The agreement unveiled Monday between the Chinese group ByteDance, Oracle and Walmart to ensure the future of the TikTok application in the United States is more fragile than ever.
While neither Washington nor Beijing can agree on who will have the majority of the capital of the future TikTok Global entity, the social network remains under the blow of a disappearance of the application stores in the United States from Sunday evening .
Read also: Donald Trump and China reject the TikTok agreement
To avoid this scenario, TikTok filed a summary Wednesday in a Washington court.
The company is asking for a suspension of its impending ban from the App Store and Google Play, as WeChat, another Chinese app in the hot seat, obtained it last Saturday.
“
If the bans are not suspended, the damage to the plaintiffs will be irreparable,
” the platform writes in the court document.
And to support its claims, TikTok reveals the effects of Trump's threats on its activity.
Read also: In the United States, the fate of WeChat in suspense
The company claims to have lost $ 10 million in advertising revenue in August alone.
A dozen advertisers, including very large brands, canceled or suspended their campaigns on the social network after Donald Trump signed his presidential decree against TikTok.
The company now has the greatest difficulty in recruiting.
She says in the court document that 52 candidates declined recruitment offers within the company, explaining that her situation had become too precarious.
TikTok has also seen the departure of important American influencers, such as Charli d'Amelio, who joined the competing platform Triller.
TikTok fears a domino effect on other creators and, ultimately, on its audiences.
Evaporation of users
The company is also warning of a temporary ban on the app.
TikTok is indeed under a total ban on American soil from November 12 if its situation is not regularized by then.
TikTok made projections in the event that the social network was banned for a few months, then reappeared.
According to its calculations, a two-month ban would result in a disappearance of 40 to 50% of its daily users.
A six-month ban would result in the evaporation of 80 to 90% of its American users.
Before Trump's threats, TikTok was gaining 424,000 new users every day.
The social network also claims that the actions launched by the Trump administration are in no way motivated by the fear that TikTok will spy on its users for the benefit of Beijing.
“
As unclear and contradictory statements by the president and other officials in recent months have proven, the bans were not motivated by genuine national security concerns, but rather by political considerations related to the general elections in come,
”asserts the platform.
The TikTok summary will be examined by the courts on Thursday.
