On Jan. 22, the Chinese-owned app TikTok sold its U.S. operations to multiple U.S. companies. The app, originally owned by ByteDance, sold its majority ownership of U.S. TikTok operations to Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX.
The sale comes after years of conflict over the public safety of Americans using an app under Chinese ownership. It started in 2020, when the federal government, led by requests from President Donald Trump, announced its consideration of banning the app, citing security concerns.
Following a series of lawsuits and attempted plans to sell TikTok, ByteDance suggested it would rather shut down U.S. operations than be sold to a company like Microsoft. This continued into the Biden administration, which signed a law that would order ByteDance to divest its ownership in the U.S.
Days before Trump’s second inauguration, the app was shut down due to the deadline of the Biden-passed law but was granted an extension on Trump’s first day in office. The unenforced deadline would continue to be extended until the sale of U.S. operations this year.
Although the sale included a variety of U.S. companies, Oracle has caught the brunt of the backlash from the sale due to its acquisition of the recommendation algorithm. Due to new U.S. ownership, the algorithm has to be retrained to comply with U.S. requirements, which has not gone well for the new parent company.
Within days of the announcement of the sale and prior to it going into effect, users were noticing a change in the algorithm, noting that they were only getting months-old videos they had already seen on their “For You” page. It didn’t help that within days of the acquisition, companies, including Oracle, reported catastrophic server outages mostly due to the snowstorm that swept the nation.
Within this time frame, viral posts on TikTok and on X noted that political posts and comments were being taken down or were receiving less engagement than other posts. On Jan. 26, California Gov. Gavin Newsom got involved, launching an investigation into the allegations of anti-Trump content being suppressed by TikTok.
The Trump administration was deeply involved in the sale of TikTok, and with the acquisition by Trump ally Larry Ellison, chief technology officer of Oracle, eyes were on the federal government, as they were involved in the issues reported by users. At the same time, major events were taking place that were allegedly not spreading as easily on the app, notably the release of new Epstein files and the shooting of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Minneapolis.
Oracle quickly shut down these accusations, citing the power outages from a storm as the culprit of the issues being reported. On Jan. 27, Oracle spokesperson Michael Egbert wrote "The challenges U.S. TikTok users may be experiencing are the result of technical issues that followed the power outage, which Oracle and TikTok are working to quickly resolve.”
An analysis from the publication Good Authority examined the algorithm following the sale of TikTok. The research showed that all keywords saw a dip in activity following the server outage, not just politically related terms. Although evidence of suppression of political content could not be found in the research, Good Authority could not rule out more subtle forms of moderation, like shadow banning.
On Sunday, a statement from TikTok assured users that the technical issues caused by the storm had been resolved.
“We have successfully restored TikTok back to normal after a significant outage caused by winter weather took down a primary U.S. data center site operated by Oracle,” TikTok wrote in a statement.
While accusations continue to fly, evidence has yet to be found to confirm that major content suppression has been caused by anything other than Oracle’s server outages from the winter storm. If nothing else, the situation shows that Oracle will be kept under a close eye by users for a long time to come.
