Featured Image Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Staff / Getty
President Donald Trump is set to change your TikTok personalised feed forever.
TikTok's rollercoaster year might finally be coming to an end with a big shake-up of how the app actually works.
For most of this year, ByteDance (TikTok's parent company) has been dealing with pressure from US officials to either sell off the American side of things or get shut down completely.
Last week, the Trump administration extended the 17 September deadline to mid-December, before giving away a five-word ambiguous answer about the TikTok's future.
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This is actually the fourth time Trump has delayed the deadline that originally gave ByteDance until January 2025 to either sell the app or shut it down in America.
Now there's a deal on the table that could save TikTok in the US, but it means completely rebuilding the algorithm that decides what videos you see on your For You page.
It seems the technology behind the algorithm will be copied and retrained using US user data.
According to a White House spokesperson on Monday (22 September), tech giant Oracle will oversee and audit TikTok's recommendation technology, while a newly formed partnership with US investors will manage operations for the app's sale.
White House officials believe the deal to be win-win for TikTok's user base and national security interests.
The agreement will outline how the app will comply with US national security requirements and includes a 120-day extension of enforcement deadlines that will lead to the closing of the deal.
It's still unclear whether the Chinese government has approved the agreement, but the White House are confident in securing China's official approval.
TikTok's 170 million American users' information is currently stored on Oracle's servers through an existing initiative known as Project Texas.
As part of the deal, Oracle would take on a comprehensive role in securing the entirety of the app for American users, a White House official stated.
This would mean digging through all the code and the recommendation system, then rebuilding everything from scratch using only US user data.
Oracle already provides cloud computing infrastructure for a reputable companies including ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, and has been long rumoured to play a role in President Trump's deal, as per the BBC.
The surge in demand for its data centres among AI companies helped push its stock dramatically higher and briefly made its co-founder and chairman Larry Ellison the world's richest person.
Earlier this year, President Trump said he would welcome Ellison's offer to buy TikTok.
