A new set of American powerplayers appears set to take over ownership of TikTok’s U.S. business from the Chinese company that made the short-form video app the most widely used social media platform in the world. 

It is also likely the most controversial one, due to national security concerns over TikTok parent company ByteDance’s ties to the Chinese government and broader societal concerns with extremist, divisive and harmful content often funneled to users through the app’s powerful algorithm. 

That algorithm is now expected to be licensed by the American software company Oracle, which would also manage the app’s security. With new ownership comes one key question about the transfer of TikTok from Chinese to American control: Will American owners, with no ties to the Chinese Community Party, be more responsive to concerns about the proliferation of antisemitism, hate and extremism on the platform? 

Anti-hate experts cautioned that it’s too soon to know, and that new ownership does not necessarily mean a major change in policy — or that a change would necessarily be in the direction of more content moderation. After all, TikTok’s algorithm, which feeds users personalized content it expects them to like via the app’s For You Page, is the source of the company’s success, because the more that users enjoy the content being recommended to them, the more time they spend on the app. 

“I think it’s broadly understood that TikTok has a more powerful algorithm than other platforms,” said Hannah Rose, senior research and policy manager at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a British organization that researches online extremism. “What’s happening now is that extremist content is being served to you, even if you don’t go looking for it. And so what we need to see from TikTok, and from many platforms I should say, is the ability to identify and mitigate that at scale. Users shouldn’t be served antisemitic content.”

But there are changes new owners could put in place if they see content moderation as a priority.

“I’d be looking towards how they’re implementing their terms of service, what kind of mitigation measures they’re looking to put in place,” said Rose. “There’s a lack of transparency from social media platforms on how their algorithms are curated, how content is served to users, and when it has such a significant impact on public safety and public life, greater transparency in that effect would certainly be beneficial to be able to understand what is going on.” 

Antisemitism has been an ongoing concern about TikTok for years. Fears that antisemitic content was spreading unchecked on the platform increased after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel two years ago, when Jewish content creators asserted that they were facing a barrage of hate and that the company was not doing enough to protect them. The likely sale of TikTok already has some anti-Israel content creators worried that their posts will not spread as widely due to a possible algorithmic change. 

In a November 2023 report, the Anti-Defamation League found that “bad actors” were able to sidestep TikTok’s content moderation policies to spread antisemitic content on the platform. Now, the organization is sounding a more positive note about TikTok. 

Daniel Kelley, director of strategy and operations at the ADL’s Center for Technology and Society, said the company has since taken steps to address the problem — a move that he said is particularly notable, since other tech giants, like Meta and YouTube, have recently stepped back from prioritizing content moderation. 

“I know that there’s been a lot of scrutiny of TikTok, especially around the Jewish community relative to Oct. 7,” said Kelley. “But from where I’m sitting, where we’re sitting, we’ve seen TikTok lean in on fighting hate and fighting antisemitism, where Meta and all their platforms, YouTube and others, X among them, formerly Twitter, are taking huge, huge, huge steps back.”

Meta decided early this year to loosen its guidelines around hate speech. YouTube, which is owned by Google, announced this week that content creators who had previously been banned for spreading COVID-19 or election-related misinformation could now apply to be reinstated. Elon Musk fired X’s content moderation chief when he bought the platform in 2022, and hate speech has proliferated on the site since. 

Last year, TikTok officials attended a symposium to combat online antisemitism, alongside executives from Google, Meta, Microsoft and X. The gathering was hosted by Deborah Lipstadt, then the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism. One of her former staffers, Erica Mindel, joined TikTok this year to work on antisemitism policy. 

“Content moderation at scale is incredibly hard, and every platform has its issues. But we see that TikTok hired somebody who is going to be their antisemitism liaison,” Kelley said. “They meet with us regularly. We see no evidence of them backtracking on their commitment to fighting antisemitism.” 

What the ADL will be waiting to see from TikTok’s new owners is whether they follow the trend of other American tech companies in moving away from content moderation. 

“The concern that we have, if the ownership of TikTok shifts, [is] we would want to ensure that we aren’t seeing a backtracking on content moderation as a result of the change of ownership,” said Kelley. “Anytime there’s a massive change in a social media company, there’s going to be a question of, what’s their continued posture going to be relative to fighting antisemitism, fighting extremism?” 

TikTok has disputed that the Chinese government can access user data, and the company has  said it isn’t spreading Chinese propaganda. That claim will be put to the test when the company comes under the control of American owners. 

A TikTok spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.