TikTok has a path to remain in the U.S.—and it looks a lot like a plan that ByteDance, its powerful Chinese parent company, proposed years ago.
On Friday ByteDance announced it will form a new joint venture, TikTok USDS, to meet U.S. demands that it divest the platform or face a nationwide ban. The venture will host TikTok’s U.S. user data on Oracle servers, review the app’s code, set content moderation policies for U.S. users, and “retrain” recommendation algorithms using only U.S. data. It will also continue to generate meaningful revenue for ByteDance—and free it from some long-running political headaches.
The announcement ends a long legal battle that spanned multiple administrations, strained U.S.–China relations, and cast uncertainty over one of America’s most popular social media platforms.
