Prior to the deal, President Donald Trump had threatened to ban new downloads of the app as well as block any deals that didn't satisfy his concerns. At issue for marketers is the privacy of Americans' information and the safety of the data being collected on them by TikTok.
In August, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that purportedly forced the video-sharing app’s Beijing-based owner, ByteDance, to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations or face a nationwide ban. How that would be enforced is still unclear. On Monday, Trump said he would reverse course on his initial approval if ByteDance keeps a stake in the new company.
The Treasury Department, which previously confirmed the planned partnership between Oracle and TikTok, had indicated at the time it would review the arrangement to be sure it satisfies security concerns, as The Washington Post reports. While TikTok has maintained that it does not share any U.S. user data with the Chinese government, the Trump administration has repeatedly warned about TikTok’s use of American information.
Karim Hijazi, CEO of cybersecurity firm Prevailion, told Yahoo Finance the deal doesn’t necessarily resolve “any of the problems” from a security or data privacy perspective. “There’s a lot of hurdles to get over,” Hijazi said.
Jeff Chester, executive director of the privacy nonprofit Center for Digital Democracy, warned that Oracle itself presents a privacy concern. “Oracle has assembled an array of powerful targeting subsidiaries, now called the Oracle Marketing and Oracle Data Clouds, that raise privacy issues in the deal,” Chester told Politico. “Unless the Administration and regulators act, Oracle will be able to leverage TikTok users data for its other business operations.”
Trump’s affinity for Oracle may also be a factor. Trump said last month that Oracle was a “great company” and that it “would be certainly somebody that could handle” the TikTok deal. In February, Oracle founder Larry Ellison hosted a fundraiser for the president.