TikTok Bought: The Deal, Education Fund, And What It Means For TikTok Users

The following story was written by a student on the staff of The Jaguar Times as part of Hilliard Bradley High School’s Journalism Production course.

by Hunter Wilson, Staff Writer

The Deal

Over the past couple of weeks President Trump has threatened to ban TikTok, the popular social media platform with over 100 million users in the United States. Social media companies invading their user’s privacy has been a constant issue in recent years. His reasoning behind trying to ban TikTok lies in the fact that it is owned by ByteDance, a company based in China. Trump claims that the app gives Beijing access to the personal data of Americans. This could be dangerous because private information of many Americans would be exposed.

TikTok denounced that claim by saying that their data centers are located outside of China. Hilliard Bradley student Luke Weisenburger (grade 10) says that he’s “kind of worried” that

our information could be stolen but also that he feels that it’s “better that the data centers are outside of China”. Hayley Lauve (grade 12), another student at Hilliard Bradley says that she is “very confident that American companies will be able to keep our information safe."

A deal was struck between the United States and ByteDance, but questions still remain unanswered. According to CNN, “Trump gave his blessing to a deal that would give Oracle and Walmart a combined 20% stake in a new company called TikTok Global, which would be headquartered in the United States and operate the app”. This is where the confusion starts. Oracle Executive Vice President Ken Glueck said ByteDance will not own any part of the viral video app. That claim from Ken Glueck appears to be entirely false. According to CNN, The actual compromise consists of Walmart and Oracle owning 53% of TikTok Global, while the rest of the company is owned by Chinese and International investors.

Education Fund

President Trump said that the deal would include a $5 billion fund for US education. ByteDance said that they were unaware of an education fund being part of the deal. According to CNN, TikTok Global "will pay more than 5 billion in new tax dollars to the US Treasury.” These payments are tax related, and not for an education fund.

What It Means For TikTok Users

While the future of TikTok is somewhat uncertain, one thing is definite, TikTok isn’t going anywhere. Even if President Trump’s ban threat went through it wouldn’t take the app off of mobile devices. Americans could continue to watch and upload videos. The app wouldn’t be available to download, so over time it would become glitchy due to a lack of updates. The short videos that give many teens and many Americans a sense of joy are here to stay.