Judge US prohibits government from blocking trade with TikTok

A US judge has blocked the US government from trying to ban trading with TikTok. Earlier, the judge said that TikTok should remain in American download stores, now the other measures are also off the table.

The Department of Commerce wanted to prevent US companies from still trading with TikTok and parent company ByteDance, but according to the judge, this is an invalid application of the law that should make this possible, writes The Verge. Earlier, the same judge banned the removal of TikTok from download stores just before the presidential election.

A ban on trading with TikTok could potentially prevent American creators from publishing videos on the platform. Some companies make money from publishing videos, while other companies spend money on TikTok with advertisements.

The deadline set by US President Trump’s administration for the sale of TikTok to an American company expired on Friday. ByteDance had proposed a construction that Walmart and Microsoft would start a subsidiary in the US called TikTok Global.

The US government found that acceptable, but the Chinese government subsequently blocked the export of certain artificial intelligence techniques, probably including TikTok’s algorithms. As a result, that deal did not go through immediately.