【Epoch Times News, February 19, 2025】As US President Trump tries to save TikTok, multiple acquisition deals are being negotiated behind the scenes. However, TikTok insists that it has no intention to separate from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. Moreover, the Chinese Communist Party has ordered ByteDance not to sell TikTok. However, the very act of separating from the Chinese Communist Party is precisely what the ban on TikTok requires under the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Apps Act.”
In the acquisition cases revealed by the media so far, there has been no mention of TikTok completely cutting ties with ByteDance, raising concerns that they may violate the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Apps Act”, or the “No-Sell, No-Access Act”.
According to the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Apps Act,” passed by the US Congress on April 24th last year and signed by then-President Biden, unless TikTok is “effectively separated” from entities controlled by foreign opponents, it will be banned from operating in the US. Legal experts say that the power to determine if the separation is “effective” lies with Trump.
According to a report by the Associated Press at the end of January, under the suggestion of the Trump administration, the startup company Perplexity AI has proposed a new plan to merge with ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok. Perplexity AI is a research and conversational search engine powered by AI chatbots. According to the proposal, ByteDance, headquartered in China, “does not need to completely sever ties with TikTok”, but will “contribute its efforts to TikTok’s US operations.”
Multiple pieces of evidence indicate that ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is under the control of a foreign opponent – the Chinese Communist Party.
In 2021, the US media “The Information” quoted data from “Tianyancha” to report that Beijing ByteDance Technology sold 1% of its shares to a company owned by three state-owned entities of NetInvest (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. This transaction allowed the Chinese government to appoint a director to the Beijing ByteDance company. The Democracy Foundation pointed out that this allows the Chinese government to directly influence company decisions to obtain information about US users.
In 2022, ByteDance admitted that Chinese employees openly accessed sensitive TikTok geolocation data to monitor US journalists. The Democracy Foundation pointed out that this event shows TikTok and other Chinese tech platforms evolving into mature tools for state surveillance.
In June 2023, former ByteDance employee Yu Yintao accused in a US court that in 2018, the Chinese Communist Party monitored Hong Kong democracy protesters through TikTok’s “backdoor” access rights to identify and monitor activists’ locations and communications.
Yu Yintao also revealed in the lawsuit that ByteDance’s office in Beijing has a special party organization responsible for monitoring the company’s applications, “guiding the company on advancing Communist core values,” and has the “authority to completely suspend the company’s Chinese applications.”
Yu Yintao said, “The committee has the highest access rights to all the company’s data, even data stored in the US.”
So, is Perplexity AI’s plan to “effectively separate” from ByteDance? Nancy A. Costello, a practical law professor at Michigan State University, told the Epoch Times that the key issue lies in the level of control ByteDance will have over TikTok.
Costello said, “TikTok, according to the law (the ‘Protecting Americans from Foreign Apps Act’), must be a US entity, owned and operated by a US entity. It must completely sever its ties with ByteDance – including economic interests and algorithm interests – as required by the law. It’s quite clear in the law. It doesn’t leave much room for interpretation.”
Costello is also the director of the First Amendment Clinic at Michigan State University and director of the Free Expression Online Library and Resource Center.
Another possible deal facilitated by the Trump administration is Oracle and a group of external investors acquiring TikTok. According to NPR, under this plan, ByteDance will retain a minority stake in TikTok, while Oracle will “supervise” TikTok’s algorithms, data collection, and software updates.
However, the meaning of “supervise” in this context is ambiguous, and it’s unclear if this means the algorithms, data collection, and software updates of TikTok will still be executed by ByteDance.
Costello said, “What does ‘supervise’ mean? Is ByteDance still involved in operations? Are they still operating the algorithms, collecting data? Will they actually reduce their involvement? What data will they collect, how much data on Americans? Do they have the power to control the algorithm and content push? It’s hard to know without understanding the details of how Oracle will ‘supervise’ this. Technically, according to the law, ByteDance should not be involved in any form of algorithmic control.”
Costello said, “When I read the law (the ‘Protecting Americans from Foreign Apps Act’), I found that TikTok must, in fact, divest itself from any financial ownership and operational interests ByteDance has over it, including the algorithm, as required by the law.”
Costello believes that if ByteDance still has some ability to operate the algorithm, it would not comply with legal requirements.
However, Perplexity AI’s merger agreement proposes terms to cut ties with the existing algorithm. According to the Associated Press, under the new company structure, TikTok “will not adopt a proprietary algorithm that supports the content users see on the app.” The agreement also stipulates that the new company must allow “full control by the US board.”
Costello said that such terms are more likely to comply with the law.
However, TikTok has repeatedly stated that it has no intention to separate from its parent company, ByteDance.
On January 10th, during a court hearing where TikTok requested to overturn the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Apps Act”, TikTok’s defense lawyer, Francisco, argued that the separation required by the law was impractical. He provided two reasons.
Firstly, TikTok has a global engineering team to maintain and update the source code. “Effective separation” would prohibit any form of coordination with the global engineering team. Secondly, “effective separation” would disconnect the US from a global content platform.
The firm stance of TikTok behind this issue is influenced by the Chinese Communist Party. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Chinese Communist Party sent a message to ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, based in Beijing. The company’s leadership interpreted this as the government preferring the US to ban TikTok rather than selling the app.
On February 8th, a TikTok spokesperson stated bluntly, “The TikTok US company cannot be acquired; the reason is simple, because it will cease to exist.”
Such resolute attitude from the Chinese Communist Party is not surprising, as TikTok is deemed a critical strategic asset and a powerful weapon in its strategic competition against the US. TikTok has 170 million monthly active users in the US.
Apart from helping the Chinese Communist Party collect data of Americans, TikTok can also clandestinely influence US public opinion, such as spreading anti-Semitic content. Research by Natalie Gabriel Weimann, a communication professor at the University of Haifa in Israel, found shocking extreme anti-Semitic messages in video clips, songs, comments, text, images, and symbols on TikTok.
TikTok can also be leveraged by the Chinese Communist Party to influence US elections and sway US politics. While Trump believes that there are many young supporters on TikTok who helped him win the 2024 election, let us not forget that four years ago, during his second presidential campaign, TikTok also played a treacherous role.
On June 20, 2020, Trump held a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His campaign chairman announced in advance that 1 million people had applied for tickets. However, on the day of the event, only 6,200 showed up, dramatically dampening Trump’s campaign morale. The reason was that some users on TikTok registered hundreds of thousands of tickets for the Trump rally but intentionally did not attend.
The change in TikTok’s attitude towards Trump on the platform remains a mystery. But as long as TikTok’s ownership remains in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party, the platform’s election orientation can be manipulated by the Party.
During the 2022 US midterm elections, TikTok once again intervened by launching a feature called “Election Center”. This feature allows users to access election information from various states, including how to register to vote, how to vote by mail, and how to locate local polling stations.
In August of that year, Representatives Jim Banks and Michael Waltz wrote to Jeffrey Wichman, a senior official in charge of foreign political interference in the US intelligence community, saying that TikTok’s “Election Center” could provide the Chinese Communist Party with unprecedented political oversight and election interference tools.
Upon taking office on January 20th, Trump signed an executive order to delay the implementation of the “No-Sell, No-Access” Act by 75 days. Now, there are just over 40 days left before TikTok faces a potential shutdown again. So far, companies showing interest in acquiring or merging with TikTok include Amazon and Microsoft.
Costello said, “He (Trump) does indeed support maintaining TikTok’s status as a social media platform for Americans, so he has to find a way. But it has to comply with the requirements of the law, namely (TikTok) has to separate from ByteDance, completely cut ties. So, the path he has to take here is like walking on a very narrow steel wire.”
According to the law, these acquisition cases must meet the requirements of “effective separation”. However, he stated that the power to determine whether there is “effective separation” is in Trump’s hands.