Oracle, Silver Lake consortium to control 80% stake in TikTok in US

121 pointsposted 12 hours ago
by Mgtyalx
(reuters.com)

40 Comments

slg

9 hours ago

Sometimes I'm truly baffled over the stories that the HN readership ends up mostly ignoring. When I heard about this news elsewhere, I came here fully expecting this to be high on the front page with hundreds of comments discussing it. For comparison's sake, the story about Tiktok shutting down[1] and then restoring service[2] in the US each had over 2500 comments. Meanwhile, 3 hours after this story was posted, this is the 14th comment.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42753396

[2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42759336

TillE

8 hours ago

Frustratingly I can't recall specific examples, but in the past year there have been several major discussion-worthy tech stories I've seen on The Verge or wherever, and I come to HN a couple hours later and there's either literally nothing or the post got zero interaction. Strange!

ChrisArchitect

8 hours ago

Not really news in this state. Because other than a few more details here it's not any different than the story from last week (which we knew Oracle was in the mix etc). The deal isn't final.

slg

6 hours ago

It is funny to say this as if there was some past story on here that everyone saw. In the last month, the story about a potential TikTok deal with the most engagement maxed out at 3 comments and 17 points[1]. This is probably the most important news in the social media sphere since Musk bought Twitter and the HN audience doesn't care about it until contracts are signed? That's pretty unbelievable.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45249430

metalman

an hour ago

details, NO algorythm, Trumpy, China, Money, Twitteresque user base revolt....or worse so it's very much as you state, non final

elzbardico

11 hours ago

Oracle owning TikTok is one of the most unintentionally funny things to ever happen.

polishdude20

8 hours ago

It's like a 100 year old with hardware crypto wallet.

HackerThemAll

10 hours ago

Oracle is then going to mandate license fees from every user, together with 22% support fees with 8% increase every year.

They'll then rewrite TikTok in Java, and migrate to Oracle Database.

1970-01-01

10 hours ago

The Android .APK files are already Java.

Justsignedup

5 hours ago

The most terrifying thing is there will be a trump-government representative in the governing body.

We are truly looking at 1984 as a blueprint not a warning.

adastra22

4 hours ago

You can just not use TikTok.

OKRainbowKid

an hour ago

That doesn't diminish the impact it has on the rest of humanity, and by proxy, on me.

drewbitt

11 hours ago

Reminds me of Yahoo buying Tumblr. Mismatched. Their best bet is to change little to nothing, but not sure the administration will let them.

greekrich92

5 hours ago

>Current users of the app will be asked to shift to a new app

So it's just going to fade into obscurity then huh

Tarsul

10 hours ago

so US users will be cut off from the rest of the world? Wow. Thats crazy.

TranquilMarmot

6 hours ago

TikTok in China is already cut off from the rest of the world. The US is just copying China's homework.

lukewrites

4 hours ago

We are doing state capitalism without China’s “serve the people” bit. Hm, maybe there’s a name for that type of government, idk.

pier25

4 hours ago

Wouldn't surprise me if a lot of global users ended up using the US app instead of TikTok.

nodejs_in_2025

6 hours ago

Being controlled by Oracle and "Andreessen Horowitz" sounds like a sure way to completely shut down any criticism of Israel from the platform.

The issue was never about data, the issue is not even about controlling speech. The issue has always been UNcontrolled speech that the American government wants to control and censor.

Specifically, the little dirty fact that your goverment is funding a genocide with your tax-paying dollars. If the american people understands that their country funds a brutal genocide, the whole "moral superiority" discourse that justifies american foreign interventions collapses.

Thats all there is. The american governments cannot allow their people to have uncensored speech.

otterley

4 hours ago

Why is it that for nearly every story involving a Jewish name, someone has to come in and complain about Israel? Besides, there are plenty of venues to criticize Israeli policy and actions, especially if you do so respectfully.

ulfw

3 hours ago

Why would any company want to operate in America, sell to Americans or onboard American users anymore?

If you're not successful you just wasted a ton of time and money.

If you are successful the newUSA will force you to divest what you've build against your will.

Doesn't sound like a country worth investing in anymore.

hollerith

11 hours ago

>A new company will be created to operate TikTok, with U.S. investors holding a roughly 80% stake and Chinese shareholders owning the rest, the report said.

It would've been better for the mental health of our country if it had been banned (along with Instagram Reels and Youtube Shorts).

acheron

11 hours ago

The good news is, I can’t see “being owned by Oracle” as anything other than a death sentence.

SilverElfin

11 hours ago

I doubt it. Oracle has a booming datacenter and cloud business right now. Their role is to host the data in a US jurisdiction, which they can do. It won’t affect the success or failure of TikTok. And frankly it won’t give TikTok users privacy since the data can still be accessed by software written by Chinese employees.

bl4kers

2 hours ago

> since the data can still be accessed by software written by Chinese employees.

Source?

volleyball

3 hours ago

So Larry Ellison just took over Paramount group which is now looking to bid for Warner Brothers and CNN. And now Ellison is going to take over TikTok.

Paramount(being run by Larry Ellison's son) is looking to install the pro-israel-propagandist who has variously masqueraded as a liberal, a conservative and anti-woke free-speech champion, Bari Weiss[1] as CBS's editor-in-chief or co-president[2]. It also bears mentioning that Ellison is a life-long zionist, friend of the IDF and close personal friend of Netanyahu to whom he even offered a post at Oracle.[3]

This very much looks like a hostile take-over of the American mind by a tech billionaire who just overtook Elon Musk to become the world's richest man. People should be talking about whether they want to go through this all over again.

[1] - https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-fals...

[2] - https://archive.is/20250916040811/https://www.nytimes.com/20...

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Larry_Ellison&old...

user

11 hours ago

[deleted]

user

6 hours ago

[deleted]

tw04

5 hours ago

I hope this is sounding alarm bells for everyone else as much as me.

Larry's son buys Paramount (CBS) and promptly fires Stephen Colbert, a money making machine who was leading his timeslot as what was, in hindsight, a clear message to everyone that nobody is safe if they don't fall in line.

Larry now gets TikTok, which like it or not is the most influential social media platform among today's youth.

Both are Trump fanatics. This is the next stage in the Ailes playbook that has already gone too far in ruining the American experiment.

tensorlibb

9 hours ago

I think this is a massively good step forward.

However, TikTok is still a brain rot slop machine and we would be right to question Ellison's motivations.

SilverElfin

11 hours ago

What does this “stake” get America at all? Will they be able to change the algorithms or censorship or amplification on TikTok? The point of the ban was to avoid national security issues from having an adversarial state (China) controlling speech in America. Banning it entirely is the best way to avoid these problems.

As a reminder, TikTok forces staff to sign pledges to support China’s political system in order to work there and get stock awards:

https://dailycaller.com/2025/01/14/tiktok-forced-staff-oaths...

Fade_Dance

11 hours ago

>Banning it entirely is the best way to avoid these problems.

Too popular to ban. Political constraints.

>Will they be able to change the algorithms or censorship or amplification on TikTok?

"An Asia-based investor of ByteDance said the new US TikTok entity would use at least part of the Chinese algorithm but train it in the US on American user data."

________________

I'm not sure you're looking at this the right way though. This isn't some conclusion of a search for the optimal way to address the situation (which would probably be an actual digital privacy framework). The ban couldn't go through because the app was too popular and Trump liked the attention he was getting on it. So if the ban has to be backed out of, what's the second best option? A "deal" of course, from the world's best deal maker. It's no more complicated than that.

The Intel stake is the same - barely thought out. If you haven't noticed, this has been a common theme in many policy decisions lately.

nemothekid

4 hours ago

>(which would probably be an actual digital privacy framework)

The ban wasn't executed on digital privacy concerns. The intent of the original ban was on digital privacy concerns, and that was shot down.

>The Intel stake is the same - barely thought out. If you haven't noticed, this has been a common theme in many policy decisions lately.

The TikTok ban passed under Biden, and the ball was kicked to Trump so he would deal with the political fallout. But the reason the ban passed the second time around was because China would not censor content about the Gaza genocide. The ban had no legs until October 7th and TikTok frustrated the US/Israel message that Hamas was homicidal terrorist group that spawned from no where.

What seems obvious is that, yes, the new TikTok, will fall in line with other US owned social media companies when it comes to spreading US propoganda.

So while Chinese social networks have "What happened in tiananmen square?", US social networks will have "Is Israel committing a genocide?".

dragonwriter

10 hours ago

> What does this “stake” get America at all?

“America” is an abstraction. It gets the people who will own the new entity something, and its gets the government decisionmakers something, and that’s, in practice, more important than what it gets “America”.