The time will come on January 22nd: then the US business of the video platform will begin Tiktok will be spun off from its Chinese parent company Bytedance and transferred to a joint venture of US companies. In addition to financial companies from the USA and Abu Dhabi media reports According to this, an actor close to Trump who has repeatedly been involved in politics in recent years will play a central role in the corporate cooperation: the IT group Oracle.
“With the consortium led by Oracle, other circles close to Trump are taking over the last digital public sphere that is not close to Trump and can thus control discourses and opinions in the future,” says network expert Markus Beckedahl from the Center for Digital Rights, classifying the deal.
The takeover goes back to an initiative during the term of office of Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden. Its government saw the Chinese owner’s popular app as a threat to national security – and wanted it banned from the USA. Tiktok is one of the most popular apps, especially among young people: content, dance moves or memes that go viral in the short videos reach an audience of millions. For Europe, the platform reported 200 million monthly active users in September; worldwide the number is estimated at around 1.6 billion.
The platform is in the hands of the Chinese company Bytedance. Despite his assurances to the contrary, there is still speculation that the Chinese government, on the one hand, is getting data from users from Europe and the USA – and, on the other hand, is also influencing the content. There are always indications of this.
Results from researchers suggest that the Tiktok algorithm shadowranks, among other things, posts about Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Uyghurs. Shadow ranking means that an algorithm downweights content and thus limits its reach. However, it is unclear whether this is due to the direct influence of the Chinese government.
The threat: blocking or selling
The US government presented the owner with the alternative: blocking the app within the US or selling it to US investors. After various deadline extensions by the current US President Trump, who obviously did not want to miss Tiktok’s populist potential, the takeover is now taking place. However, the purchase price is unclear: In September, US Vice President JD Vance estimated the value of Tiktok’s US business at around $14 billion.
The IT group Oracle was considered a potential participant in a purchase early on. Larry Ellison, founder of the company, is one of the richest people in the world. According to the financial agency Bloomberg’s list of billionaires, his fortune is around $250 billion. Ellison is also Trump’s confidant. And the family is a heavyweight when it comes to investments and control in the media sector: Just in August, Ellison’s son David took over the Hollywood group Paramount and merged it with his Skydance group. Paramount owns, among other things, the television station CBS, who was often a target of Trump – and whose news response was rebuilt shortly after the takeover.
Other tech companies with a loudspeaker function are already on Trump’s line: Platform X with owner Elon Musk, and Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has also been loyal since Trump took office again. With Tiktok’s US division, another large platform is now coming under US influence and is moving closer to Trump. After the agreement, Democratic Senator Elisabeth Warren criticized: “Trump wants to give his billionaire buddies even more control over what you see.”
“If this comes about, then we will experience digital synchronization in the USA,” says digital expert Beckedahl. It is a similar development to what has already been seen in Hungary or Russia: “Oligarchs close to the government are taking over important media in order to create a government-friendly public.”
Beckedahl assumes that Tiktok will develop in the same direction as Twitter, now A development that will remain even when Trump is gone.
And in Europe?
For European users, the completion of the acquisition will likely be silent – at first. So far there are two versions of Tiktok: one for China and one for the rest of the world. Now there will be three: the USA, China and the rest of the world. Since the version for Europe remains unchanged in the hands of Bytedance, little will change for local users for the time being.
But that could change if Tiktok gets a new or at least changed algorithm in the USA. This is the heart of the platform and is crucial for which videos users see. And for the Trump administration, the algorithm will be the key lever for spreading its political interests. As is common with many large social media services, the algorithm already favors polarizing and quickly consumable content. In other words, exactly those that Trump and his politics offer – and that reach a large and young audience via Tiktok.
It is still unclear what the interfaces from the US version to the rest of the world TikTok will look like and how this will affect the functionality for European users. For example, if local users like videos from US creators or want to interact with them.
Given Europe’s great dependence on US platforms, Beckedahl calls for consistent enforcement of the rules for platform regulation. And at the same time a political strategy to create alternatives to reduce dependencies.