TikTok ban averted? White House reportedly in talks for Oracle-led majority stake to reduce Chinese ownership

▤ Summary

The White House is currently in talks with software company Oracle and other US investors to take over the global operations of the popular video-sharing app TikTok, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the negotiations, quoted by US National Public Radio (NPR).The proposed arrangement would allow ByteDance, TikToks Chinese parent company, to maintain a minority position, whilst Oracle would supervise the apps algorithm, data collection and software updates. "The goal is for Oracle to effectively monitor and provide oversight with what is going on with TikTok," said a person directly involved in the talks, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the deliberations, quoted by NPR. Sarah Kreps, who focuses on technology and foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, noted the difficulty in proving the absence of Chinese control over data and the algorithm.The current negotiations follow the collapse of a previous national security plan involving Oracle, known as Project Texas, which failed to guarantee TikToks independence from ByteDance. White House negotiators believe this indicates that Beijing is not planning to block a deal that gives American investors a majority stake in the company.Meanwhile, Apple and Google have not yet returned TikTok to their app stores after the platform went offline for about 14 hours. Trumps executive order was sufficient for Oracle and other web infrastructure companies to restore TikToks services, but other companies, including Apple and Google, are not taking the risk due to the potential for hundreds of billions of dollars in fines under the TikTok ban law.TikTok which was shutdown for a few hours on January 18 but came back online around 12 hours later, with a message confirming support from Trump, who signed an executive order delaying the looming ban by 75-days on Day 1 of his presidency.

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