The TikTok Ban Was Never What It Seemed

The strange saga of the TikTok ban may soon be coming to an end. “We have a deal on TikTok,” the president said on Tuesday. The Wall Street Journal has a few more details on the proposal:

TikTok’s U.S. business would be controlled by an investor consortium including Oracle, Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz under a framework the U.S. and China are finalizing as talks shift into high gear, according to people familiar with the matter…

…Existing users in the U.S. would be asked to shift to a new app, which TikTok has built and is testing, people familiar with the matter said. TikTok engineers will re-create a set of content-recommendation algorithms for the app, using technology licensed from TikTok’s parent ByteDance, the people said.

Since the Trump administration started officially shepherding the deal, this is approximately the outcome people were expecting: a deal to hand off some of the company to Oracle, a company led by Trump ally (and richest-man-in-the-world contender) Larry Ellison, whose company has a longstanding relationship with TikTok stemming from earlier attempts to satisfy requests from the American government. The possible involvement of private-equity firm Silver Lake was reported earlier this year, as was that of Andreessen Horowitz, where named partners have embraced the administration.

There are, however, some new and important details. The investors will take an 80 percent stake in the new entity, meeting the 20 percent maximum threshold for Chinese ownership outlined in the existing law. The entity will also have an “American-dominated board with one member designated by the U.S. government.” If the idea of a government-appointed board member sounds familiar, it might be because of a similar condition placed by the Trump administration on the merger of U.S. Steel into Nippon Steel. Or perhaps it brings to mind the sorts of relationships the Chinese government has with the country’s largest companies, including ByteDance, which are required to establish internal-party committees.

It’s the sort of weird, contorted resolution that, if you’ve been keeping up with the various stated reasons for banning or forcing the sale of TikTok, seems like it wouldn’t really satisfy anyone: not the Republicans who were concerned about influence operations and spying by Chinese owners, who will still have a stake in the company; not Democrats who blundered into supporting the ban just in time for Trump to change his tune, and who cited the dark influence of the TikTok algorithm, which the new company will be licensing from ByteDance anyway; and not the bipartisan group of lawmakers who passed the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act in 2024. The somewhat wider range of people who intuitively supported the ban in the spirit of taking on social media in general, or as a remedy for social media’s influence on young people, will be the least satisfied of all now that the ban has become, well, a relaunch.

When it comes to the TikTok ban, though, “stated reasons” were never especially useful. Trump’s initial interest in a TikTok ban was part of a broader anti-China posture at the time. That began dissolving after allied TikTok investors — who will likely come out of this transaction in good shape — made their case and disappeared when Trump found out that at least some users on the platform like him. Democrats’ transparently strategic attempt to outflank Trump on the ban only seemed genuine when they were talking about fears that the platform was turning young people against Israel and left them owning an unpopular policy for unpopular reasons. And now, Trump remaking himself as TikTok’s savior is surreally ridiculous, resulting in some of the most purely unbelievable claims he’s ever made:

"We have a deal on TikTok," Trump said, underscoring the importance of the social media platform for young people. "The kids want it so badly, I have parents calling me up. They don't want it for themselves. They want it for their kids."

— Jarrett Renshaw (@JarrettRenshaw) September 16, 2025

In the end, the TikTok ban wasn’t primarily about national security or influence — although this new arrangement will have implications for both — but rather political control and the demonstration thereof. A Chinese app became popular in a foreign market. Political leaders in that foreign market found this unacceptable. Under threat of a total ban, they forced a partial sale to political allies, who, despite licensing the Chinese company’s underlying technology, will now have the discretion to set platform policies however they see fit. One of those allies, Larry Ellison, is the father of David Ellison, who recently became CEO of Paramount, and who, with help from family, just launched a bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, too, raising the possibility of a politically aligned media and internet conglomerate without precedent, at least in the United States, as well as broad new ideological alignment among social-media leadership:

Red-pilled billionaires will soon own America's top social media platforms for journalists/politicians (X). Zoomers (TikTok), boomers (Facebook), and hotties (Insta) https://t.co/OoJPtxfnWp

— Eric Levitz (@EricLevitz) September 16, 2025

It might be generous to say that, for Donald Trump, everything has gone to plan, but it’s certainly worked out. Meanwhile, also-ban Democrats may have committed a historic political error for reasons it’s still not clear they even understand. If the deal goes through — the president today signed another extension while details get hashed out — Americans will find themselves in a strange new version of an old situation: wondering if, and how, TikTok’s close relationship with the dominant political party of its domestic government could affect what they see and post.