Trump joint venture proposal on TikTok ownership counter-intuitive, expert says
The US President has suggested TikTok could enter into a joint ownership deal with the United States to avoid a looming ban for the site.
President Donald Trump’s suggestion of the United States entering into a 50-50 ownership joint venture with TikTok’s parent company to help it avoid a US ban would be “counter-intuitive”, one social media expert has said.
Among an array of executive orders signed by the president after he took office on Monday, Mr Trump signed one giving TikTok’s China-based parent firm ByteDance more time to find a buyer for TikTok’s US business to help it avoid a ban because of national security concerns around the company’s links to China.
The president has previously suggested TikTok could avoid the ban by entering into a joint ownership deal with the United States, but no further details on how such a scheme could work have so far been brought forward.
Social media expert Drew Benvie, who is also chief executive of social media consultancy Battenhall, said he believed Mr Trump’s proposed approach would not work, and that the stand-off over the app was more about US-China relations on a broader scale.
“TikTok is the jewel in ByteDance’s crown, and the Chinese tech giant will not let go of it lightly,” he told the PA news agency.
“In reality, I expect TikTok to be used as a bargaining chip in US-China deals more broadly, and then the app itself will likely end up operating, in the US at least, under tight data regulations. This is the broad direction of travel globally already.”
He added that the president’s approach would also not solve the concerns raised by the previous Biden administration when it introduced the ban, and was backed by the US Supreme Court earlier this month when it rejected ByteDance’s appeal over the new law.
The Biden administration argued the data of the 170 million Americans who use TikTok could fall into the hands of the Chinese government or that the site’s recommendation algorithm could be manipulated to sow discord in the United States.
“President Trump signing the executive order so early in his tenure is a clear message that this solution will not be a simple one, and now there are 75 days for that solution to be found,” Mr Benvie said.
“Whilst Trump has mooted a 50-50 ‘joint venture’ between the US and China, this would be counter-intuitive and not solve the issues of content manipulation and data protection that were the US Supreme Court’s very concerns in the first place.
“If TikTok did end up under US ownership, even 50-50, the app would likely look and feel exactly the same to most users.
“In fact, it is other social networks that are ambulance chasing amid the turmoil over the last week, with X and Bluesky both announcing their plans to launch vertical video feeds, and Meta announcing the launch of a Capcut competitor named Edits in March.”
YouTuber MrBeast, real name Jimmy Donaldson, has suggested he would be interested in being part of a group with the aim of buying TikTok’s US business, having posted earlier this month that he would buy the site “so it doesn’t get banned”, before later adding that several billionaires had been in contact to try and make the bid a reality.
Following Mr Trump’s inauguration on Monday, he posted a video to TikTok saying he was on a private jet “about to put in my official offer for this platform”.
There have also been reports that Trump ally Elon Musk was interested in buying the site, with Bloomberg reporting that officials in China were considering such a sale.
However, TikTok denied the rumours, saying it “can’t be expected to comment on pure fiction”.
Mr Trump supported a similar ban during his first term as President, but has since said he changed his view after gaining traction on the platform which he claims helped him win younger voters during the presidential election.
TikTok went dark in the US on Saturday ahead of the proposed ban coming into effect, but resumed service on Sunday evening after Mr Trump confirmed he would issue an executive order once he took office.
A message shown to users of the app in the US as it returned thanked the new President for his intervention and TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew was among a range of technology executives to attend President Trump’s inauguration on Monday, with Apple boss Tim Cook, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google chief executive Sundar Pichai and close Trump ally Elon Musk all in attendance.
Silicon Valley has moved to align itself with the President, and Mr Benvie said Mr Trump’s impact on the social media landscape – particularly in the wake of the TikTok stand-off – was likely to be considerable during his second term.
“Users are already getting itchy feet, which TikTok’s decision to go dark on Sunday only exacerbated.
“YouTube with over 2.4 billion users are able to use Shorts, and two billion Instagram users are turning to Reels already too, so whatever deal that Trump and TikTok think will work, any small changes to the platform will cause considerable reverberations across the social media ecosystem.”
