Social Media platform TikTok is hugely popular, with millions of users across the world (including 170 million Americans) enjoying its eclectic content mix – it is a vast video smorgasbord. Although dim sum is perhaps the better metaphor as it is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. And that Chinese ownership has been a problem for the US government for some time.

Proposals to ban TikTok in the USA (as a national security threat) were proposed in the last months of the first Trump administration, and under the Biden presidency the US Congress passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA), which forces apps deemed to be controlled by a “foreign adversary” to divest their US operations or face a nationwide ban.

Fast forward to September 2025 and the announcement of an agreed “framework” for a takeover of TikTok’s US operations by American investors, followed by President Trump signing an executive order laying out the plan for an ownership transition.

The deal—which shifts power from Beijing to a handful of American billionaires—may protect American data, but it also reshapes the digital marketplace that runs through every handset and every app. It touches advertising, messaging, app development, and the telecom pipes that carry them all. In short, it touches the heart of the mobile ecosystem, where the TikTok deal could tip control toward the ultra-wealthy poised to profit.

The Billionaire Board

The TikTok transaction highlights an anomaly: all sizable social media in USA is owned by US billionaires. Wealth is power, and power now owns the platforms of speech. The US TikTok board will read like a map of concentrated influence: Larry Ellison, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Dell, and their sons.

Murdoch’s empire spans Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and tabloids across three continents. His media channels already shape public opinion from Sydney to New York.

Ellison, founder of Oracle, brings another kind of dominance – not over stories, but over data itself. His company runs the digital backbones of governments and corporations. Ellison will oversee the US version of TikTok’s algorithm and data management. Oracle will “recreate” the recommendation engine and host it on its cloud, effectively owning the machine that feeds videos to 170 million Americans. It is a quiet but massive shift in the power structure of digital attention.

The algorithm and the illusion of safety

Officials say the deal will prevent foreign manipulation. US authorities have long been concerned that TikTok’s ownership by a Chinese company could allow the Chinese government to access sensitive American user data, influence public opinion, or even use the platform for covert intelligence operations.

While the algorithm hasn’t changed, replacing Beijing’s reach with a domestic boardroom removes the potential for foreign government interference, but it doesn’t make the system transparent or immune. It only changes who can steer it – and who profits.

Larry Ellison has long believed that society runs better when it is watched. “People behave best when everything is recorded,” he once said. Oracle has a history of collecting user data without clear consent. It settled a lawsuit in 2022 for tracking billions of people through ad-tech tools. Its dream of total visibility fits uneasily with the idea of digital freedom.

TikTok’s algorithm is not a neutral instrument. It decides what millions see, and what they don’t. To “franchise” such a system means licensing the power to influence minds. If the algorithm becomes a US asset, its tuning may reflect domestic politics rather than Chinese interests. Trump joked he would make it “100 percent MAGA.” It may have been a joke, but the concern is real. The capacity to bend public mood is now in private hands, aligned with political power.

Surveillance and Soft Power

China’s role in global data collection triggered this deal, but the US answer risks repeating the same model under a different flag. Ellison has ties not only to Trump but also to Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, to defence donors, and to the data surveillance industry. Oracle’s partnership with police departments and intelligence agencies suggests that TikTok’s US infrastructure could merge with wider systems of monitoring.

Technology has always carried politics inside it. The danger now is that national security becomes a license for domestic propaganda. What began as protection from a foreign threat may end up entrenching ideological control at home.

The moral question is simple: can a democracy outsource truth to its richest men?

The Mobile Fallout

For advertisers, it creates another walled garden. Data that once circulated through open ad-tech channels will be captured inside Oracle’s cloud. Independent ad networks and smaller players will pay more to reach users and may see their analytics restricted.

For messaging platforms, it sets a precedent: political leaders can demand ownership changes in private apps. Once governments begin to redraw the map of platform control, no service is safe from political bargaining. Encryption and cross-border interoperability could be next.

For developers, fragmentation looms. A TikTok split into national versions suggests a future of “sovereign algorithms.” Each country could demand its own cloud, its own rules. Innovation thrives in open systems; it dies behind borders.

For telcos, the deal is another reminder of their paradox. Networks carry the traffic but lose the value. If platforms become tools of surveillance or propaganda, operators risk being conscripted into systems they do not control. The line between carrier and controller is blurring fast.

MEF believes regulation must be firm yet neutral. Security is necessary, but it must not become a pretext for political capture or monopoly control. The mobile ecosystem needs rules that protect users’ rights and ensure fair competition, not deals made in campaign season.

The digital revolution began with connection – one device linking to another, one user to the world. It promised openness, not obedience. If this deal stands, the next phase of that revolution may belong not to citizens, but to a handful of men who already own too much.

Changing the owner does not change the algorithm’s power. It only changes who it serves.

Dario Betti is CEO of MEF (Mobile Ecosystem Forum) a global trade body established in 2000 and headquartered in the UK with members across the world. As the voice of the mobile ecosystem, it focuses on cross-industry best practices, anti-fraud and monetisation. The Forum, which celebrates its 25^th anniversary in 2025, provides its members with global and cross-sector platforms for networking, collaboration and advancing industry solutions.