When TikTok removed its services early Sunday, it added a politically tailored notice to disappointed users: “We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to restore TikTok once he takes office . »
TikTok may have more than 170 million followers in the United States, but for that it was only aimed at one of them. The selfish message to the man who once said, “Only I can fix it” was clear. And rarely does a corporate political appeal—especially one as nuanced as this one—yield such instantaneous results.
Mid-morning Sunday, Mr. Trump declared that he would indeed remedy this problem: “I will issue an executive order on Monday to extend the deadline before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that we can conclude a agreement to protect our national territory. security.”
Mr. Trump then described, in the vaguest terms, his new idea: reconstituting TikTok as an equal “joint venture” between the existing Chinese owner, ByteDance, and some kind of American entity. It has superficial appeal, although it’s unclear whether it would satisfy the mandate of the law passed by Congress and signed by President Biden banning the app unless the company and algorithm are under American control.
It’s also not clear that it would solve the national security problem inherent in TikTok’s algorithms — which monitor users’ selections and select what is next shown to them — being written in China.
But it was an impressive policy all around. By shutting down the app for part of Saturday evening and Sunday morning, TikTok showed its loyal users what the world would be like without the app. (This shouldn’t be hard to imagine: It first appeared on American phones in 2016, just two months before Mr. Trump’s first election.) And it created, for just a few hours, a standoff that Mr. Trump could then intervene and decide, at least temporarily, to go to the rally of his supporters in Washington on Sunday afternoon.
It’s no wonder that TikTok CEO Shou Chew plans to attend the inauguration and, at least before the ceremony was moved to the Capitol because of the cold, took his place on the dais. He will hardly be alone among the leaders of the technology sector; Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk will also be present.
For TikTok, Mr. Trump’s turnaround in recent months — from the man determined to ban the app to the man determined to save it — was nothing short of a miracle. On Sunday morning, as Mr. Trump announced his stay of execution for the app, his new national security adviser, Michael Waltz, said that despite all the national security concerns, “this is a fantastic app.” This is something that 170 million Americans benefit from, and we’re confident that we can save TikTok, but also protect Americans’ data and protect them from influence, whether it’s an outright sale » or firewall “to ensure that data is protected here on American soil.
He seemed to anticipate Mr. Trump’s strategy: finding a solution that would satisfy the mandate of the law which makes it illegal, as of Sunday, to “distribute, maintain or update” an “application controlled by a foreign adversary.” . There is an exemption if the president determines that the app is “no longer controlled by a foreign adversary,” particularly when it comes to designing the algorithms that make TikTok work.
Would Mr. Trump’s 50/50 joint venture meet this definition? It depends. If ByteDance remains the owner and developer of the algorithm and this algorithm is composed in China by Chinese engineers, this solves very little.
The national security concern that motivated the adoption of the law arose from fear that the algorithm could be controlled by the Chinese government or that Chinese authorities could access user data or their geolocation. And of course, there’s the underlying fear that the algorithm could be stealthily designed to influence what Americans see on their phones.
No one knows yet what a joint venture would look like; Mr. Trump was imprecise in his language, making it unclear whether the U.S. partner would be a private company or the government itself. But clearly the president-elect is pleased that his first meeting with China involves a deal, and when he visited the Capital One Center on Sunday afternoon for a pre-inauguration rally, he is touted to hold all the influence. .
After noting that the app helped him perform remarkably well in the election with young voters — at least for a Republican — he said, “So I like TikTok!” I had a pretty good experience, didn’t I?
When the cheers died down, he suggested that the United States had no intention of paying for its 50 percent share in the company; ByteDance would give away half the company in exchange for presidential approval that would allow it to operate. “Whether you like TikTok or not, we’re going to make a lot of money,” he said, without mentioning national security concerns.
If it played out this way, it would amount, at a minimum, to an unusual business transaction, more akin to the way the government sells leases to drill for oil and gas or sells space on the electromagnetic spectrum to telecommunications companies.
But these are just details that will inevitably change. For now, Mr. Trump could be content with the message that appeared on the TikTok app as service was restored in the afternoon, just before his arrival at the rally. On a day when nothing had really changed – no executive order had yet been signed, no solution to the national security problem found, just an idea floating around – TikTok gave all the credit to the new president.
“Thank you for your patience and support,” the notice read. “Thanks to the efforts of President Trump, TikTok is back in the United States!