TikTok has new owners in the United States. Will they change the video app?
On Thursday, TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, agreed to spin out a U.S. TikTok entity. Under the complicated arrangement, non-Chinese investors will own about 80 percent of the American app. ByteDance will keep 19.9 percent of it.
What does that mean for the typical TikTok user in the United States? Here’s what we know.
Will I have to download a new app?
No. The 200 million users in the United States will be able to keep their existing TikTok app, a spokeswoman for the new venture said. There won’t be any need to download a new version.
Will the algorithm change?
It’s too soon to say whether the new venture will make any changes to TikTok’s much vaunted algorithm, which recommends to users a seemingly endless stream of content. The U.S. TikTok will license the algorithm from ByteDance and retrain it on American users’ data, according to a statement from TikTok on Thursday.
But “even small tweaks could at least change the quality of the experience,” said Kelley Cotter, an assistant professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Pennsylvania State University.
Will the content I’m seeing change?
Investors in the U.S. TikTok will also have the final say over content moderation, according to TikTok’s statement. That means they can make decisions about exactly which kinds of videos are allowed and which aren’t.
Right now, for example, TikTok bans all sorts of inappropriate content, such as hate speech, harassment and misinformation.
That could change under new ownership. The billionaire Elon Musk, for example, drastically loosened restrictions on the types of content that users could post on X, which he bought in 2022 when it was Twitter.
Some experts worry that the new owners will also influence the content on TikTok more directly.
The reason for a U.S. TikTok is a 2024 federal law that aimed to separate the app from its Chinese owner, out of concern that Beijing could use it to surveil Americans or spread propaganda. The new owners might have the same power, said Anupam Chander, a law and technology professor at Georgetown University.
“By shifting the ownership of this speech platform to American companies who perhaps have a close relationship with the sitting president, it allows more theoretical room, potentially, for misinformation to be disseminated,” he added.
Will this change anything for TikTok users outside the United States?
No.
Emmett Lindner is a business reporter for The Times.
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