White House Plan to Restructure TikTok Ownership

The White House says President Trump will sign an executive order declaring that a negotiated sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations satisfies the bipartisan 2024 divestiture law and will pause enforcement for 120 days to complete regulatory approvals. Under the proposed structure, roughly 80% of TikTok’s U.S. assets would be placed in a U.S.-based joint venture owned by American investors (including Oracle and private-equity firm Silver Lake), leaving ByteDance with under 20%. Oracle is slated to oversee data, security and the app’s recommendation algorithm, which would be retrained and run on U.S. servers. The administration says the arrangement addresses national-security concerns and preserves service for roughly 170 million U.S. users, but it still requires signoffs from U.S. regulators and Chinese authorities. Critics warn that concentrating control of TikTok’s influential algorithm among prominent U.S. tech and investor allies raises fresh questions about free expression, data governance and independent oversight.