San Francisco (AFP)

TikTok on Tuesday filed a petition with a Washington court to prevent an order issued by Donald Trump's administration from taking effect Thursday, as the US president seeks to ban the application of the Chinese group ByteDance in the United States.

"We are constantly facing new requests and we have no visibility on the possibility that our proposed solutions will be accepted, so we have requested a period of 30 days as allowed by the decree of August 14", explained TikTok.

Donald Trump signed two decrees against the social network this summer.

That of August 14 obliges ByteDance to sell the American activities of TikTok in 90 days, in the name of the "national security of the United States".

The tenant of the White House has accused for months, without proof, the very popular video-sharing platform of siphoning data from American users for the benefit of Beijing.

After negotiations with several companies, ByteDance and TikTok proposed to create a new company involving the IT group Oracle as a technology partner in the United States and retail giant Walmart as a business partner.

The project seemed to suit the US administration, but the platform is still awaiting the green light.

She complains that she did not receive any additional delay from CFIUS, the agency responsible for ensuring that foreign investments do not pose a risk to national security.

The CFIUS investigation led to the August 14 decree.

"Almost two months have passed since the president gave his preliminary agreement to our proposal (...). We have provided detailed solutions to finalize the agreement, but have not received any substantial feedback on our concrete project. in terms of personal data protection and security, ”TikTok said Thursday.

Two days before the deadline, "we have no choice but to file a case in court to defend our rights and those of more than 1,500 employees in the United States".

TikTok has 100 million users in the United States.

The app also fell under the decree of August 6, which also threatened to ban it by November 12, for the same reasons but under different terms.

But on October 30, a Pennsylvania judge seized by three TikTok content creators ordered the US administration not to prevent other companies from providing essential services to the platform, such as online hosting.

© 2020 AFP