Ed Markey Presses Tik Tok Joint Venture and Oracle on Data

Sen. Ed Markey asked tik tok’s U.S. joint venture and Oracle on Friday to answer questions about data security and foreign manipulation safeguards. The request lands after ByteDance finalized a January deal to create a majority American-owned structure for the app. For users, the focus is no longer just ownership. It is who can reach the data and who can touch the recommendation system.

Markey and Oracle

Markey’s inquiry focuses on the security of data from Americans using TikTok. TikTok is used by over 200 million Americans. That scale turns the question from a corporate governance issue into a practical one for a huge U.S. audience that relies on the app every day.

Oracle is one of TikTok USDS JV’s three managing investors. That places the company inside the structure meant to secure U.S. data and avoid a U.S. ban on TikTok. The senator is now pressing for answers on whether those safeguards are strong enough to withstand outside interference.

January deal in focus

In January, TikTok said the venture will retrain, test and update TikTok’s content recommendation algorithm on U.S. user data. TikTok also said the algorithm will be secured in Oracle’s U.S. cloud. That setup is central to the company’s claim that U.S. data and the system that shapes what people see can be kept inside a domestic structure.

Markey’s letter tests that claim at the point where the app’s most sensitive machinery meets its new ownership model. The unresolved issue is whether the safeguards now in place are specific enough to block foreign manipulation of the recommendation algorithm while the joint venture takes over those functions.