TikTok Ban Postponed, WeChat Ban Halted By Judge

The United States was ready to ban the new downloads of controversial social media apps TikTok and WeChat on last Sunday but they both managed to avoid the ban temporarily at the last moment after Trump said he had given a deal between TikTok, Walmart and Oracle his ‘’blessing’’ and a judge in California issued a preliminary injunction blocking the order of the WeChat ban.

Earlier last month, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to ban US transactions with ByteDance and Tencent, the Chinese owners of the popular short video app TikTok and messaging app WeChat, that was planned to go into effect last Sunday.  

TikTok was reportedly in talks with Microsoft for a while and its value increased by $77 billion after announcing its plans about the possible acquisition.But the tech giant last week announced that it’s offer was rejected by the owner ByteDance.

Oracle has reportedly won bid for TikTok’s US operations. However, talks didn’t come to a conclusion yet and the clock was ticking on TikTok, as well as on WeChat. 

WeChat was luckier as a US judge said that she was willing to grant a preliminary injunction as the order of the Trump Administration was too vague. But again, the judge hadn’t issued a final decision. 

The apps were planned to be banned in the United States last Sunday. At the last minute, one was saved by Trump’s ‘blessing’ and the other one by the US judge. 

“I have given the deal my blessing,” President Trump said announcing that he approved Oracle’s bid for TikTok ‘in concept’ and the ban has been postponed by 1 week.

And US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler has issued a preliminary injunction blocking the ban on the new downloads of WeChat, saying that WeChat users who filed a lawsuit showed “serious questions going to the merits of the First Amendment claim, the balance of hardships tips in the plaintiffs’ favor.” (Reuters)