Washington: Tech giant Oracle will receive a copy of the algorithm powering TikTok to operate for US users, according to a senior official in President Donald Trump’s administration on Monday.
Determining next steps for the algorithm, currently owned by the Beijing-based ByteDance, has been one of the most closely watched issues during negotiations over TikTok’s future. The Trump administration official, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the emerging deal, said they believe the plan will satisfy national security concerns if TikTok divests from its Chinese parent, ByteDance. President Joe Biden signed bipartisan legislation before leaving office requiring the Chinese company to sell its assets to an American company or face a ban.
American officials have previously warned the algorithm that fuels what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect. “It wouldn’t be in compliance if the algorithm is Chinese. There can’t be any shared algorithm with ByteDance,” said a spokesperson for the House Select Committee on China. Oracle would receive a copy of the algorithm and oversee the app’s security operations. The algorithm would be “fully inspected and retrained,” the senior White House official said Monday. In a call with reporters, the official later emphasised that the content recommendation formula would be retrained only on US data in order to make sure the system is “behaving appropriately.”