“Sociable” is the most recent commentary on essential social media developments and trends from industry expert Andrew Hutchinson of Social Media Today.
U.S. TikTok creators can breathe a sigh of relief, with TikTok’s parent company ByteDance reportedly coming to terms on a deal that can keep the app energetic within the nation, and can see the American version of TikTok sold to a group of majority U.S.-based investors.
As reported by CNBC, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew sent an email to staff notifying them of the deal, which can come into effect on Jan. 22, 2026, a day before the expiry of President Trump’s fourth Executive Order to withhold enforcement of the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.”
As per CNBC:
“TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew told employees on Thursday that the corporate’s U.S. operations will likely be housed in a brand new three way partnership named ‘TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC’. As a part of the three way partnership, Chew said the corporate has signed agreements with the three managing investors: Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based MGX.”
So they’re not all U.S.-based, but this is identical ownership group that the Trump team approved back in September, when it trumpeted its pending TikTok deal.
Which didn’t progress as expected.
White House officials had expected to get final agreement on the deal shortly after that September press conference, but Chinese officials were less definitive on the deal, with the CCP seemingly searching for more trade or diplomatic concessions before agreeing to the proposal.
Whether any further concessions have been agreed to with a purpose to secure this agreement, we don’t know, but various outlets are reporting that the deal has been communicated to TikTok staff, regardless that it hasn’t officially been confirmed by ByteDance or TikTok as yet.
So what does that mean for TikTok?
Well, it gets to remain energetic within the U.S., where the platform has 170 million users.
That’s the important win for the app, though the larger query that many can have now’s what sort of influence the Trump administration may need over TikTok’s algorithms and what content people see within the app.
One of the important thing sticking points of the deal has long been TikTok’s algorithm, and whether any deal would involve the sale of the algorithm code to a U.S. entity.
According to Chew’s announcement, the brand new TikTok U.S. entity will likely be chargeable for “re-training” the algorithm on U.S. user data, “to make sure the content feed is free from outside manipulation.”
Which also signifies that this group can have the ability to weigh things as they select, and with the Trump team set to have a say over who, exactly, will likely be on the governing board of the group, that might see TikTok’s systems lean further toward Trump-supporting content and perspectives.
One concern here is that TikTok will eventually turn out to be more like X, where right-leaning conspiracy theories are allowed much more leeway.
Indeed, X owner Elon Musk is arguably the most important amplifier of politically-motivated misinformation, and he has repeatedly used his influence over X’s algorithm to spice up perspectives that he agrees with and restrict those he doesn’t.
At first blush, one might assume that TikTok is less politically influential than X, given X’s concentrate on real-time news discussion. But TikTok has seen a rapid rise as a brand new source of late, with more Americans now getting news content on TikTok than those that do from X, based on recent data from Pew Research Center.
TikTok’s role as a news source could possibly be a worthwhile consideration in the brand new deal and will open the door to the amplification of politically motivated news stories with a purpose to higher reach younger voters.
Oracle, particularly, is run by long-time Trump supporter Larry Ellison, and it’s Oracle specifically that can oversee the U.S. TikTok algorithm.
Given TikTok’s success, you’d assume that the group would mostly wish to keep things running as they’re, but perhaps, around election time, we could see some influence creeping in, which can change the TikTok feed.
That’s only one consideration as to how the brand new U.S. TikTok entity will run, and whether there’ll be any major changes to the app because of this of this recent management group.
Again, you’d assume that business as usual could be the important focus, with a purpose to maximize the platform’s potential. But we’ll need to wait and see how the dust settles, and the way much influence and control the U.S. group looks to exert over the platform’s operations.
So perhaps, after a 12 months of wrangling, TikTok has finally secured its future within the U.S., providing assurance for a lot of creators within the app.
We’ll wait for official confirmation, but perhaps Trump won’t need to issue one other executive order to maintain the app in operation.
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