TikTok’s ownership and future has been a long process with many contradicting changes over the years; however, the war is finally over, for now. The platform’s U.S. operations have been moved into a partnership with Oracle, Silver Lake, and Michael Dell.
A deal made on January 22, 2026, marked the end of a legal battle that had threatened to remove the platform from American users. Professors at the University of Dayton in Ohio point out that switching owners could mean replacing current problems with concerns of security. After the TikTok ban in 2024, a string of executive orders had resulted in a year-long stall in enforcement actions.
From January into early February, TikTok experienced widespread outages that were linked to issues at the Oracle data center. These issues included videos failing to load entirely, to “For You” pages resetting. This app relies on a smoothly running algorithm, so this was quite a big deal, and users found it hard to ignore. The transition of this ownership was supposed to increase stability and trust; however, it did quite the opposite and caused more harm than good.
Oracle itself is now in charge of TikTok’s recommendation system, which is being retrained to meet U.S. requirements. Although oversight aims to be open, users distrust the process and claim that posts criticizing politicians are being hidden or removed.
Considering TikTok’s past criticism regarding the algorithm’s opacity, this transition raises concerns that we could be swapping one controlling Influence for a new one. The decisions being made about this app are quite invisible to the users themselves.
TikTok looks the same, scrolls the same, and overall seems the same as before, but behind the scenes, the people in charge of this app are changing. This affects whose voices are prominent. Moving to a U.S. version has been a messy process with many technical problems and feed changes causing some users to move to other apps. Oracle’s involvement has changed TikTok’s narrative, but it hasn’t eased concerns—it’s worsened them. The app’s future now rests in political interests and corporate rather than the public.
“President Trump issued an extension upon taking office, he had no authority to do so. Literally under the law passed by Congress,” says Dr. Christopher Devine, a political science expert. He states, “ By issuing several extensions when the TikTok law provided for no more than one, President Trump was effectively making rather than enforcing federal law in this instance”.
Devine points out that this refusal to enforce federal law had kept 170 million Americans from deleting the app. Devine says that the legal timeout had purposely ignored what Congress wanted, which was to have the app removed.
“Politically, this has been a win for Trump,” Devine says. The Trump administration had managed to “Americanize” the app and keep its immense American audience. With this win for Trump, there was a cost. The boundaries of presidential power came even blurrier, with rules constantly being ignored.
Under this new agreement, ByteDance, a Chinese company, holds a 19.9% share of
TikTok, which is just under 20%, the limit for foreign control. While this ownership change satisfies federal requirements, experts suggest it fails to address security concerns.
“There are ethical issues whenever the government, at any level, influences social media decisions,” says Dr. Chad Painter, a media ethics professor. Putting TikTok within the control of industry leaders doesn’t fix the issue of how companies treat their users. Without changes to the platform, addictive designs and data extraction will not be fixed.
With political donors now leading TikTok USDS ( The United States Digital Service), there is a much higher risk that the government could interfere in content moderation. There has been slight evidence of these content changes since Elon Musk had Bought X. For younger users, the enjoyment of using these platforms blind them from the risk of data collection, as well as security concerns. Platforms collect a wide variety of data ranging from IP addresses to behavioral data, which tracks how long users watch certain videos or the kinds of content they are watching.
Using this data, the app feeds the user similar content so that they will watch more. UD students say that “apps collect data anyway” and “I can’t control it.” With TikTok back and active in the U.S, experts in the UD say that younger audiences need to think critically about the political involvement in TikTok.
TikTok doesn’t need more behind the scenes reshuffling of secretive deals – it needs real and visible accountability over how its algorithm is controlled and whose voices are favored. Until we see this change, Oracle’s involvement feels less like a solution and more like a temporary “fix”. For the users of TikTok, the question is no longer if the app will pass its next test, but if the platform will still feel like theirs when this transition has settled.
