Trump Executive Order Will Hand TikTok Over to US Investors

On Thursday, US president Donald Trump signed an executive bid to transfer ownership of TikTok’s US cognition to a group of American investors, including Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison.

“I had a very bully talk pinch president Xi. We talked astir TikTok. He gave america nan go-ahead,” Trump said during a White House property conference. He conceded that he’d gotten a spot of guidance from nan “Chinese side.” By Thursday afternoon, nan Chinese authorities had not issued an announcement acknowledging nan deal.

Vice President JD Vance said nan woody weighted TikTok astatine astir $14 billion. ByteDance was valued astatine $330 billion arsenic of August. Both Trump and his treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, credited Vance arsenic playing a pivotal domiciled successful brokering nan agreement.

Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, and Rupert Murdoch are among nan “four aliases five” American investors who will return complete TikTok’s US operations, according to Trump. “Oracle is playing a very large part,” he said astatine nan property conference. Vance noted nan afloat database of investors will beryllium released successful nan “days to come.”

Details of nan woody are still unknown. “What this woody ensures is that nan American entity and nan American investors will really power nan algorithm,” Vance said during nan briefing. “We don’t want this utilized arsenic a propaganda instrumentality by immoderate overseas government.”

It’s unclear if ByteDance would stay successful immoderate measurement responsible for nan cognition of TikTok successful nan US. Up to this point, TikTok has been betting connected Project Texas, a strategy designed to abstracted nan information entree of US- and China-based employees, to soothe nationalist information concerns. But a world level for illustration TikTok inevitably requires different departments and geographical branches to entree information from each other, making a cleanable separation unlikely. For galore successful Congress and successful Washington much broadly, immoderate ByteDance engagement successful nan caller US TikTok would break nan law. On nan flip side, if licensing fundamentally amounts to buying a transcript of nan ByteDance root code, it’s difficult not to spot that arsenic a usurpation of Chinese law.

It’s besides unclear whether US users will now beryllium forced to migrate to a caller app, and whether they’ll beryllium served different contented than TikTok users successful nan remainder of nan world.

White House property caput Karoline Leavitt said connected Monday that location would beryllium nary difference. But moreover if nan excavation of contented being posted to nan level is nan same, changes to nan proposal algorithm would inherently mean that users spot different things. TikTok was 1 of nan first societal networks successful which nan contented algorithm overwhelmingly decides a user’s experience, dissimilar erstwhile platforms that prioritize individual connections and self-labeled interests. It intends users person little power complete what they spot connected their For You page.

There are wide concerns that nan Trump management is consenting to weaponize its allies’ power of media and societal media to censor contented it doesn’t favor. Larry Ellison, nan Oracle laminitis who will person a important domiciled successful nan caller TikTok entity, has adjacent ties to nan Trump administration. CBS, which is now owned by his boy David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance Corporation, precocious canceled The Late Show, whose host, Stephen Colbert, is simply a predominant Trump critic.

Asked by a newsman connected Thursday if nan woody would mean much MAGA contented connected TikTok, Trump responded, “If I could, I’d make nan algorithm 100 percent MAGA related. But it’s not going to activity retired that measurement unfortunately. Everyone’s going to beryllium treated fairly.”