James Kynge

So ByteDance transferred the majority of its U.S.

operations to a new entity.

That entity is called TikTokUSDS, Joint Venture LLC.

And that company, the joint venture, is led by Oracle, Silverlake, MGX.

All of those are American companies.

they hold over 80% of the ownership of the equity in that joint venture.

But ByteDance owns 19.9%.

So the Chinese company remains a pretty significant shareholder.

Now, the really important thing I think about these companies, and in the case of the TikTok US joint venture, it is also the most important thing, is the algorithm.

The TikTok business is nothing without the algorithm that underlies it.

And although Oracle is now responsible for securing the data of American users and overseeing the retraining of the recommendation algorithm using American sources, you know, so American data will be used to retrain the algorithm, the control of the algorithm will remain in the hands of ByteDance.

And it will lease the algorithm to the American joint venture, TikTok joint venture.

And it will get payments for that of around 20% of the American entity's revenue.

Now, so...

this to me means it is ByteDance that remains in control of the algorithm.

And that to me is, you know, that's the key point, because it means that presumably ByteDance can tweak the algorithm anytime it wants without informing the US entity.

And it gives ByteDance an operational

relationship with the company in the US.

Do you see it like that, Alice?

Or am I being too kind of reds under the bed about this?