TikTok deal adds new U.S. owners. Here’s what this means for users.

TikTok will officially remain in the US for the near future. A new, majority US-owned company was set up to continue running the popular video-sharing app in the country, and it has announced some very US-centric changes to its For You feed.

American politicians have pushed for years to sell TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to American owners. These lawmakers claim that the Chinese government spies on American users through the app (though there is no evidence that this is actually happening), and accuse TikTok of manipulating its algorithms to serve up content that is sympathetic to Palestine and China.

Now it seems that these politicians have got their way. The new company, called TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, will acquire TikTok’s ownership in the US, as well as the US operations of other ByteDance apps like CapCut and Lemon8.

“The TikTok USDS Joint Venture is tasked with securing U.S. user data, apps, and algorithms through comprehensive data privacy and cybersecurity measures,” the TikTok USDS Joint Venture announcement said.

TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC is owned by several different investors, the majority of whom are American. While TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance owns 19.9 percent of the US joint venture, 45 percent is divided equally between three managing investors: US private equity firm Silver Lake, US IT company Oracle and UAE investment firm MGX.

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A series of predominantly US investors own a small share of the remaining 35.1 percent, including investment firm Dell Family Office and Westmere Strategic Investments, an affiliate of Susquehanna International Group.

How TikTok’s new US owner will affect your For You feed

The TikTok USDS joint venture said US user data will be kept in Oracle’s US cloud servers, indicating it will ensure it is secure. TikTok had done the same before, investing $1.5 billion with Oracle to separate the data of US users in an initiative called Project Texas. Still, this was not enough to convince US lawmakers and stop the sale.

The TikTok USDS joint venture will also use US user data to retrain and update the app’s famous content recommendation algorithms, as well as host this new version in Oracle’s cloud. Other countries will likely continue to use the TikTok algorithm without these US-centric updates.

It seems reasonable to assume that this redrafting may attempt to address the aforementioned concerns of politicians regarding the type and nature of content that people in the US view on TikTok. The company further said it would “protect the US content ecosystem” by controlling TikTok’s US content moderation and trust and safety policies.

Fortunately, these changes don’t mean that TikTok users in the US will be completely cut off from the rest of the world. The TikTok USDS joint venture says content from US creators will still be shown to users in other countries. However, it remained silent on whether US creators can continue to view content from the rest of the world in a similar manner.

As such, it would not be surprising if US users see less pro-Palestinian TikToks on their For You feed in the future.

The new owner of TikTok US is led by CEO Adam Presser and CSO Will Ferrell (not to be confused with actor Will Ferrell), both of whom previously worked at TikTok. The company will also have a seven-member, majority-American board of directors, including TPG Global senior advisor Timothy Datels, Susquehanna International Group managing director Mark Dooley, Silver Lake co-CEO Egon Durban, Oracle executive vice president Kenneth Glueck and MGX chief strategy and security officer David Scott. Well-known Singaporean TikTok CEO Shaw Chew will also serve as a director in the TikTok USDS joint venture.