TikTok Separate Recommendation Algorithms For US Users, Efforts To Avoid Ban

TikTok is developing separate recommendation algorithms for its 170 million users in the United States (photo: dock. tiktok)

Jakarta - TikTok is developing separate recommendation algorithms for its 170 million users in the United States. This effort was made to create a version that operates independently from its parent company in China, ByteDance. This step was taken to ease concerns for US lawmakers who want to ban the app.

The order to separate this source code was given by ByteDance late last year, before a law forced the sale of TikTok operations in the US began to receive attention at this year's Congress. The law was signed in April.

Once the code is separated, it could form the basis for the divestment of TikTok assets in the US, although there are currently no plans to do so. The company previously stated that it had no plans to sell assets in the US and such a move was deemed unlikely.

TikTok initially declined to comment. TikTok, through a post on X, stated that Reuters' report "assigned and inaccurate factually," without specifying what was inaccurate.

TikTok also posted a quote from their federal lawsuit: "the 'administrative' divestment requested by law to allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States is unlikely: not commercially, not technologically, not legally. And of course not within 270 days stipulated by law."

In recent months, hundreds of ByteDance and TikTok engineers in the US and China, were ordered to start separating millions of rows of code, sorting out company algorithms that pair users with videos according to their interests. The mission of these engineers is to create a separate code base that is independent of the system used by the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, while eliminating linking information to users in China.

This previously unreported plan provides a rare view of how TikTok's technical separation of operations in the US could be, and suggests to what extent TikTok will seek to address the bipartisan political risks it faces. US President Joe Biden and other law-supporting law advocates argue that TikTok provides too much access to Beijing over a large amount of data that could be used to spy on or influence TikTok users in the US.

Engineers continue to work under orders to separate the US TikTok recommendation algorithm from the wider ByteDance network. Previously, plans to isolate US user data, called Project Texas, failed to meet regulatory satisfaction and US lawmakers. The company is now working to step up its efforts to show that its US operations are independent of its owners in China.

TikTok faces a huge challenge in separating the source code underlying US TikTok operations from its parent in China. This work is expected to take more than a year to complete. The final goal is to create a new source code repository for recommendation algorithms that only serve US TikTok. Once completed, US TikTok will run and maintain its recommendation algorithm independently of the TikTok app in other regions and its Chinese version, Douyin.

However, TikTok is aware of the risks that US TikTok may not be able to provide the same performance as TikTok today as it relies heavily on Chinese ByteDance engineers to update and maintain code bases to maximize user engagement.