Amazon emails employees asking to delete TikTok, later cancels order

New Delhi : Around five hours after Amazon sent an email to its employees asking them to ban the use of TikTok application and delete it from their devices, the company informed reporters that they have cancelled the direction and there are no new policy rules in regards to usage of TikTok.

“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 company's spokesperson Jaci Anderson refused to answer why the decision has been turned around.

The initial internal email, which was disseminated widely online, told employees to delete TikTok, a video app increasingly popular with young people but also the focus of intensifying national-security and geopolitical concerns because of its Chinese ownership. The email cited the app's “security risks.”

Amazon is the second biggest private employer after Walmart in the US and a ban of TikTok would have came as a shocker to Bytedance.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had said that the government was “certainly looking” at banning the app, setting off confused and irritated posts as well as jokes by TikTok users.