Thought Leadership
A buyer of Tiktok will have to develop its own recommendation software if there is no ongoing Chinese involvement in the operation of the short video app.
China has made it clear that the Tiktok algorithm is regarded as “national intellectual property” and is not for sale, said Frank McCourt, the American party interested in buying Tiktok. The algorithm decides which videos are shown to users next. It is therefore a cornerstone of Tiktok’s success.
Postponement by Trump
According to a US law, Tiktok should actually have been sold by the China-based owner Bytedance by January 19 – or go off the grid in the US. However, President Donald Trump granted a grace period of 75 days, which expires on April 5. He also held out the prospect of extending the deadline if necessary – although there is no basis for this in the law.
US Vice President J.D. Vance said last week that a fundamental solution for the future of Tiktok in the US would be found by the beginning of April. Bytedance and Tiktok have so far said that it would be impossible to sell only the US part of the app because this would break up the platform.
McCourt emphasized on CNBC that, in his view, US law clearly requires the separation of Chinese technology from Tiktok. His “Project Liberty” envisions a US Tiktok based on American technology. Users should be able to customize their Tiktok algorithm themselves instead of it being a “black box that collects user data and basically manipulates people”, said McCourt. The software giant Oracle is to be the technical service provider.
Bytedance does not want to let go
However, according to a report on the website “The Information”, Bytedance continues to hope that Trump will accept the “Project Texas” plan, which has been promoted for years, in which information from US users is stored in the USA and Oracle monitors data flows and software updates. This was not secure enough for Trump’s predecessor’s administration, as Tiktok was to remain the property of Bytedance. Tiktok has a similar plan for Europe called “Project Clover” for data storage in Ireland.
dpa
