A historic turning point for the future of Tiktok in the United States. According to what reported by Wall Street Journalan agreement would have been achieved that transfers the control of the American operations of the popular social network to a consortium of stars and stripes investors. The agreement, still unofficial, provides for the creation of a new independent company that will manage social data on American soil.
The property will be distributed in order to guarantee US dominance. 80% of the shares will go to a group of investors led by giants such as Oracle, Silver Lake and Andreesen Horowitz, while the remaining 20% will be held by Chinese shareholders.
What will the new app be like
To ensure compliance with national data security interests, governance will reflect this structure.
The Board of Directors will be American majority and, an unprecedented aspect, a member will be appointed directly by the United States government. This agreement, if confirmed, would represent the long dispute solution on national security that for months has held Tiktok in the sights of the Trump administration.
The plan to save Tiktok in the USA involves unprecedented technological operation. US users will have to download a new application, still in the test phase, to continue using the service.
The heart of the safety agreement revolves around Oracle, which will be formally commissioned to manage and host user data on its servers located in Texas, thus removing any doubt about the control of sensitive information.
Meanwhile, Tiktok’s engineers are working to recreate his algorithm of content recommendation from scratch, the real secret of the success of the app.
This asset, of extraordinary value, was the main obstacle in the negotiations. The solution found provides for the use of a basic technology granted by bytedance, but autonomously implemented by the new US entity.
Trump postpon the block of Tiktok
On the political front, the White House has officially extended the deadline for the sale or ban of the app to 16 December. The announcement comes in parallel to the declarations of President Trump, who confirmed that he had reached a agreement in the beginning with China.
Friday I will talk to the Chinese president XI to confirm everything (up) an agreement very different from those made in the past.
He then promised to reveal soon the group of “great American companies” involved.
Use worries about national security
The dispute on Tiktok has its roots in the Trump era, when already in 2020 the then president tried to impose the sale of the app by adding national security reasons.
At the center of the concerns there are two main risks:
- any access of the Chinese government to the data of the millions of American users;
- The possibility that the algorithm is manipulated to influence public opinion in the United States.
These fears found new strength in 2024, with the bipartisan approval of Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.
The law obliges Bytedance, the Chinese parent company, to transfer the management and ownership of Tiktok to the USA within a predetermined deadline, under penalty of definitive exclusion from the American digital stores – for the joy and earnings of Mark Zuckerberg.
Tiktok and Bytedance have always rejected the accusations, claiming to have never shared information with the Beijing authorities.
Miliardari investments in the Texas project, developed with Oracle to keep American data have also been planned. Despite this, the reassurances have not convinced the congress, which today pushes for a radical solution: the complete sale of the platform.
