In April 2024, former President Joe Biden signed a law stating that if ByteDance, TikTok’s owner, didn’t give up full rights to the U.S., the platform would be banned nationwide. The platform went dark for less than a day. Then, in Jan. 2025, President Donald Trump issued several executive orders to hold off the ban and had American investors hold the majority of the company. 

The main reason for the initial ban is that the Chinese government was able to access U.S. users’ data. Imagine the panic you feel when you realize one of your passwords has been leaked or one of your accounts has been hacked. That’s what this data leak was, but on a much larger scale. It seems the U.S. government wanted to ban the app all together, and cut all ties there. Trump would have rather taken ownership of the app, hence why he involved American investors instead of having the government own the platform. 

The app is beginning to look more and more like Trump trying to appeal to the next generation of voters and promote himself through the app. It’s a political stunt that furthers the divide between each political party, and that should be avoided if the American people are going to become one country again.

With Trump so invested in ‘saving TikTok’, it makes you think: Why involve the investors? Why would the app be sold to investors and not the government?

To start off, ‘TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC’ has three major investors: Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX. Oracle is a big name tech company, co-founded by Larry Ellison. Silver Lake is a private equity firm, meaning they invest in companies, or hold stock in them, and profit off of it. MGX isn’t actually based in the U.S., but in Abu Dhabi and is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) company. These investors each hold 15% of the American version of TikTok, as ByteDance still holds 19.9% of TikTok. 

These investors have representatives on a seven-member board, put together to run and oversee this new version. The board has plans to change TikTok’s moderation and algorithms, though the way the app actually runs will still be the same.

Oracle is one of the more interesting investors, because the co-founder Larry Ellison is a publicly known friend of President Trump and has a firm grasp on the entertainment industry. Ellison’s son, David Ellison, is the chairman and CEO of Paramount Skydance and had made a bid to take over Warner Bros. Discovery, rivaling Netflix’s bid.

Oracle gains a firmer grasp over the entertainment industry and a better relationship with Trump, Silver Lake gains money and broadens its investment portfolio, and MGX gets to implement its AI software into the platform. 

What does Trump gain? Publicity, attention, and maybe even brownie points with the youth for ‘saving’ their app. The more publicity he gets from TikTok, the more power he derives from the people. That power only fuels his ego to continue on with his political nonsense. 

When the administration flipped over, TikTok users reported that videos about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Jeffry Epstein, and Alex Pretti were being censored, sparking the hashtag ‘#TikTokCensorship’ and forming a distrust within the new administration. 

TikTok claims it was a power outage in one of its data centers, but there is no hard proof of these specific topics being censored. The outage rendered all videos unviewable, not just political ones. 

But a power outage? That’s almost as believable as my dog eating my homework. 

What is the end product of “TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC” or the American version of TikTok? Well, Trump seems like he’s using it to promote and popularize himself with the next generation of voters. Oracle basically has free will to censor whatever it would like within the app and its moderation as well as more control of entertainment, especially with younger audiences. 

This whole ‘new’ TikTok honestly just feels like MAGA propaganda, with Larry Ellison being close friends with Trump. His inclusion doesn’t instill any sense of comfort or reassurance that political voices won’t be silenced within the app. MGX’s contribution of their AI software almost feels like a slap in the face, judging by how outwardly people are against AI as well. 

While it may be hard to stop doomscrolling, it’s important to pick your poison. With Trump’s influence on the app, a lot of the information you consume could be misinformation or propaganda. 

It’s really more of a matter of where you want your money to be going, whether it’s YouTube or Instagram. Anything besides TikTok is better at this point.