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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/24/tiktok-ownership-chinese-american-australia-may-choose-between-china-usa-trump-billionaire-backers>
"Would you rather a Chinese-owned TikTok or one run by a consortium of
Trump-supporting billionaires?
That’s the choice Australia is being asked to consider.
The Trump administration has outlined that a proposed deal for TikTok to remain
in operation in the United States would transfer the control of TikTok’s US
operations to a US company that will have seven seats on the board, with six
filled by Americans. Donald Trump has suggested a consortium of US businesses,
including Larry Ellison’s Oracle and Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch’s Fox
Corporation, are involved in the deal.
TikTok is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. US Congress passed a law in
2024 to ban the social media app unless it was sold to a US company, citing
national security and privacy concerns. The Trump administration has extended
the deadline for the ban several times as a deal was hashed out between the US
and China.
As part of the proposed deal, TikTok’s proprietary algorithm “will also be
controlled by America”, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has said.
The move led to the Liberal senator James Paterson suggesting that if the deal
went ahead then Australia should move to the US version of the app.
“It would be an unfortunate thing if there was a safe version of TikTok in the
United States, but a version of TikTok in Australia which was still controlled
by a foreign authoritarian government,” he told Murdoch’s
Sky News.
Tom Sulston, head of policy at Digital Rights Watch, said it was the
surveillance of users that was the issue, not the ownership of TikTok, and that
the move to bring TikTok under US control was “baffling”.
“The problem is not the ownership. The problem is the constant and intrusive
surveillance of the user base. Users of a US-owned TikTok won’t enjoy any more
privacy than they did with a Chinese-owned TikTok, on account of the lack of
meaningful regulation of social media companies,” he said.
“TikTok users will still be pervasively surveilled as they use the internet,
and that surveillance will be used both to advertise at them and by national
intelligence services to profile them.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
