With the trendy dances, people having the chance to get famous overnight, and the occasional drama, TikTok has left an influence on the modern world over its almost ten years of life. However, a change in ownership has left fans and investors alike wondering about the future of the platform.
Three years ago, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew appeared in front of Congress to debate how he was handling his platform, where he was questioned for over four hours on its safety and privacy. This was after heated controversy and a call for TikTok to be banned in the U. S, making headlines and ultimately leading to what was effectively a slap on the wrist.
“When TikTok was originally going to get banned, I was pretty worried,” comments junior Alexander Vermillion. “It was my most used social media platform, and when it actually got banned for that short amount of time, I was worried.”
Despite this, talks about ownership changes in the U. S began, with it first being phrased as a deal: change ownership and TikTok won’t get banned. This began a three-year-long struggle, with it ending in the past few weeks with numerous American companies buying stock to become 45% shareholders of TikTok.
These shareholders are three large U.S. Companies: Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX. Oracle is a software company that specializes in the cloud. Silver Lake is a general technology investment company, and MGX is an investment firm, specifically for AI.
The deal had many small stipulations, ranging from algorithm ownership and licensing to overall management. The board of directors would consist of the following: Oracle executives, Silver Lake and MGX executives, and Chew, TikTok’s formerly mentioned CEO.
According to the deal, the overall TikTok algorithm will remain in China with Bytedance, a Chinese-based company that was one of the many original concerns that America had with TikTok, while the algorithm specifically for American citizens will be only trained by data from the U.S itself.
This has caused some suspicion, with critics saying that this American algorithm may try to censor citizens, stemming from recent political issues between Democrats and Republicans.
However, Bytedance still retains full control of the algorithm and has no plans of fully selling it to US companies. This is what makes the app so popular, as competitors such as Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts have tried but failed to recreate the original.
The future is hazy about the platform, with users thinking that the platform won’t be the same.
“I feel like the platform will definitely change,” junior Nusaynah Arif claims. “If they’re buying it out, there must be a plan or something they want to do. A change feels inevitable.”
