U.S. President Donald Trump has signed an executive order approving a plan to restructure TikTok operations in the country to address national security concerns.
TikTok is a massively popular short-form video platform owned by Chinese firm ByteDance. The social media servuce has a strong presence in the U.S., counting more than 170 million users, according to statistics published at the beginning of the month.
The platform isn’t just for entertainment, as many creators in the country depend on it for income, and businesses use it to advertise and promote brands and products.
The risk of user data being accessed by the Chinese government, as well as that of the platform being used to influence and distribute propaganda, sparked increasingly larger concerns in the United States, which resulted in a short-lived ban on January 19.
The next day, President Trump issued an executive order postponing the enforcement, followed by several similar actions until a divestiture plan could be formulated, approved, and agreed upon.
The latest White House announcement confirms that the involved parties have now agreed on a plan for TikTok to continue to be available to U.S. users, by separating the platform from ByteDance and sold to a U.S. owner.
The approved framework agreement suggests the following key points:
- A new U.S.-based joint venture will run TikTok in the United States
- The divestiture also covers Lemon8, CapCut, and related apps/websites
- That entity will be majority-owned and controlled by U.S. persons
- ByteDance and its affiliates will now own less than 20% of this new entity
- U.S. entities will fully control algorithms, code, and content moderation
- U.S. user data must be stored in an American-run cloud environment
- Security partners will monitor software, algorithms, and data flows
- ByteDance will be excluded from the company’s security committee
Oracle, which has been working with TikTok in the U.S. since 2020, hosting user data from the region, will now take an expanded and more formalized role.
Along with other American investors, reportedly Andreessen Horowitz and private equity firm Silver Lake Management, the company will manage TikTok’s operations and algorithm.
The American software and cloud services giant will serve as a security provider for TikTok’s U.S. operations, safeguarding user data and auditing algorithm and moderation practices.
TikTok’s algorithms and content recommendation models will now be retrained using only U.S.-approved data, ensuring that there will be no foreign influence.
This retraining process will be inspected, validated, and continually overseen by the designated security partners, including Oracle.
According to Bloomberg, users in the U.S. will also have to transition to a new app that will replicate the original algorithm for content recommendations based on U.S. user data.
This doesn’t affect non U.S.-based TikTok users, who may continue to use the global platform, which remains under ByteDance’s complete control.
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