TikTok to Create US Version of Core Algorithm But There’s a Twist, Sources Say

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TikTok develops US version of core algorithm amid political pressures, sources say.

A new report claims TikTok is attempting to replicate its recommendation system for its 170 million American users. This could lead to a new version that functions independently of its Chinese parent and is more acceptable to American lawmakers seeking to prohibit it.

A measure to force the sale of TikTok’s U.S. business started to gain momentum in Congress this year. Still, the work on dividing the source code requested by TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance late last year was underway. In April, the bill became law.

Anonymous individuals with knowledge of the short-form video-sharing app’s inner workings have revealed that, while no such plans exist at this time, the division of the code might pave the way for the sale of the company’s U.S. assets, as per Reuters.

As previously stated, the corporation has no intention of selling its U.S. assets and has stated that doing so would be impossible.

Initially, TikTok chose not to comment. “The Reuters story published today is misleading and factually inaccurate,” TikTok wrote on X after its publication, although it didn’t say what was wrong.

“The ‘qualified divestiture’ demanded by the Act to allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States is simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally,” reads a passage from TikTok’s federal lawsuit, which the company also tweeted. Plus, it won’t be within the 270 days under the Act.

“Our reporting remains unchanged,” stated a representative from Reuters.

In May, TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, filed a lawsuit in a U.S. federal court to halt the law that would have mandated the app’s sale or prohibition by January 19. Tuesday, a U.S. appeals court established an expedited timeline to examine the objections to the new law.

Code Randomly Spaced

Hundreds of programmers from ByteDance and TikTok in China and the United States were instructed a few months ago to start sorting through millions of lines of code in the company’s algorithm that matches viewers with videos they like. Two people familiar with the matter told Reuters that the engineers’ goal is to build a new code base apart from the systems used by Douyin, ByteDance’s Chinese TikTok, and to remove any references to Chinese users.

This previously undisclosed proposal reveals how far TikTok is willing to go to deal with the bipartisan political danger it confronts. It also gives a rare glimpse into the potential technological separation of its U.S. operations. U.S. President Biden and other bill proponents contend that TikTok grants Beijing excessive access to massive amounts of data, which might be used for espionage or influencing TikTok users in the United States, as Yahoo Finance reported.

According to earlier Reuters reporting, selling the app with its algorithms is improbable. The Chinese government added content recommendation algorithms to its export-control list in 2020, making it necessary to go through administrative licensing procedures if TikTok divests or sells its technology.

A legal brief states that the recommendation engine code for TikTok was adapted for use in the United States and other worldwide markets from its original development by ByteDance engineers in China.

ByteDance says the app’s popularity is due to the success of TikTok’s recommendation engine, which builds users’ content feeds based on their interactions with watched material.

Open Source

Reuters’ sources said the effort was tough and arduous, describing it as “dirty work.” This highlights how difficult it is to separate the underlying code that links TikTok’s U.S. operations to its parent company in China. According to these sources, the project will be completed in over a year.

ByteDance and TikTok have threatened to take on U.S. law in court, citing First Amendment concerns. According to the sources, engineers are still told to separate ByteDance’s larger network from TikTok’s U.S. recommendation engine.

U.S. regulators and lawmakers were not pleased with an earlier idea to separate customer data from the rest of the world, known as Project Texas. The business is now trying to prove that its American activities are separate from its Chinese owner by increasing its efforts in this area.

According to the sources, in an effort to demonstrate technological transparency, TikTok executives explored “open sourcing” some of the app’s algorithm, which would mean making it accessible to anyone for change.

Two sources, one of whom was present at the team all-hands meeting and another of whom reviewed the messages, have confirmed that executives have shared plans and updates regarding the code-splitting project through its internal communications system, Lark, as well as in internal planning documents.

Internal messages could not be independently verified by Reuters.

One source asserts that the development is hindered by compliance and legal concerns about deciding which code components can be transferred to TikTok. Before each line of code can be added to the independent code base, it must be inspected to ensure it can.

The objective is to build a fresh repository for the algorithm’s source code that TikTok will only use in the United States. After it’s finished, TikTok U.S. will operate and maintain its recommendation system separately from TikTok apps in other regions and Douyin, the Chinese alternative. According to the sources, that decision would separate it from the enormous resources of its Beijing-based parent business regarding engineering development.

Sources said that if TikTok successfully separates its recommendation engine from its Chinese counterpart, the risk of TikTok U.S. not being able to match the performance of the existing TikTok—which relies heavily on ByteDance’s engineers in China to update and maintain the code base—is something that TikTok management is well-aware of.