TikTok ban: Trump administration resort to court order blocking restrictions

TikTok ban: Trump administration resort to court order blocking restrictions

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The U.S. government on Monday appealed a decision by a federal judge earlier this month that prevented authorities from fully implementing their restrictions against the popular short video app.

The appeal challenges a December 7 injunction by U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols, which prevented the United States Department of Commerce from enforcing rules that would have made TikTok’s network traffic illegal by infrastructure companies.

The US government will not extend the deadline for a TikTok agreement, but negotiations continue

This decision came after an earlier injunction that prevented the Department of Commerce from banning downloads of TikTok from US app stores.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The company has been in the sights of the Trump administration for months. U.S. President Donald Trump accused TikTok of posing a national security risk because its Chinese owner, ByteDance, could be forced to hand over TikTok user data to the Chinese government. TikTok denied the complaint and said that TikTok stores US user data in Virginia and Singapore – outside the scope of Chinese law.

TikTok is closing an agreement with the United States government to address its concerns that it would attract American investors, such as Oracle (ORCL) and Walmart (WMT). But that deal was not finalized.
Earlier this month, the U.S. government refused to extend the deadline it had set for ByteDance to sell the app. But he also decided not to execute an executive order demanding the sale.

This allowed negotiations between TikTok and the American authorities to continue. But it is unclear whether concerns over the app will be resolved before President-elect Joe Biden takes office next month.

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