this is. Trash. What's that? Oh that's like a fishing lure.

So that's a weird situation to be in and I guess you're probably asking yourself, “Ok, well why don't you just talk about it then Hank?” Honestly, because I don't know what to say.

So first of all: Can you ban TikTok in the state of Montana? Uh, kind of maybe, but probably. at least at the moment, no. The idea of the ban, which is headed to the desk of Governor Greg Gianforte (who I think is expected to sign it), is that you wouldn't be able to download TikTok on your phone from an app store. And I don't like that. I don't want there to be, like, a fractured internet where some states have different internet than other states. That seems bad, but also maybe seems unconstitutional. I do imagine this will be fought in a number of ways in the courts. 

Um, as with so much these days, it seems performative. It seems like the goal is to get people to talk about it. Not to actually do something. Not to achieve a goal. To perform governance rather than to govern. Now, I don't think that a national TikTok ban would be that way. I don't pretend to understand the intricacies of international relations between the U.S. and China. The future that that relationship might bring, and what the Chinese government would do with its influence over TikTok today seems like potentially a very different thing than they would do with its influence over TikTok in 10 years.

You know, we all watched as these platforms were used to rend societies in different ways over the last few years, and it's not a good vibe. And I totally understand being worried about that, whether it is using that to spy on high-profile individuals or if it's used to sort of put your finger on the scale and promote content that creates more rifts in our society, which these platforms have done already on their own for purely economic reasons. And I don't see why they couldn't also do it for political reasons if they were asked to by a government, which does require companies that operate in that country to do what they say. At the same time, we've never dealt with the removal of not just speech, but an entire platform for speech. You know I don't think that TikTok is just a place where content goes, I think that it is many cultures, it is many genres. and many things are created there and will be created there that would not be created somewhere else. 

So I don't think on a national scale that this is easy. I think we've gotten ourselves into a pretty weird situation honestly. I think I've gotten myself into a pretty weird situation, but I think on the scale of the state of Montana, um, that it's a lot of the same performative stuff that is just infuriating me generally a lot right now. It's just a bunch of people over obsessed with whatever is being talked about on Fox News that day. And I don't really know if it's good to pour a bunch of attention on it because I live in a state where the people I vote for are not going to be in the majority anytime soon and the other people win points for doing this BS, and they like it when it gets attention so I don't really know what to do about that. But shout out to all the more sane voices in the Montana legislature. It’s a-it's a hard time to be doin’ what you're doin’, uh, but I appreciate you.

John, I'll see you on Tuesday.