Journalism Glance
TikTok has signed a deal to spin-off its U.S. operations to a group controlled by mostly American investors, including software giant Oracle, a company run by billionaire Trump ally Larry Ellison.
TikTok's hyper-engaging algorithm and the massive amount of data the app has collected on millions of Americans is set to be overseen by the new U.S. firm. According to the agreement, TikTok's U.S. algorithm will be retrained with only Americans' data. Content moderation rules around what is permitted and what is not will be set by the new investor-controlled entity.
Yet the underlying algorithm will still be owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, with the blessing of American auditors, according to an internal TikTok memo reviewed by NPR and two sources familiar with the deal who were not authorized to speak publicly.
"With an American majority running the content moderation, concerns about foreign propaganda seem to have been alleviated," said Anupam Chander, a professor of law and technology at Georgetown University who studies the regulation of new technology. "But it is possible that the American TikTok might end up censoring or hiding speech that is permissible on the global TikTok platform. I would hope that the U.S. content moderation team would allow speech that the American owners might dislike."
Being a member of the Pentagon press corps was once one of the more prestigious assignments in US journalism, a position reserved for heavy hitters from venerable newspapers and news channels, reporters at the peak of their powers.
Canadian human rights activists are demanding answers from their government after a former United Nations special rapporteur who investigated Israeli abuses against Palestinians was interrogated at the Canadian border on “national security” grounds.
Two major news agencies demanded that Israel explain what happened during a strike on a hospital in Gaza last month that killed five journalists, calling for concrete actions and accountability to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
