A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from forcing Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their US app stores, in a ruling that came just hours before the companies were required to implement the ban.
Judge Carl Nichols ruled in favour of TikTok, which had argued that the Trump administration was infringing on free speech and acting in a capricious manner to harm the popular short-video app.
The US commerce department had ordered TikTok to be removed last Sunday. But it extended the deadline after US President Donald Trump gave preliminary approval for an agreement that would involve ByteDance, the Chinese owner of the app, selling a minority ownership stake to Oracle and Walmart.