President Donald Trump introduced on Sept. 19, 2025, a initial settlement for the sale of a majority stake in TikTok from Chinese language tech large ByteDance to a bunch of U.S. traders following Trump’s negotiation with Chinese language chief Xi Jinping.
The deal would create a brand new U.S.-only model of the app, bringing it into compliance with a legislation signed by way of former President Joe Biden on April 23, 2024, and upheld by way of the Superb Courtroom on Jan. 17, 2025. Specifics of the deal stay to be hammered out, and left unresolved is the destiny of the video sharing app’s core set of rules – and what that suggests for TikTok’s tens of millions of U.S. customers.
The Chinese language executive has indicated it’s going to now not allow ByteDance to promote the set of rules, as a result of it’s categorized as a managed generation export, in line with Chinese language legislation. In the meantime, U.S. tech business executives and a few lawmakers say compliance with the legislation calls for the set of rules to be underneath American keep an eye on. The deal as proposed comprises licensing the set of rules in order that it stays Chinese language highbrow belongings whilst the U.S. model of the app continues to make use of the generation.
TikTok’s For You Web page set of rules is broadly regarded as crucial a part of the app. As one analyst put it: “Buying TikTok without the algorithm would be like buying a Ferrari without the engine.”
The set of rules’s price lies in its uncanny capability to wait for customers’ content material personal tastes. Many customers declare it is aware of them higher than they know themselves — a sentiment that has advanced right into a curious combine of non secular trust and conspiracy theorizing, as my colleagues and I’ve documented. Different students have in a similar fashion famous that customers really feel extra in detail noticed and identified by way of TikTok’s set of rules than the ones powering different well-liked platforms.
I’ve studied social media algorithms for almost a decade, exploring how {our relationships} with them have advanced as they turn into an increasing number of entwined with day-to-day existence. As each a social media pupil and TikTok devotee, I wish to shed some mild on how the set of rules works and the way the app may alternate within the wake of its sale.
How the TikTok set of rules works
TikTok’s For You Web page set of rules serves customers movies it calculates they’re more likely to watch.
Screenshot by way of Kelley Cotter
In many ways, the TikTok set of rules does now not fluctuate considerably from different social media algorithms. At their core, algorithms are simply a chain of steps used to perform a particular purpose. They carry out mathematical computations to optimize output in provider of that purpose.
There are two layers to the TikTok set of rules. First, there’s the summary layer that defines the end result builders need to accomplish. An inside report shared with The New York Instances specified that TikTok’s set of rules optimizes for 4 objectives: “user value,” “long-term user value,” “creator value” and “platform value.”
However how do you flip those objectives into math? What does an summary idea like “user value” even imply? It’s now not sensible to invite customers whether or not they price their revel in each and every time they seek advice from the website online. As a substitute, TikTok will depend on proxy alerts that translate summary results into quantifiable measures — in particular, likes, feedback, stocks, follows, time spent on a given video and different consumer habits information. Those alerts then turn into a part of an equation to expect two key concrete results: “retention,” or the possibility {that a} consumer will go back to the website online, and “time spent” at the app.
The TikTok For You Web page set of rules will depend on gadget studying for predicting retention and time spent. Gadget studying is a computational procedure wherein an set of rules learns patterns in a dataset, with very little human steerage, to provide the most productive equation to expect an result. Thru studying patterns, the set of rules determines how a lot person information alerts topic for arising with an actual prediction.
A Wall Boulevard Magazine investigation discovered that the period of time customers spend looking at every video performs a big position in how the set of rules chooses movies it suggests to customers. The use of the equation it has generated to expect retention and time spent, the set of rules assigns a rating to every video and ranks imaginable movies that may be proven to the consumer by way of this rating. The upper the rating for a person consumer, the much more likely the video will seem of their feed.
In fact, content material traits and different customers moreover tell suggestions, and there are different subprocesses folded into the equation. This step is the place algorithmic moderation normally is available in. If a video looks as if engagement bait or has over the top gore, as an example, the content material’s rating will probably be penalized.
Listed below are the fundamentals of the way TikTok’s set of rules works.
What’s more likely to alternate for US customers
The sale has now not been finalized, and what occurs to the set of rules is unresolved. On the other hand, it’s relatively positive that TikTok will alternate. I see two key causes for alternate.
First, the proposed app’s U.S.-only consumer inhabitants will adjust the make-up of the underlying dataset informing algorithmic tips on an ongoing foundation. Because the varieties of content material and customers come to replicate American cultural personal tastes, values and behaviors, the set of rules is also quite other because it “learns” new patterns.
Additionally, now not all customers will make a selection to sign up for the brand new app, particularly whether it is noticed as underneath the keep an eye on of Trump’s allies. The present deal reportedly would give an 80% proportion to U.S. traders, together with 50% to new traders Oracle, Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz. Those traders’ have connections to Trump, and an obvious provision of the deal permits the U.S. executive to choose one board member. This may increasingly lead to a consumer inhabitants – and information – reflective of a narrower realm of pursuits and ideologies.
2d, it’s imaginable that almost all proportion homeowners of the brand new app will make a decision to regulate the set of rules, specifically in relation to content material moderation. The brand new homeowners would possibly need to alter TikTok’s Group Tips in line with their view of appropriate and unacceptable speech.
As an example, TikTok’s present Group Tips restrict incorrect information and paintings with unbiased fact-checkers to evaluate the accuracy of content material. Whilst Meta used to practice a equivalent means for Instagram and Fb, in January 2025 introduced that it could finish Meta’s relationships with unbiased fact-checkers and unfasten content material restrictions. YouTube has in a similar fashion comfortable its content material moderation this yr.
The hot button is algorithms are extremely delicate to context. They replicate the hobby, values and worldviews of the individuals who construct them, the personal tastes and behaviors of other folks whose information informs their fashions and the felony and financial contexts they perform inside.
Because of this whilst it’s tough to expect precisely what a U.S.-only TikTok will probably be like, it’s protected to think it’s going to now not be a great reflect symbol of the present app.
