A deal to keep TikTok active in the US past the current deadline of Dec. 16 is likely to happen soon. The Wall Street Journal reports that an executive order could approve a deal involving US companies and China as early as this week.
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What will change for TikTok? Who will control the platform? Will the US version of the popular video app be a reboot with a completely new app, or a version of the current one that some 170 million Americans already use?
While there are surprisingly few answers for many of those questions, there seems to be some progress. On Sept. 19, US President Donald Trump spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping. He said afterward that a deal for US companies to take over the platform's American operations had China's blessing. China-based ByteDance owns TikTok.
But the experience for people who use TikTok during this transition is much less clear.
What could change?
Previous reports had suggested that a US version of TikTok would require all domestic users to migrate to an entirely new app, and that the new app might not have access to the same content as other countries.
That may no longer be the case. According to The Wall Street Journal, US TikTok users may not be required to migrate after all, and the parties involved may make the transition through an app update.
Still, the algorithm TikTok uses in the US is likely to change. Bloomberg reports that a new algorithm could be used based on ByteDance's original version, but rebooted and trained on new data. It's not yet clear whether existing user data would be merged with data from the new algorithm version or if that's even possible.
Who'll run TikTok in the US?
The US version of TikTok would be controlled and run by a consortium made up of several US-based businesses, including Oracle, which reportedly would handle data storage and cloud services and also act as TikTok's security provider.
According to the Wall Street Journal and a separate report from Reuters, existing investors in TikTok, such as Susquehanna International, would control 30% of the US TikTok consortium, and new investors, such as the private-equity firm Silver Lake, would join that share to make up a total of 80% ownership.
ByteDance would not relinquish total control. It would hold one of seven board seats for TikTok's US operations, according to those reports. If that's true, it would leave the door open for China's continued involvement, which was one of the dangers the Trump administration and the previous Biden administration cited as a reason to shut down TikTok in the first place.
However, those details on ownership and control could still change. Chinese officials have not confirmed that any deal on TikTok has been finalized.
How soon will it happen?
At one point, it looked like a deal might be finalized by the Sept. 19 phone call between China and the US. But instead, the Trump administration pushed back to a December deadline for TikTok to change ownership or shut down. However, if an executive order happens sooner, that could speed things toward a quicker resolution.
English (US) ·