TikTok will not shut down on Wednesday, as President Donald Trump inches nearer to closing a deal with China that will most likely see the app's majority ownership shift to US owners and US-based users shift to a new app.
On Tuesday, Trump confirmed that he has extended the deadline to December 16 for TikTok owner ByteDance to divest ownership to comply with a law designed to block China from spying on US users or manipulating TikTok's algorithm to influence Americans.
The president claimed that the extension allows time to finalize a deal that sources told The Wall Street Journal would shift 80 percent ownership to "an investor consortium including Oracle, Silver Lake, and Andreessen Horowitz." Existing ByteDance investors will also join the consortium, including Susquehanna International, KKR, and General Atlantic, the WSJ reported.
Under the current framework—which could change—TikTok's board would become "American-dominated," sources further confirmed, including "one member designated by the US government." Trump suggested the deal would be finalized within the next 30 to 45 days, CNBC reported.
Ultimately, China gets to keep the TikTok algorithm, simply licensing the algorithm to the US instead of handing over the heart of TikTok's success. As Ars previously reported, that means the US could end up with a glitchier version of TikTok, with sources telling WSJ that TikTok engineers will be forced to "re-create a set of content-recommendation algorithms" for the US app if the deal goes through. However, according to the Financial Times, "content generated by American users would still be available to users in the 'rest of the world' app and vice versa."
There's a chance that the Republican-controlled Congress could intervene if national security concerns remain after Trump finalizes the deal. Politico reported that some Republicans, like Sen. Chuck Grassley (R.-Iowa), are taking a "hard line," vowing to oppose the framework if it violates the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, the law intended to ban TikTok if China maintained control of the algorithm.