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Donald Trump’s TikTok downloads ban blocked by US Court

LI NETWORK

US washington District Court has issued a preliminary injunction to prevent the TikTok app store ban from taking effect.

Court has temporarily blocked Trump administration order that was set to bar Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google from offering Chinese-owned short video-sharing app TikTok for download.

US Commerce Department issued a statement, “will comply with the injunction and has taken immediate steps to do so.”

The statement, which defended the TikTok order and Trump’s executive order demanding owner ByteDance divest its TikTok US operations within 90 days, did not specify whether the government would appeal.

TikTok Advocate John E. Hall argued the ban was “unprecedented” and “irrational” during a 90-minute Sunday morning hearing.

He added,”How does it make sense to impose this app store ban tonight when there are negotiations under way that might make it unnecessary?”.

TikTok submitted to the Court, “will also maintain our ongoing dialogue with the government to turn our proposal, which the president gave his preliminary approval to last week, into an agreement.”

ByteDance the parent company of TIKTOK on Sept, 20 said, it had struck a preliminary deal for Walmart Inc and Oracle Corp to take stakes in a new company, TikTok Global, that would oversee US operations after Trump said he had given the deal his “blessing.” Negotiations continue over the terms of the agreement and to resolve concerns from Washington and Beijing.

US Departments expressed national security concerns that personal data collected on 100 million Americans who use the app could be obtained by China’s Communist Party government.

The Justice Department told to the Court,”interfering with a formal national security judgment of the president; altering the landscape with respect to ongoing CFIUS negotiations; and continuing to allow sensitive and valuable user information to flow to ByteDance with respect to all new users.”