The United States government on Thursday said that it will delay enforcement ban on TikTok that was set to come into effect from Thursday night. The decision came after a court ordered in favour of the app, owned by Chinese firm ByteDance.
President Donald Trump, who has been in feud with Chinese government over several issues, had ordered a ban on the app citing national security concerns voiced by US officials. However, the US Commerce Department had cited an injunction from a federal judge in Pennsylvania last month.
“The department is complying with the terms of this order,” the commerce department said in a statement, adding that the ban “has been enjoined and will not go into effect pending further legal developments.”
The ban was halted in the wake of “pending further legal developments,” which emerged after three prominent TikTokers in September argued in Philadelphia court that the app should not be banned in the country.
The judge had then said that “the Commerce Department had likely overstepped its authority when it tried to ban transactions on the platform”.
Earlier on Tuesday, it had asked the government for a 30-day extension because of “continual new requests and no clarity on whether our proposed solutions would be accepted,” which was denied.
The Chinese app had also filed a petition in a US Court of Appeals to review the actions by the Trump administrations Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFUIS).
Meanwhile, Oracle and Walmart have come as saviours as they plan to create a new company with ByteDance called TikTok Global which will be headquartered in the United States.
After ban in India, United States is the largest foreign market of the Chinese short video making app TikTok. It has 100 million users in the United States.
Picture Credit: Google