Still Competing, TikTok Continues To Operate In The US

JAKARTA - United States (US) federal judges have temporarily suspended President Donald Trump's administration order banning the download of the TikTok app on Apple and Google services.

The decision came after District Judge Carl Nichols received a request from TikTok hours before Trump's order was implemented, Reuters reported.

TikTok says it is happy with this and the company will also maintain its ongoing opinion with the government to turn a proposal previously approved by the president last week into a deal.

In a brief report filed ahead of the trial, TikTok attorney John E. Hall said Trump's bans were volatile and would undermine data security. Because the ban will take effect by blocking updates and fixes to applications used by around 100 million Americans.

"The ban is unnecessary, as negotiations are ongoing to restructure TikTok ownership to address national security issues raised by the government," said John.

TikTok's parent company ByteDance said on September 20 it had reached an initial agreement with Walmart Inc and Oracle Corp to take a stake in the new company, TikTok Global.

The two companies will oversee TikTok's US operations after Trump has granted his blessing to the deal. Currently, negotiations are continuing on the terms of the agreement and to resolve concerns from the US and Beijing.

But on the other hand, Trump administration lawyers argue that the president has the right to take national security measures, and said the ban was necessary because there were suspicions that TikTok was the Chinese government's spy through ByteDance.

For information, until now TikTok is estimated to have 100 million users in the US and 700 million worldwide. This makes it one of the largest short video services in the world.