As part of the TikTok deal that is taking shape between the U.S. and China, Oracle will build and secure a new American version of TikTok"s recommendation algorithm (via Bloomberg). As previously reported, the majority of TikTok"s U.S. operations would be held under American investors, with six of the seven board seats, and Oracle would be responsible for keeping both user data and the algorithm safe and private.
Oracle already hosted TikTok data for the U.S. users under "Project Texas," but it was still unclear who really ran the algorithm and whether ByteDance had a backdoor to user information. By retraining the algorithm in the U.S., the deal goes further than earlier fixes.
Reports suggest that many American tech and media names are already lined up in the investor group, including Oracle’s billionaire founder Larry Ellison, Dell Technologies’ Michael Dell, Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch of Fox Corp, and several well-known finance executives. Oracle will handle user data and privacy according to U.S. laws, an important change meant to address national security concerns.
The Chinese Ministry of Commerce stated on Saturday (via Xinhua) that China welcomes business negotiations in accordance with the market rules and Chinese laws.
China hopes the United States will move in the same direction and fully honor its commitments, provide an open, fair, just and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese companies, including TikTok, to continue operating in the United States, and promote stable, healthy and sustainable development of China-U.S. economic and trade relations.
There are no official comments from ByteDance representatives yet, and it"s still not clear how much control the company will retain if the agreement is signed, given that it would still own TikTok under a 20% threshold under the deal. However, U.S. officials are confident that the final details “will be happening in the coming days."
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