Sen. Ed Markey on Friday sent letters to TikTok US and Oracle $ORCL demanding information about whether the joint venture established to keep TikTok operating in the United States adequately addresses national security concerns about the app's Chinese ownership.
In letters sent Friday, Markey alleged the spin-off arrangement fell short of a 2024 law designed to sever ties between TikTok's U.S. operations and ByteDance, the app's Chinese parent company, CNN reported, saying it violated the law's spirit if not its text. "President Trump managed to keep TikTok online only by ignoring the law's central goal and relying on vague, unproven safeguards to address the legitimate risks to national security," Markey wrote in his letter to TikTok US. "Congress and the American people need to understand if and how this deal protects against Chinese influence over TikTok's content."
Among the documents Markey wants delivered no later than June 18 are the full contracts between Oracle and TikTok US and between TikTok US and ByteDance covering the algorithm license, as well as an explanation of how the joint venture audits ByteDance code and adapts the algorithm for American audiences.
The agreement closed in January, just 24 hours before an impending ban would have taken hold, handing over TikTok's American user data and the bulk of its domestic operations to a new entity. That joint venture is majority-controlled by a consortium including Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX, an Emirati-backed investment firm, with legacy ByteDance investors holding slightly more than 30% and ByteDance itself keeping a 19.9% stake, CNN reported. Oracle serves as one of three managing investors.
The joint venture said it planned to retrain TikTok's algorithm on U.S. user data, moderate content for U.S. users, and store Americans' data in Oracle's U.S. cloud. At the same time, the global TikTok operation — still under ByteDance's control — retained responsibility for the U.S. platform's e-commerce, advertising, and marketing functions. The joint venture also disclosed that it would draw the algorithm directly from ByteDance under a licensing arrangement, putting it through retraining and review only after that handoff.
Those assurances did not satisfy Markey, who challenged their adequacy in his letter to Oracle, arguing that the public has been given too little detail about the retraining process and asking "whether source code review can meaningfully identify algorithmic manipulation, especially if, for example, China attempted to hide malicious code within an urgent security patch," CNN reported.
The 2024 law, signed by then-President Joe Biden, prohibited any cooperation on a content recommendation algorithm between ByteDance and a new American ownership group. TikTok is used by over 200 million Americans, according to Reuters. CNN said it reached out to TikTok and Oracle for comment.