Trump’s TikTok play: Do we believe a deal has been reached?

This article was originally featured in cybernews - By Gintaras Radauskas

After hearing from Donald Trump that the United States and China have agreed on a long-awaited deal for changing TikTok’s ownership, users and experts still doubt that real change is coming.

US President Trump said Monday that the US and China have reached a deal over TikTok that would mark a shift in ownership for the popular app and avoid its nationwide ban.

Beijing also confirmed that a “basic consensus” has been reached after Scott Bessent said that a “framework” of the deal was in place. Officials from both superpowers have been discussing TikTok during wider negotiations in Madrid this weekend.

Are we good to go? Can millions of TikTok users in the US finally calm down and live without fear that the app might be banned?

Well, the problem is that we’ve been here before. Earlier attempts to find a new, non-Chinese owner for TikTok all came close to the finish line – but fell apart one after another.

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That’s why tech professionals, legal experts, and regular TikTok users are almost united in their unwillingness to express either joy or dismay over the alleged breakthrough.

“There’s no point in speculating about claims from the Trump administration until we have something in writing. They're all incorrigible liars,” one Reddit user said.

Deadline to sell TikTok not that dead to Trump

The Trump administration probably had to act. The original law from last year required ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to sell or shut down the app in the US by January 2025.

Sure, Trump has already extended the deadline for ByteDance three times, clearly unwilling to anger millions of American TikTok users.

The original law from last year required ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to sell or shut down the app in the US by January 2025.

That’s why on Sunday, Trump said he’d “like to do it for the kids,” and a day later, cried victory on Truth Social.

“A deal was also reached on a ‘certain’ company that young people in our country very much wanted to save. They will be very happy!”

According to Lynn Sophia, a tech lead at FreSound, Trump must have decided to speed up talks with China because it’s clear that indefinite extensions of the deadline are likely to be challenged in Congress and the courts.

“Congress could pass more detailed legislation limiting the administration’s discretion or imposing tighter deadlines – possibly with an enforcement mechanism attached,” Sophia told Cybernews.

“They could also improve oversight of deal structures or national security reviews related to foreign ownership of technology assets.”

Indeed, as per Politico, China hawks in Congress already want immediate scrutiny of Trump’s TikTok deal, insisting that ByteDance has to completely relinquish control of the company and its prized algorithm.

Details of the aforementioned framework of the deal are lacking. Reportedly, more will be revealed later this week when Trump speaks to China’s President Xi Jinping.

This uncertainty around what’s actually happening is confusing to some, not least because Trump doesn’t seem to be following proper legal procedures.

“The TikTok ban has essentially become a ‘boy who cried wolf’ situation. Has it been legally banned? Yes. Has Trump continued to postpone the ban time and time again, even though most legal experts agree he doesn’t have the authority to actually do that? Yes,” Ben Michael, attorney at M & A Criminal Defense Attorneys, told Cybernews.

This uncertainty around what’s actually happening is confusing to some, not least because Trump doesn’t seem to be following proper legal procedures.

“Because of that, it’s likely that the ban will be postponed again, and that’s why you don’t hear users even talking about the ban hardly at all anymore – even though legally it is supposed to be happening.”

Will TikTok take a sharp right-wing turn?

To be fair, White House officials have been briefing the press that the deal would reduce ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok to less than 20%. It would also remove China’s ability to access US citizens' user data.

According to CBS News sources, technology company Oracle is among a consortium of firms that would enable TikTok to continue operations in the US if the deal between the US and China is finalized.

But it seems that TikTok’s precious algorithm could be retained by ByteDance and simply leased to a new American spin-off of TikTok. Bessent said on Monday that the commercial framework deal will preserve TikTok’s “Chinese characteristics.”

That means that the formula could be continued to allegedly be misused to promote Chinese propaganda – one of the key concerns that animated the sale-or-ban law.

For Beijing, TikTok’s algorithm is rightly important. As Javier Palomarez, founder and CEO of the US Hispanic Business Council, put it to Cybernews, American firms would, of course, “save a fortune in development costs if the algorithm is shared with US buyers.”

“However, this brings into question IP laws and potential security concerns from China’s perspective,” Palomarez added.

Reddit seems to agree. One user plainly said: “I’m skeptical that China would agree to divest of TikTok and its algorithm, which they can use to their advantage to push pro-China/anti-American content. This seems like another one of Trump's deals where he claims victory for little to nothing in return.”

Again, one of the main motivations to pass the TikTok divestiture law was the concern that Beijing could force ByteDance to manipulate the platform's algorithm to control what Americans see.

Equally, though, quite a few TikTok users don’t want an American tech firm to buy the platform – especially when many of the largest and most powerful companies are in cahoots with the Trump administration.

“Depending on who buys it, you might get something like Instagram in the meantime, where it's seemingly constantly eager to feed you right-wing shit for hours if you linger for even slightly too long,” another Reddit user speculated.

What about Oracle? The company’s co-founder, Larry Ellison, the world’s richest person, is a close Trump ally, having donated to his inauguration and thrown campaign fundraisers for him. Oracle’s co-president, Safra Catz, also served on the transition team within Trump’s first administration.

“Could such allegiances make the TikTok product, which, compared to other platforms, has been less political, take a hard-right turn?” The Hollywood Reporter recently asked and reminded what happened to Twitter once Elon Musk bought it.