LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Now for another story connected to concerns about China's influence. TikTok users have had a week to digest the news that the app accessed in the U.S. is now mostly American-owned.
(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)
NOAHGLENNCARTER: It was a good run. TikTok might actually be cooked now.
NATALIE MURPHY: When changes like this happen, a lot of people, rightfully so, freak out.
LADY SCROLLER: Come on, TikTok is an app. There's going to be constantly big changes, so hopefully we can go with the flow. Hopefully, it'll be OK.
FADEL: Those voices are from the TikTok accounts NoahGlennCarter, Natalie.Murph and Lady Scroller.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Lady Scroller.
FADEL: (Laughter).
INSKEEP: Just to review some of the news here, the Trump administration defied the law by allowing TikTok to keep operating for months under Chinese ownership. It finally found a way for a U.S.-based entity to take over. And there's now supposed to be a firewall between the U.S. app and ByteDance, which is the Chinese company that founded TikTok and still controls the algorithm for users elsewhere in the world.
FADEL: Now, there were concerns that an American TikTok would have to be a standalone app cut off from users in other countries. But that scenario has been avoided, according to Myles McNutt, a media scholar at Old Dominion University.
MYLES MCNUTT: I think there was a lot of speculation that this would be this massive change in how people use the app. And by all accounts, they've really suggested that that is not meant to be the case, that this is just the same TikTok and that we're still going to be connected to the world by being connected to these other TikToks that will coexist in that same format.
INSKEEP: Now, people have been complaining about glitches in the last few days, glitches the U.S. entity blames on problems at a data center. Users are also anxious about how TikTok's U.S.-based algorithm, which determines what you see, might change.
FADEL: The U.S. entity is controlled in part by Oracle, which is run by Larry Ellison, a major supporter of President Trump. And we should note that Oracle is a financial supporter of NPR. But Matt Navarra, a social media consultant and industry analyst, says big shifts are unlikely for one simple reason.
MATT NAVARRA: This is already working. It's a very successful app. It's very profitable. And they want to keep that stability, which is something that TikTok has lacked over the last couple of years with all of this hanging over its head.
INSKEEP: Old Dominion's Myles McNutt says Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, now called X, is seen as a cautionary tale.
MCNUTT: We saw this very notion that, like, oh, this app isn't working for me anymore. I'm seeing content I don't want to see. My friends aren't here anymore. Like, this isn't what I want to be a part of. We'll go somewhere else.
FADEL: Industry analyst Navarra sees one potential pitfall ahead. The U.S. entity says that TikTok's algorithm will be retrained on U.S. user data.
NAVARRA: One of TikTok's biggest powers has been its borderless virality, in the sense that a dance trend in LA could explode in Lagos. And that might change. We just don't know.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MIDNIGHT SUN")
ZARA LARSSON: (Singing) A never-ending midnight sun.
FADEL: It could also mean that American users end up missing out on what's trending worldwide.
INSKEEP: We asked TikTok for comment. They declined. Maybe they'll send us a TikTok. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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