President Donald Trump signed an executive order approving a deal on Sept. 25 that would transfer majority control of TikTok’s U.S. operations to American investors, rescuing TikTok from a nationwide ban and marking yet another shift from his earlier attempts to shut down the proposal.
The deal follows many years of debate around the security of TikTok’s ownership by ByteDance, a Chinese company. Under the new arrangement, a U.S.-based company would operate TikTok with approximately 80% American ownership while ByteDance retains less than 20%. TikTok’s algorithm will be trained on American user data only, with Oracle overseeing security.
“I use TikTok to get a lot of my news,” senior MacEnzie Blue said. “In my life, I find short-form media to be easier to access. If there is a change of ownership that means that the information I could be getting on my For You Page could be skewed.”
Nearly a month after the announcement, users and analysts remain unsure of how retraining TikTok’s algorithm on American data will affect content and whether or not the app’s new ownership could impact user experience. Many students express concern that U.S. ownership could lead to greater government influence over what users see on the platform.
“It raises some pretty big concerns about freedom of speech,” Civil Discourse club president Farhan Khan (12) said. “I know that the Trump and the Biden administration have specifically been very wary about the types of political speech that happens on TikTok and things that are critical of U.S. foreign policy. Certain members of the government have outwardly said this is a problem and we need to regulate TikTok because of that.”
Congress passed legislation requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok in 2024, citing national security concerns about the Chinese government having access to data from millions of American users. The debate centers on fears that TikTok could be used for surveillance or to spread propaganda through its recommendation algorithm.
At the same time, some students see potential in domestic ownership, especially regarding privacy and security concerns.
“There’s some advantages just due to the culture that we have in America surrounding our information, that the privacy rights will align more with us,” sophomore Vivian Zhang said. “It’ll focus more on protecting the data of the consumers. I don’t believe there will be many large changes made from the user point of view, so I’ll probably still continue to use TikTok, unless they make such significant changes that it pushes a large demographic of its users to a different app.”
For students like Farhan, Trump’s deal reflects the growing tension between protecting data and speech for users of the app.
“[Trump] probably received a lot of pushback from users of TikTok [for the earlier ban],” Farhan said. “It’s fairly unpopular, at least among the younger generation, to outright ban TikTok. It’s a middle ground where, from his perspective, if they keep it isolated to the U.S., they have stronger control over it.”
Despite the White House announcement, the deal remains uncertain. While Trump claimed that Chinese President Xi Jinping approved the arrangement, China has not confirmed this publicly. The executive order offers multiple opportunities to extend the deadline for the previous TikTok ban, giving both sides more time to finalize or back out of the sale.