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The Trump TikTok deal is lastly finished, and truthfully, it’s by some means the worst of all attainable outcomes. That is really spectacular, because the ensuing construction manages to make the most important criticisms about TikTok considerably worse whereas attaining not one of the said targets. You’re in all probability questioning who precisely signed off on this mess.
The Chinese language authorities really accepted the deal, which entails offloading an enormous chunk of the corporate to some extremely questionable figures. The brand new possession consists of billionaire right-wing Trump ally Larry Ellison, recent off his acquisition of CBS. We even have the non-public fairness agency Silver Lake, which has broad world investments in Israeli and Chinese language hyper-surveillance, and MGX, which is Abu Dhabi’s state funding agency. This isn’t precisely a listing of privateness champions, is it?
As reported by Techdirt, the brand new U.S. operations of TikTok could have three “managing buyers” who will collectively personal 45 p.c of the corporate: Oracle Company, Silver Lake, and MGX. One other 5 p.c can be owned by different new buyers, which can or might not embody people like Rupert Murdoch. Right here’s the kicker: ByteDance retains 19.9 p.c, and associates of current ByteDance buyers maintain one other 30.1 p.c. Which means the supposedly problematic Chinese language funding continues to be big.
It’s completely baffling that they shifted possession to President Trump’s buddies whereas nonetheless sustaining the so-called problematic tethers to the Chinese language
It’s price noting that technically, none of this was authorized. The legislation said that TikTok shouldn’t have been allowed to exist for a lot of this 12 months. Everybody simply seemed the opposite manner whereas President Trump and his cronies repeatedly ignored deadlines and hammered away at this possession switch. The administration claimed the deal entails “retraining the content material suggestion algorithm on U.S. consumer knowledge to make sure the content material feed is free from outdoors manipulation.” Oracle can be imagined to be “overseeing knowledge safety.”
Given the lengthy historical past of privateness abuses by Oracle’s authoritarian-enabling billionaire proprietor, and the monitor report of everybody else concerned, you’ll be able to’t belief any of these firms. What’s really weird is that everybody appears to have forgotten that throughout the Biden administration, it was already introduced that Oracle was overseeing TikTok’s algorithms and knowledge safety. This complete new association simply shifted the possession construction to present President Trump and his mates a political win.
The purpose was by no means delicate. It was at all times for Trump’s buddies to steal an enormous possession chunk of a Chinese language short-form video firm that U.S. tech firms merely couldn’t out-innovate. Offloading the corporate to his mates at Oracle and Walmart was President Trump’s said purpose throughout his first administration, solely thwarted as a result of he misplaced the 2020 election. All the things else has simply been ornamental theater, similar to his White Home renovation antics.
You would possibly recall that Republicans like Brendan Carr spent years whining in regards to the propaganda, privateness, and surveillance threats posed by TikTok. Now, their final resolution is to shift partial possession over to President Trump’s autocratic buddies whereas maintaining the Chinese language involvement. With the issue arguably made worse, you’ll be able to simply assume that Carr will in all probability by no means point out the menace once more.
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Revealed: Dec 19, 2025 06:00 pm