Democratic senator wants TikTok US JV, Oracle to answer questions on platform safeguards
U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) attends a press conference with other Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 29, 2025. REUTERS/Kylie Cooper
WASHINGTON, May 29 : Democratic senator Ed Markey on Friday asked a TikTok U.S. joint venture and Oracle to answer questions about the security of the data from Americans using the short video platform and efforts to prevent foreign manipulation of its content recommendation algorithm.
TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, in January finalized a deal to establish a majority American-owned joint venture that will secure U.S. data, to avoid a U.S. ban on the short video app used by over 200 million Americans.
Cloud computing giant Oracle is one of TikTok USDS JV's three managing investors. In January, TikTok said The venture will retrain, test and update TikTok's content recommendation algorithm on U.S. user data and the algorithm will be secured in Oracle's U.S. cloud.
