Image via TikTok and Evan El-Amin / Shutterstock.com
A US federal court in Washington has blocked the ban on TikTok from going into effect on Sunday night, at 11.59pm, as it had been scheduled.
The delay will allow the court to decide the ban’s legality and whether the app poses a threat to national security, as claimed by Donald Trump’s administration. In the meantime, TikTok users in America are able to continue using the app in the country.
As TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is headquartered in Beijing, Trump’s administration fears that the app could enable the Chinese government to breach user data privacy in the US. This resulted in the president
signing two executive orders to shut down the app in the country back in August.
TikTok has continuously rejected the claims, and filed a last-minute injunction to stop the ban from going into effect on Thursday.
The public hearing took place on Sunday morning at DC District Court by judge Carl J. Nichols, who presided the injunction. The judge blocked the ban on Sunday night, giving time for the two parties to finalize a deal.
ByteDance stated that it has made a
preliminary agreement for Walmart and Oracle to take up stakes in TikTok Global, a new company overseeing the US operations, to resolve the concerns between America and Beijing.
The deal is currently under review by the US government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).
[via
TechCrunch, cover image via
TikTok and
Evan El-Amin / Shutterstock.com]