TikTok has finalized a joint venture to have cloud-computing giant Oracle (along with a range of international partners) run its US operations. This finally brings the company into compliance with a law passed and signed into law in 2024 that banned the social media video sharing company from operating in the US while it was being owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. But though the law has been in effect for more than a year, the Trump administration had declined to enforce it, despite having been a vocal proponent of the then-proposed law during President Trump’s first term.
According to the Wall Street Journal, investors are paying the U.S. government a “multibillion-dollar fee for arranging the deal.” According to NPR back in September, some experts are calling this a “fee,” while others call it a “shakedown.”
The new owners include Oracle, with a 15 percent stake in the American branch of the company. Oracle is run by Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest men and a close friend of President Trump. His son David recently purchased the Paramount movie studio.
TikTok has more than 200 million US users. The concern had been that the Chinese government was using the video sharing service to collect data on people in the US and around the world.
The president apparently switched from being a critic of TikTok to being a supporter because he said it helped him win his second term.
In other TikTok news:
- A personal injury lawsuit against the social media giant opened this week in California with a young woman claiming that social media companies have “built products that fostered addiction in adolescents and caused her a host of mental-health problems.” If the suit determines that TikTok is liable for harms to the young woman, it could have extensive fallout for other social media services, including Meta Platforms, Snap, and YouTube.
- TikTok has changed its terms of services, but according to Mashable, it’s basically the same crappy kind of TOS agreement that social media services have always had. When the change in ownership discussed above happened, the company made users accept a new TOS. Mashable’s Chase DiBenedetto writes that while there have been updates, they are not massive changes. But as DiBenedetto suggests, this is probably a good time for you to read through the updated contract you’ve just signed off on.