TikTok’s US ban is on hold

TikTok may continue to operate in the United States. The US Department of Commerce has announced this in a statement. It expressed its intention to comply with a court order, issued by a federal judge on October 30, caused by the lawsuit filed by three content creators of the popular Chinese app in a Pennsylvania state court. According to the agency, the platform will remain operational pending new legal decisions.

This measure comes after several back and forth between the Commerce Department, the president of the United States, Donald Trump and Tiktok. The music video application already has more than 100 million users in the United States alone. On August 6, the North American leader signed an executive order in which he gave ByteDance, the platform’s parent company, a period of 45 days to liquidate the property of TikTok on US soil. According to the president, the app would have been sharing data of US citizens with the Chinese communist government. 

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On September 18, the Department of Commerce issued a statement in which it announced that as of November 12, downloads of the popular music application would be prohibited. The objective was to force the company to sell all ownership of the service in the United States to a national company. TikTok, however, has been trying to convince the US government with a partnership agreement with two large companies in the country, Oracle and Wallmart. They would allow it to keep the service in its pocket, or at least a significant part of it.

The Chinese application filed a petition with the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Tuesday. It argued that Washington’s decision to force the sale of TikTok in the US was arbitrary and capricious. The company also explained that it had extensive discussions with the US Committee on Foreign Investment to address its concerns. However, Tiktok has received virtually no response in recent weeks.

TikTok assures that the negotiations to complete the agreement with Oracle, a technology company with which the Trump family maintains an excellent relationship, and Wallmart remain open. Those responsible for the application have been repeating for months that the accusations of the US government have no ground. Besides, all the company’s data centres are outside China and, therefore, are not subject to the control or legislation of the Asian country.