“I think that it’s a matter of genuine concern that TikTok, a Chinese operation, has access to over 100 million young people particularly in the United States of America,” Biden told reporters at a campaign stop in Minnesota.

The ban on WeChat, used by over 1 billion people worldwide, bars the transfer of funds or processing of payments to or from people in the United States through it.

The Commerce Department order bars Apple Inc’s app store, Alphabet Inc’s Google Play and others from offering the apps on any platform “that can be reached from within the United States,” a senior Commerce official told Reuters.

While the bans are less dramatic than some had feared, the Commerce Department said it could issue additional orders if it finds “that WeChat’s or TikTok’s illicit behavior is being replicated by another app somehow outside the scope of these executive orders.”.

The American Civil Liberties Union said the Commerce order “violates the First Amendment rights of people in the United States by restricting their ability to communicate and conduct important transactions on the two social media platforms.”.

The order will not bar transactions with WeChat owner Tencent’s other businesses, including its online gaming operations, and will not prohibit Apple, Google or others from offering TikTok or WeChat apps anywhere outside the United States.

judge in California declined to block the Commerce Department WeChat order, but set a new hearing for Saturday at 4:30 p.m.

EDT to decide whether to issue an emergency order blocking the Commerce order in a suit brought by WeChat users.

Commerce Department officials said they were taking the extraordinary step because of the risks the apps’ data collection poses.

WeChat has had an average of 19 million daily active users in the United States, analytics firms Apptopia said in early August.

The Commerce Department will not seek to compel people in the United States to remove the apps or stop using them

We’re not going to go out after the individual users,” one Commerce official said