Both TikTok and WeChat were supposed to get removed from the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store in the US on August 20. That was yesterday, and both apps are still present. Both TikTok and WeChat managed to avoid US bans, at least for now.
Both TikTok & WeChat have managed to avoid US bans… for the time being
ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, announced yesterday that it arranged to sell a 20-percent stake to Oracle and Walmart, the two companies will share that stake. It did all that before going public as a US-based company.
According to CNBC’s Alex Sherman, TikTok will end up with a 53-percent US ownership, after the investor makeup of ByteDance. TikTok reports that the new corporation has plans to establish its headquarters in the US with up to 25,000 jobs promised.
Following this news, the Commerce Department granted TikTok a week’s stay of prohibition. The deadline has been moved to September 27. Things are supposed to get into motion by then, though, so the app will hopefully avoid the ban altogether.
In terms of WeChat, it’s still here thanks to a court injunction on the ban. A Californian judge agreed with a group of plaintiffs, who use WeChat in the States. They said that the prohibition order would affect their First Amendment rights.
Both apps are still available in both the Google Play Store & App Store
So, both applications are still available in the Google Play Store and App Store in the US. Things may change in the coming week, of course, but for the time being, they’re still there.
ByteDance is expected to sort things out before September 27, so that it avoids the ban altogether. WeChat is still a mystery, though. Trump’s administration may still appeal the decision of the Californian judge.
TikTok managed to become one of the most popular apps in the Play Store, over a rather short period of time. This platform, which allows users to submit short videos, has not only managed to attract a lot of users, but it also made celebrities out of some content creators.
The app was formerly known as Musical.ly, and was US-based. Back in 2017, it was acquired by ByteDance. That transaction was not flagged by the US at the time.
The US President, Donald Trump, mentioned TikTok about a month ago, expressing his aim to ban the app. Android Police writes that younger users began to leverage the app to run political campaigns against him, and that may be one of the reasons why.
We will never know for sure, of course, but this situation created a lot of problems for ByteDance, that’s for sure. We’ll see what will happen in the end, but it seems like TikTok may get saved.