Roughly five hours after an internal email went out Friday to Amazon employees telling them to delete the popular video app TikTok from their phones, the online retailing giant appeared to backtrack, calling the ban a mistake.
“This morning’s email to some of our employees was sent in error,” Amazon emailed reporters just before 5 p.m. Eastern time. “There is no change to our policies right now with regard to TikTok.”
The development comes days after India banned 59 Chinese apps, including Tik Tok and UC Browser, saying that they are “prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity and defence” of the country.
As per the report, employees had to remove the app by Friday to remain able to obtain mobile access to their Amazon email. However, Amazon workers are still allowed to view TikTok from their laptop browser.
Earlier, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had confirmed that the White House is “looking at” banning the Chinese social media apps including TikTok.
To recall, TikTok is among the various Chinese apps that have been recently banned in India due to the same security issues. This has led to the apps being removed from the Google Play Store and the App Stores, with ISPs blocking them too. Following the ban, the government is said to be taking information from the banned apps’ companies to further look into the matter.
