A U.S. judge has temporarily blocked a Trump administration order that was set to bar Apple’s App Store and Google’s app store from offering Chinese-owned short video-sharing app TikTok for download at 11:59 p.m. on Sunday. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington D.C. issued the preliminary injunction in a brief order late on Sunday.
The Trump administration contends that TikTok poses national security concerns as personal data collected on 100 million American TikTok users could be obtained by China’s government.
Nichols’ detailed written opinion is expected to be released as soon as Monday.
The Commerce Department said in a statement it “will comply with the injunction and has taken immediate steps to do so.”
The injunction comes at a time when negotiations are underway to hammer out terms of a preliminary deal for Walmart Inc and Oracle Corp to take stakes in a new company, TikTok Global, that would oversee U.S. operations. Trump has said he had given the deal his “blessing.”
TikTok said it was pleased with the injunction and added it would maintain its “ongoing dialogue with the government to turn our proposal, which the president gave his preliminary approval to last week, into an agreement.”
MacDailyNews Take: The saga continues.
