Is TikTok Creating a US-Only Algorithm to Evade Getting Banned?

Proponents of the ban argue sensitive US data is at risk of being comprimised through the app, and some even go as far to claim the platform is being leveraged by the Chinese state used to covertly influence the national public. The movement is gaining traction too, with an updated divest-and-ban bill receiving cross-party support in the House of Representatives just last month.

Despite escalating pressures, a recent report by Reuters suggests that the ByteDance-owned company isn’t taking the proposed ban lying down. According to sources with ‘direct knowledge’ of internal efforts, TikTok is creating a new code repository for a TikTok algorithm for US users, in an effort to assuage security concerns by cutting ties with its Chinese owner.

The report claims that the cloned recommendation algorithm, which intends to be completely independent of the one used in its Chinese version Doyin, is already being created by software engineers in the US and China. According to two sources with direct knowledge of the project, those working on the initiatives have been ordered to separate ‘millions of lines of code’, and eliminate ‘any information linking to Chinese users’.

This isn’t proving to be an easy feat. The sources cited in Reuter’s report describe the task as “dirty work” as each line of code needs to be reviewed to determine if it can go to the separate code base. It’s likely that the mission will take over a year to complete, as a result of this painstaking process,

Yet, with TikTok’s previous attempts to quell data concerns over data security falling flat – including Project Texas, a dismissed initiative that planned to move all data centers handing US information onto national soil – there’s a chance that creating a new algorithm is the app’s last grasp to remain in the US market.