The company announced Tuesday that its US service is now part of the separate TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, with parent company ByteDance holding just a 19.9 percent stake in that new entity. The rest is owned by Oracle and investment firms Silver Lake and MGX, as well as smaller investors including Michael Dell’s family investment firm. Oracle will store the US data and the joint venture will “retrain, test and update content recommendation algorithms on US user data.” The new entity will also have “decision-making authority for trust and safety policies and content moderation.”
The sparse details in the press release shed little light on questions outstanding at the time the deal was first announced, such as whether the licensing agreement for the algorithms could be drafted in such a way as to avoid the kind of relationship with ByteDance that would be prohibited by law. Even the MPs supporting the bill seem to be in the dark. “Does this deal ensure that China does not have influence over algorithms? Can the parties involved assure Americans that their data is safe?” John Moolenaar (R-MI), Chairman of the House Select Committee on China, asked in a statement after the deal was closed. “These are questions that need to be answered as the select committee monitors this deal.”
Select Committee Ranking Member Ro Khanna (D-CA), one of the few lawmakers who opposed the initial bill and introduced another bill to repeal it, said in a statement that the deal is “once again creating uncertainty among many creators.” Khanna promised to engage with those whose livelihoods depend on the app “to find the best way forward and prevent changes that could disrupt the rapidly growing creator economy while prioritizing data security.”
Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), who voted to approve the foreign aid package that included the divestment-or-sanctions bill, later sought to create a legal extension to complete a deal. President Donald Trump violated the original bill’s deadline anyway, and Markey later proposed legally repealing the ban. Now that a settlement has been reached, Markey said in a statement, “This TikTok deal raises more questions than it answers.”
Trump has played a key role in it, talking about the TikTok deal with China’s President Xi Jinping, and joking at one point in a press conference with Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison that they might “negotiate in front of the media” on the deal. Markey expressed dismay that despite repeated requests for details, the White House has “provided virtually no details about this agreement, including whether TikTok’s algorithm is truly free from Chinese influence.” The White House and TikTok did not immediately respond to requests for comment. “Smacks of a lack of transparency,” Markey said. “Congress has a responsibility to scrutinize this deal, demand transparency, and ensure that any arrangement that keeps TikTok online actually protects national security.”
Adding to the frustration for many Democrats is the fact that some of Trump’s closest allies, like Ellison, will benefit from the arrangement. “This ‘deal’ helps Trump’s rich friends get richer in exchange for turning TikTok into a propaganda machine for the White House,” Frank Pallone (D-NJ), ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, who initially supported the bill, wrote on Twitter.
<a href