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A federal court in California has issued an injunction banning the proposed ban of WeChat from Apple and Google app stores in the US This is a setback for the US government. She had ordered on Friday that the Chinese app could no longer be offered for download. WeChat was supposed to disappear from download platforms in the US on Monday and lose most of its functionality.
According to Judge Laurel Beeler, several WeChat users had filed a lawsuit. The plaintiffs raised serious doubts, Beeler said, and invoked the right to free speech enshrined in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Beeler found that an injunction was justified because WeChat would suffer too much harm through penalties, while the service could still prevail in the main proceedings. The ministry did not initially comment on the decision.
The temporary court order now states that the usability of WeChat for current US users must not be restricted. That would also have been a consequence of the Ministry’s order. You could have continued using the apps, but you didn’t get any updates anymore. This could have made the apps unattractive or even unusable over time.
Administration officials had argued at trial that lifting the ban would undermine President Donald Trump’s efforts to ensure national security. Beeler found, however, that while there is considerable evidence of how China is endangering national security, there is little specific evidence about WeChat.
Several million users in the US use WeChat, primarily to keep in touch with family and friends in China. The US government is warning that Chinese authorities could gain access to US data through WeChat. The operator rejects this.
The administration of US President Donald Trump has raised concerns about Chinese espionage as a reason for measures against the short video app TikTok. Trump views TikTok activities as a national security risk. He fears that the information of the approximately 100 million monthly users in the United States could be shared with the Chinese government. He had asked that the company be sold to an American company or closed.
Now the future of TikTok in the US seems certain. TikTok’s download block was postponed for a week on Saturday; Trump had reached an agreement between the Chinese owner of TikTok, ByteDance, and Oracle.
