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A judge in Washington has temporarily blocked an order from the Trump administration banning Apple and Google from offering the Chinese-owned app TikTok for download, which was scheduled to go into effect at 11:59 p.m. Sunday.
US District Judge Carl Nichols granted a preliminary injunction requested by TikTok owner ByteDance to allow the app to remain available on US app stores, but refused “at this time. “to block additional commerce department restrictions that will take effect on November 12. that TikTok has said would have the impact of making the app unusable in the United States.
TikTok’s attorney, John Hall, had said that a ban would be “punitive” and shut down a public forum used by tens of millions of Americans.
In a written report filed before the hearing, lawyers for TikTok said the ban was “arbitrary and capricious” and would “undermine data security” by blocking updates and fixes to the app used by some 100 million Americans.
The company also said the ban was unnecessary because negotiations were already underway to restructure TikTok’s ownership to address national security issues raised by the administration.
TikTok said the proposed ban was not simply a business restriction, but would “ban constitutionally protected core speech – videos composed by millions of Americans that contain a wide range of individual expressions, ranging from art to political speech.”
TikTok has approximately 100 million users in the US and 700 million worldwide, making it one of the largest operators in the social media space.
The TikTok petition had speculated that Trump was retaliating over reports that critics used the app to snatch tickets to a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that they had no intention of going to, an event that embarrassed the president, with many fewer people in attendance than expected.
Government attorneys argued that the president had the right to take national security measures and said the ban was necessary due to TikTok’s ties to the Chinese government through its parent company ByteDance.
A government report called ByteDance “a spokesperson” for the Chinese Communist Party and said it was “committed to promoting the CCP’s agenda and messages.”
