Trump saved TikTok from a ban: what we know about the deal.

According to Vox: TikTok is not only the most downloaded app in the world, but also a powerful information platform on the planet.

This app has become a subject of political controversies. TikTok is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. For many years, US legislators have tried to limit its activities — either banning it or forcing it to sell to American investors. Recently, after Donald Trump's return to power, this struggle has escalated to a new level that could significantly change the social media landscape. Last week, Trump signed an executive order to create a new subsidiary — TikTok US, which will allow the app to remain available in the US despite a ban passed by Congress in 2024. Trump's allies, including Larry Ellison (CEO of Oracle), Michael Dell (Dell Technologies), and the Murdoch family, will be involved in managing the new company. China must approve this deal.

Emily Baker-White is a senior journalist at Forbes and the author of the book Every Screen on the Planet: The War for TikTok. Her publications have revealed how ByteDance employees accessed American users' data and how TikTok's internal systems gave the company significant influence over what we see.

I invited Baker-White on The Gray Area to discuss the news about a potential deal between the US and China regarding TikTok, as well as how Washington and Beijing are playing this game. As always, the full podcast has plenty of interesting moments, so listen and subscribe to The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or any podcast platform. New episodes come out every Monday.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

TikTok is more than just a social platform. Why is it so important?

TikTok founder Zhang Yiming believed that information could find people better than people could find information. On older platforms, you subscribed to accounts and searched for content. On TikTok, you open the app, and it works for you. It tracks how much time you spend on content, how you interact with it, and the experience is so seamless that it learns about you while you do nothing.

And it’s designed to take control away from you — it provides you with what you want without requests.

Yes, it’s insidious because we like it. If we didn’t like it, we wouldn’t use it. We relinquish our autonomy without noticing it because the product is pleasurable.

Isn’t part of the pleasure the absence of the need to think?

Decision fatigue is a reality. Previously, you simply stood in line, doing nothing. Now, you can’t just stand and wait. When did that become unacceptable? Why must we act in every little pause of our everyday lives?

TikTok's 'For You' feed is a predictive machine based on discovered preferences, rather than what we say we like. How does this change user psychology?

TikTok has helped initiate a broader shift: now we see much less content from people we know and much more from professional creators. This applies to TikTok and, increasingly, Instagram and Facebook. It’s more like Netflix than the original Facebook — people don't go there to see friends.

I hesitated for a long time but finally decided to try TikTok for this interview. It’s a true social drug. Immediately after entering, you can see how it studies your mind, predicts your desires, and delivers your ideal digital drug tailored only for you.

Most who have tried agree — and Instagram Reels knows it.

Content moderation on TikTok

Today, content moderation resembles the functioning of other major UGC platforms. Algorithms detect possible violations; moderation teams oversee the rules and adjust these systems. In the US, politicians appear as competitors. Initially, it was different — more 'Chinese' political adjustments that were later 'westernized'. One of the key features is the internal heating tool.

“Remember, you make fewer choices about what to see. This means you’re giving more control over your information diet to a faceless machine — and to the people who create and manage it.”

What is the heating button?

It allows certain employees to give videos a fixed number of views — 5000, 50000, 5 million — bypassing recommendations. This initial push often leads to further organic growth. Initially, many people had access. It was used to train the system on what 'good content' is until the algorithm became flawless. Over time, marketing began to use it to attract creators and partners. TikTok eventually restricted access and enforced stricter rules, but abuses occurred — and with this tool, some of these abuses likely continue to this day.

Other platforms also boost and downrank content. How is this different?

All adjust distribution. What distinguishes this case is how overt, granular, and widely available the 'big red button' was — at least in a historical context. (If people on other platforms have similar tools, my Signal is open.)

Comparing TikTok's impact to Facebook and Twitter

Facebook and Instagram are similar in size, and YouTube is massive. But TikTok is actually much larger — at the level of Facebook in 2019 or 2020, if not more. And remember, you make fewer choices about what to see. This means you’re giving more control over your information diet to a faceless machine — and to the people who create it.

What control does Beijing have over TikTok? Is the word 'leverage' more suitable?

Leverage. In China, authorities can coerce employees — 'do this or else' — including threatening their families. If a ByteDance/TikTok employee based in China can access US data or influence rankings, state structures can compel them to do so. This potential is a problem. There is limited public evidence of widespread use of such actions — potential does not equal actions — but the leverage is real as long as employees from China have relevant access.

Is there evidence that China used TikTok as ideological weapon?

In the US, I haven't seen any public evidence of manipulation by the PRC through TikTok. Previously, TikTok had restrictive policies regarding topics related to China; those have changed. There are closed materials — mentioned in TikTok lawsuits — which, according to American officials, pertain to manipulation abroad, but I haven't seen them.

ByteDance's response to the US ban on TikTok — Project Texas — separating US data under Oracle's control. How has that gone?

Conceptually, 'the driver doesn't carry cash': [the US] blocked access from the Chinese side [to Oracle], so coercion could not lead to accessing US data. They spent billions trying to separate. But there are hundreds of internal tools and data channels, and closing every last avenue is a complicated task. They have made significant progress, but the 'last mile' guarantee is hard.

What makes this technical task so challenging?

If you've ever worked at a large tech company, you know how many internal tools there are and how they interact. TikTok is supported by hundreds of them. The consumer app you see is based on 500 internal applications. Cutting off data channels through all of them will be a maze-like task. Although most paths have been shut down, the 'last mile' is nearly impossible.

Political efforts around TikTok

Trump initially tried to ban TikTok and then forced a sale; he resorted to an improper legal mechanism and lost in court. The Biden team has been working on Project Texas for about 2 years, then moved to 'sell or be banned', prompting Congress to pass the law. ByteDance filed a lawsuit; the case reached the Supreme Court, which upheld the law. The day before [the second] Trump inauguration, TikTok briefly 'flickered' — after assuming office, Trump ordered the Department of Justice not to enforce the law. TikTok has lived in this purgatory ever since.

And TikTok publicly thanked Trump for 'saving' it.

In stark contrast to their earlier advertising 'Donald Trump is not on TikTok — download now'.

After all your investigation, what are your feelings about TikTok now?

Personally, I don’t like auto-playing videos — on any platform. I downloaded TikTok to report on it; despite the cute animals, I'm not a natural consumer of video. This probably saves me from addiction.

You end the book noting that Zhang Yiming is already moving to AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). That seems intriguing.

He’s a builder. TikTok's complex problems are mostly solved; generative AI is the next frontier. The story of TikTok is not related to AI, but the fundamental issues — agency, control, who governs your reality — remain the same.

When you think about the algorithm, replace the word with a guy named Bob. If Bob should not set prices across industries, neither should the algorithm. If Bob shouldn’t have access to all social security numbers, neither should the algorithm. Algorithms are created by people, for the interests of people — and when we forget this, we give them too much power.

We usually do not make additions, but the legal future of TikTok may have changed after our conversation. What do we know now?

Learning more, but the details are still unclear. Both parties — American and Chinese — report progress. Trump describes the deal and continues to not pursue the anti-ban law. According to reports, he will sign an order declaring that the deal complies with last year's article — he has great freedom in this matter. Post-deal American buyers/managers include Oracle (already the cloud platform for TikTok/TTP), Andreessen Horowitz, and possibly the Murdochs. The terms — and who gets what power — remain unclear.

Are there details of the deal that we know?

Both parties note that ByteDance retains ownership of the recommendation algorithm; American TikTok licenses it. 'License' can range from 'do whatever you want' to seriously limited. How open this license is will determine the true separation. You will also hear the term 'leasing'; designation matters less than conditions of control.

Oracle claims it will 'retrain the algorithm from scratch'. What could this mean?

Models are as good as the data for training. The TikTok algorithm was built over years on massive, mixed corpuses (including data from the public web). Will ByteDance hand over these corpuses? Does it still have them? If the new owners cannot replay the original data, users may notice that the 'new TikTok' isn’t very good — this is a business risk.

Will Oracle keep American users' data separate from China?

Most likely, this will resemble the current data security configuration of TikTok in the US: new US user data will be stored in a controlled Oracle TTP, [trustworthy technology partner], closed off from ByteDance. The project's agreement formalizes and extends this.

What will new American shareholders get, aside from a large amount of money?

Money is a lot. But there is also influence over speech policies: harassment/hate policies, moderation position, priority signals. Many on the left see this as transferring a huge discussion platform to Trump’s allies. Smart owners won't overtly politicize quickly — that’s bad business (look at what happened to Twitter/X). But ownership ultimately determines policy.

It looks like Trump is handing this over to his influential political allies. Such as Larry Ellison from Oracle, Marc Andreessen, the Murdochs from Fox News — all of them are involved in this potential deal, and this has a whiff of corruption. Am I missing something here?

I don't think it's wrong. If a Soros group wanted to come in, or Warren Buffett, I'm not sure Trump would want to do that. You’re looking at a president who has immersed himself in the private sector and private deals much more than any president in recent history.

He is handing the mouthpiece of expression to his allies — people he believes will use it in ways he approves of. This is a strange deal. When I think of the law passed by Congress, in a sense, they were trying to limit presidential power, but the way it was written still granted the president immense power. And I think many of those who passed it did not envision a president so willing to blatantly self-service.

If they had envisioned it, perhaps they would have written it differently. It’s just the truth — I don't believe many of them would have done it this way had they foreseen the moment we’re currently in.

How much better is this deal than control from Beijing over TikTok?

The book 'the problem of authoritarian pressure' has always been the content against a state that cannot do this. We are now witnessing attempts by the US executive branch to shape distribution and punish critics. We will soon find out what 'better' is, but tactics similar to CPC raise concerns.

Listen to the rest of the conversation and don't forget to follow The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you listen to podcasts.