TikTok avoids the guillotine (for now) with a last minute sale
Well, it seems that the digital apocalypse for lovers of viral dance is postponed. After years of uncertainty that had us all doing the Renegade of fear, TikTok finally signed the agreement to sell its operation in the United States. The saviors (or new owners, depending on how you look at it) are a trio of investors: Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX. The news comes just as the clock was counting down for the app to stop working in January 2025.
According to an internal memo seen by The Associated Press, CEO Shou Zi Chew confirmed that ByteDance and TikTok have signed binding agreements with the three investors, with everything expected to be finalized on January 22.
In other words, we went from “this is going to be banned” to “let’s sign these papers” in record time. A plot twist worthy of a dramatic TikTok.
The new distribution of the cake (and who controls the algorithm)
This is where it gets interesting. The new joint venture will be like a complicated family dinner where everyone wants to sit at the head of the table.
- 50% will be owned by the consortium of new investors (Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX share 15% each).
- Another 30.1% will go to existing ByteDance investors.
- And ByteDance itself is left with 19.9%.
But the most juicy thing is not only the money, but the control. The company will have a new board of directors of seven members, most of them Americans, and will be subject to terms that, I quote verbatim from the memo, “protect Americans’ data and the national security of the United States.” Sounds good, right? Like when your mom tells you she’s going to “check” your cell phone for your own good.
The big question was: what about the algorithm? That secret ingredient that recommends kitten videos and impossible choreographies at 3 a.m. Well, it will be “retrained” with data from American users to, another quote from the memo, “ensure that the content feed is free of external manipulation”. The data itself will be stored locally on a system managed by Oracle. Basically, they’re putting a tracking chip and special training into TikTok’s digital brain.
A political drama with more twists than a Challenge
To understand why this is so big, you have to step back. This puts an end to several years of uncertainty worthy of a political soap opera. The US Congress passed a law to ban TikTok if it did not find a new owner other than ByteDance, its Chinese parent. The deadline was January 2025.
And then Donald Trump entered the picture, because what modern drama would be complete without him? On his first day in office (in this new administration), he signed an executive order to keep TikTok running while they searched for a deal. Then came three more executive orders, extending deadlines as if they were the Instagram stories you don’t want to disappear.
There was a moment in April where they thought they had a pact ready… until China backed down after the Trump administration’s tariff announcements. A true “what am I, a meme?” geopolitical.
The last order, in September, was one that Trump said would allow TikTok to operate “in a manner that meets national security concerns.” I mean, the final season has many seasons here.In the end, what we have is a respite. The platform survives, but transformed. It will no longer be totally Chinese or totally free in its original functioning. It’s like when your favorite app makes a massive update: it’s still the same… but different. The chaos and irreverence continue, but now with supervision and local servers.
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