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Sen. Bernie Sanders blasted what he characterized as crony capitalism by President Trump, claiming that the Trump administration’s deal making TikTok’s U.S. business majority-owned by American investors will give Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison “control” over the video app’s content algorithm.
Sanders, in a widely shared post Monday on X, said: “Thanks to Trump, right-wing multibillionaire Larry Ellison will now control the TikTok algorithm,” along with the assets under the Paramount Skydance umbrella, which include CBS, MTV, The Free Press, BET, CMT, Nickelodeon, Paramount+ and Pluto TV.
Sanders, the liberal independent senator from Vermont who is generally aligned with the Democratic Party, concluded his post: “This is what Oligarchy looks like.”
However, Larry Ellison does not actually “control” the TikTok U.S. joint venture or its content-recommendation algorithm. Oracle is one of several investors in the JV and holds a 15% stake. In addition, Larry Ellison held about 41% of Oracle’s shares as of last July, so Ellison doesn’t even have a controlling stake in Oracle.
Oracle has one board seat on the seven-member the board of the TikTok U.S. joint venture. That’s held by Kenneth Glueck, EVP in the Office of the CEO at Oracle. Beijing-based ByteDance retains 19.9% ownership of the U.S.-based TikTok joint venture. ByteDance was forced to do the deal to come into compliance with the U.S.’s TikTok divest-or-ban law, which prohibits distribution in the U.S. of any app that is more than 20% owned by a “foreign adversary” (in this case, China).
The content algorithm used by the TikTok U.S. joint venture is licensed from ByteDance, and the American company will manage it separately from the algorithm that’s used by the TikTok app in the rest of the world. The TikTok U.S. JV said it will “retrain, test and update the content recommendation algorithm on U.S. user data. The content recommendation algorithm will be secured in Oracle’s U.S. cloud environment.”
Meanwhile, Sanders’ post also suggested that Larry Ellison “controls” Simon & Schuster — however, that’s incorrect. Paramount Global in 2023 sold Simon & Schuster to investment giant KKR for $1.62 billion in cash.
Variety has reached out to Sanders’ reps for clarification.
It is true that Larry Ellison has full control over Paramount Skydance, under the acquisition of Paramount Global by David Ellison’s Skydance Media. The Paramount Skydance deal closed in August after gaining FCC approval once Skydance committed to enduring diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs at Skydance and Paramount will be permanently shut down and agreed to appoint an ombudsman to review “complaints of bias or other concerns” involving CBS. The FCC’s clearance of the Skydance-Paramount pact came less than a month after Paramount Global agreed to pay $16 million to President Trump to settle his lawsuit against CBS over a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris.
Over the weekend, some TikTok users in the U.S. said they were deleting the app over the perception that under its new ownership, the app was censoring videos critical of ICE, including “Hacks” star Meg Stalter. However, according to TikTok, the U.S. version of the app encountered technical issues that delayed the posting of new videos to the platform because of a power outage at a U.S. data center.
In the U.S., more than 200 million individuals and 7.5 million businesses use the app, according to the TikTok U.S. JV.
English (US) ·