A deal to keep TikTok active in the US past the current deadline of Dec. 16 will likely happen soon. The Wall Street Journal reports that an executive order could approve a deal involving US companies and China as early as this week.
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What will change for TikTok? Who will control the platform? Will the US version of the popular video app be a reboot with a completely new app, or a version of the current one that some 170 million Americans already use?
While there are surprisingly few answers for many of those questions, there seems to be some progress. On Sept. 19, US President Donald Trump spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump said afterward that a deal for US companies to take over the platform's American operations had China's blessing. China-based ByteDance owns TikTok.
But the experience for people who use TikTok during this transition is much less clear.
What could change?
Previous reports suggested that a US version of TikTok would require all domestic users to migrate to an entirely new app, and that the new app might not have access to the same content as other countries.
That may no longer be the case. According to The Wall Street Journal, US TikTok users may not be required to migrate after all, and the transition may be handled through an app update.
Still, the algorithm TikTok uses in the US is likely to change. Bloomberg reports that a new algorithm could be based on ByteDance's original version, but rebooted and trained on new data. It's unclear whether existing user data would be merged with data from the new algorithm or if that's even possible.
Who'll run TikTok in the US?
The US version of TikTok would be controlled and run by a consortium of several US-based businesses, including Oracle, which reportedly would handle data storage and cloud services and act as TikTok's security provider. Â
According to The Wall Street Journal and a separate report from Reuters, existing investors in TikTok, such as Susquehanna International, would control 30% of the US TikTok consortium, and new investors, such as the private-equity firm Silver Lake, would join that share to make up a total of 80% ownership.
ByteDance would not relinquish total control. According to those reports, it would hold one of seven board seats for TikTok's US operations. If that's true, it would leave the door open for China's continued involvement, which was one of the dangers the Trump administration and the Biden administration cited as a reason to shut down TikTok in the first place.
However, details about ownership and control could still change. Chinese officials have not confirmed that any deal on TikTok has been finalized.
How soon will it happen?
At one point, it looked like a deal might be finalized by the Sept. 19 phone call between China and the US. But instead, the Trump administration pushed back to a December deadline for TikTok to change ownership or shut down. However, if an executive order happens sooner, that could speed things toward a quicker resolution.
The definition of what a "final deal" looks like could also depend on who's asking. Even if the parameters are set for new ownership by the Dec. 16 deadline, specifics of how it will all work might not even be public after a switchover happens.
"I won't be at all surprised if we're still learning about oversight and governance details long after TikTok is transferred from ByteDance to Oracle," said Jake Williams, a security expert and faculty member at IANS Research.Â
Williams said the ByteDance ownership stake may not be a problem if it doesn't include control over content algorithms and data collection, but he foresees technical issues that could sink the entire project.
Will the update be successful?
Even with administration assurances that a new app may not be necessary, retrofitting the existing app to work with Oracle's systems may be next to impossible, according to Williams.
"Anyone who thinks you can just lift and shift infrastructure for any major application from one data center to another has never worked in operations," he said.Â
Adjusting the current app is something that would take years, not months, he said, adding that features would probably have to be discontinued to make TikTok functional.
There's also the matter of whether other countries will trust the US algorithm not to censor content, especially after the recent Jimmy Kimmel clash.
While the Trump administration seems determined to get TikTok into the hands of US companies and in partnership with the government, Williams is less optimistic about its prospects.
"All in all, this effort is almost certain to fail at both policy and technical levels. It will kill TikTok as we know it today in the process," he said.