By Bixyl Shuftan
Most are familiar with Tiktok, the highly popular social media app in which people post and watch short videos. It's been especially popular among teenagers and young adults, some of whom have been able to get a following as content creators, even make a little money. But, there's been a problem. TikTok has been owned by Bytedance, a company in China, and therefore under the dominion of it's authoritarian government which has become more antagonistic towards the United States in recent years. And because of this, many see it as a security risk as it could be used to collect data from Americans that could be weaponized by China's
government against the US.
Since 2020, President Donald Trump has made threats to ban the Chinese-owned social media ap TikTok over national security reasons. In January 2025, TikTok was temporarily blocked in the US following a law coming into effect, but was soon lifted by executive order when the parent company agreed to negotiate further.
A few days ago on Thursday January 22, it was announced a deal had finally been made "from the new TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC," as the newly created company for TikTok called itself.
Today, TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC has been established in compliance with the Executive Order signed by President Trump on September 25, 2025, now enabling more than 200 million Americans and 7.5 million businesses to continue to discover, create, and thrive as part of TikTok's vibrant global community and experience. The majority American owned Joint Venture will operate under defined safeguards that protect national security through comprehensive data protections, algorithm security, content moderation, and software assurances for U.S. users.
An article by Associated Press
stated there would be an emphasis on data protection, "with U.S. user
data being stored locally in a system run by Oracle. And there would be a
focus on the social media app's algorithm, which was the big issue in
the debate about TikTok. Under the deal, TikTok's old owner Bytedance
will license it to the new US company and holds "19.9% of the joint
venture." The three managing investors are the technology company
Oracle, Silver Lake, a private equity firm, and MGX, an investment firm.
They each control a 15% share. Among other investors is Michael Dell,
the founder of the Dell Corporation. The others can be found in TikTok's press release.
It
should be noted that the law requiring TikTok to get a new owner
prohibited “any cooperation with respect to the operation of a content
recommendation algorithm” between Bytedance and any new owner. So the
Chinese company's continued partial ownership may still cause some legal
trouble in the future.
However,
not every TikTok user is celebrating the threat of the app being
blocked again finally being lifted. In the days since ownership of the
app changed hands, the rate people have been deleting it from their
smartphones and computers has increased 150%. On the weekend after the deal, people began noticing glitches, that some videos wouldn't load and some were getting zero views. On Monday January 26, TikTok blamed the problem at an outage at a data center and stated they were hoping it would be resolved soon.
But some were skeptical as stories began going around that it was certain videos that were having trouble, those with left-wing and anti-Administration political content, such as celebrities speaking out against the killing of Alex Pretti by ICE agents in Minneapolis, anti-ICE videos, and mentions of Jeffery Epstein. The new Terms of Service by TikTok's new owner has also gotten criticism as information collected from users includes "racial or ethnic origin, national origin, religious beliefs, mental or physical health diagnosis, sexual life or sexual orientation, status as transgender or nonbinary, citizenship or immigration status, or financial information." An article by Ars Technica would say experts believed "TikTok users’ censorship fears are justified."
“Even if these are technical glitches, the pattern of what’s being suppressed reveals something significant ... When your ‘bug’ consistently affects anti-Trump content, Epstein references, and anti-ICE videos, you’re looking at either spectacular coincidence or systems that have been designed—whether intentionally or through embedded biases—to flag and suppress specific political content.”
The article would go on to say a spokesperson from TikTok would deny the allegations, that no changes have been made to the algorithm or policies about content moderation, only to the Terms of Use and privacy policy and how AI interactions are monitored, “We don’t have rules against sharing the name ‘Epstein’ in direct messages and are investigating why some users are experiencing issues."
California's Governor Newsom recently stated on Twitter that TikTok should be investigated, “I am launching a review into whether TikTok is violating state law by censoring Trump-critical content.”
“Even if these are technical glitches, the pattern of what’s being suppressed reveals something significant ... When your ‘bug’ consistently affects anti-Trump content, Epstein references, and anti-ICE videos, you’re looking at either spectacular coincidence or systems that have been designed—whether intentionally or through embedded biases—to flag and suppress specific political content.”
The article would go on to say a spokesperson from TikTok would deny the allegations, that no changes have been made to the algorithm or policies about content moderation, only to the Terms of Use and privacy policy and how AI interactions are monitored, “We don’t have rules against sharing the name ‘Epstein’ in direct messages and are investigating why some users are experiencing issues."
California's Governor Newsom recently stated on Twitter that TikTok should be investigated, “I am launching a review into whether TikTok is violating state law by censoring Trump-critical content.”
Some of those who have stopped using TikTok have turned to another social media app, UpScrolled, getting 41,000 downloads over the three day period following the announcement of TikTok's new ownership when it had been averaging just 500 a day. It should be noted that when TikTok was blocked in the US temporarily last year, some started using another Chinese social media app called RedNote, but gradually came back once the better known app was back online. It is unclear what will happen if the future should the allegations of censorship fade.
So the threat to ban the highly popular social-media platform is gone. But for some who see expressing and viewing political opinions as important, the solution has come with a heavy cost.
So the threat to ban the highly popular social-media platform is gone. But for some who see expressing and viewing political opinions as important, the solution has come with a heavy cost.
Sources: Tiktok, Associated Press, Techcrunch, Ars Technia, Engadget,
Bixyl Shuftan
