US Government Appeals Against TikTok Ban

U.S. government announced on Monday appealing the ruling that blocked the Trump administration’s TikTok ban. The Trump administration had raised concerns over the videosharing app due to its Chinese ownership by way of parent company ByteDance and the potential risk of the app's U.S. user data being accessed by the Chinese government.

Meanwhile, Judge Nichols in the separate case led by the ruled that Trump overstepped his authority in trying to ban the app from the U.S., referring to the agency’s action as “arbitrary and capricious.” TikTok, in response, had vowed to fight the order in court while it also entered negotiations with American companies over the potential sell-off of its U.S. operations, in case the order was upheld.

In contrast, the U.S. Commerce Dept. spokesperson explained that the time of the ruling it would continue to comply with the injunctions but intended to “vigorously defend the executive order and the Secretary’s implementation efforts from legal challenges, according to News Tech.

Later, On September 18th, the US Commerce Department issued an order to block downloads of the app in the US. But a day later, the president said he had approved “in concept” a bid from cloud computing giant Oracle to become TikTok’s “trusted tech partner.” That deal called for creating a new entity, TikTok Global, which would be based in the US and take over processing and storage for all US-based the app users.

Earlier, the U.S. President Donald Trump issued ban on the two Chinese apps, TikTok and WeChat, describing the decision as “political manipulation and repression.” Trump announced the closure of these two platforms within a period of 45 days, amid increasing tension between the United States and China.