Latest news with #ProjectTexas
Malaysian Reserve
15-07-2025
- Business
- Malaysian Reserve
TikTok urgently pitches Canada security solution to avoid shutdown
TikTok is trying to talk with Canada about security solutions that would spare the popular video app from a looming order to shut operations in the country. So far, its pleas have fallen on deaf ears, said Steve de Eyre, director of TikTok's government affairs for Canada, in an interview. 'We are still looking to get to the table,' he said. TikTok, owned by China-based ByteDance Ltd., started this month to freeze spending on cultural programs and sponsorships, following a November directive to close its Canadian unit, which cited national security concerns. TikTok would still be available on app stores for Canadians to use after the shutdown. 'Time is running out,' de Eyre said, though the company declined to share its deadline. TikTok has challenged the order in court. TikTok Chief Executive Officer Shou Zi Chew wrote to Industry Minister Melanie Joly on July 2 requesting an urgent in-person meeting within the next two weeks. According to a copy of the letter seen by Bloomberg, he wrote: 'The windup process is rapidly approaching a critical juncture where, unless you intervene, TikTok will be forced to fire all of its Canadian employees' as well as halting investment and support for creators. De Eyre confirmed the contents of the letter, and said the company hasn't yet received an official response. The Industry Ministry didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. In other countries where it's faced concerns, TikTok has set up systems to fence off user data to prevent it from being sent to China. These were dubbed Project Texas in the US and Project Clover in the EU. Asked if TikTok has pitched Canada an equivalent like 'Project Maple,' de Eyre said: 'Maybe it would be Project Maple. But we need to sit down, understand the concerns that Canada has, and we want to build a solution that would provide greater data security, greater oversight and accountability where there are these concerns.' In the UK, TikTok hired a British firm to audit its data controls and protections to allay concerns. Right now, TikTok says it stores Canadian user data in the US, Ireland, Singapore and Malaysia. The company said it paid C$340 million ($248 million) in Canadian tax from 2019 to 2024, employs about 350 people across Toronto and Vancouver, and has 14 million Canadian users. 'We've had people who have unfortunately left for other opportunities because of this order being out there, and we haven't been able to rehire for those roles because of the order,' de Eyre said. He argued the ban was enacted by a different government, under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, 'in a different time,' and that things have changed in the US, where Donald Trump has delayed a more comprehensive order for ByteDance to sell or shut down the app. Last month Trump said he's found a buyer for the US operations. The irony of Canada's order if it goes through, de Eyre argues, is that the country loses 'the accountability of having a TikTok entity within Canada's legal jurisdiction, having employees who are directly accountable to parliament and regulators and law enforcement,' even though the app will remain available. –BLOOMBERG
Business Times
14-07-2025
- Business
- Business Times
TikTok urgently pitches Canada security solution to avoid shutdown
[VANCOUVER] TikTok is trying to talk with Canada about security solutions that would spare the popular video app from a looming order to shut operations in the country. So far, its pleas have fallen on deaf ears, said Steve de Eyre, director of TikTok's government affairs for Canada, in an interview. 'We are still looking to get to the table,' he said. TikTok, owned by China-based ByteDance, started this month to freeze spending on cultural programmes and sponsorships, following a November directive to close its Canadian unit, which cited national security concerns. TikTok would still be available on app stores for Canadians to use after the shutdown. 'Time is running out,' de Eyre said, though the company declined to share its deadline. TikTok has challenged the order in court. TikTok chief executive officer Shou Zi Chew wrote to Industry Minister Melanie Joly on Jul 2 requesting an urgent in-person meeting within the next two weeks. According to a copy of the letter seen by Bloomberg, he wrote: 'The windup process is rapidly approaching a critical juncture where, unless you intervene, TikTok will be forced to fire all of its Canadian employees' as well as halting investment and support for creators. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up De Eyre confirmed the contents of the letter, and said the company has not yet received an official response. The Industry Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In other countries where it's faced concerns, TikTok has set up systems to fence off user data to prevent it from being sent to China. These were dubbed Project Texas in the US and Project Clover in the EU. Asked if TikTok has pitched Canada an equivalent like 'Project Maple', de Eyre said: 'Maybe it would be Project Maple. But we need to sit down, understand the concerns that Canada has, and we want to build a solution that would provide greater data security, greater oversight and accountability where there are these concerns.' In the UK, TikTok hired a British firm to audit its data controls and protections to allay concerns. Right now, TikTok says it stores Canadian user data in the US, Ireland, Singapore and Malaysia. The company said it paid C$340 million (S$318 million) in Canadian tax from 2019 to 2024, employs about 350 people across Toronto and Vancouver, and has 14 million Canadian users. 'We have had people who have unfortunately left for other opportunities because of this order being out there, and we haven't been able to rehire for those roles because of the order,' de Eyre said. He argued the ban was enacted by a different government, under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, 'in a different time', and that things have changed in the US, where US President Donald Trump has delayed a more comprehensive order for ByteDance to sell or shut down the app. Last month, Trump said he's found a buyer for the US operations. The irony of Canada's order, if it goes through, de Eyre argues, is that the country loses 'the accountability of having a TikTok entity within Canada's legal jurisdiction, having employees who are directly accountable to parliament and regulators and law enforcement', even though the app will remain available. BLOOMBERG
Calgary Herald
14-07-2025
- Business
- Calgary Herald
TikTok Urgently Pitches Canada Security Solution to Avoid Shutdown
Article content (Bloomberg) — TikTok is trying to talk with Canada about security solutions that would spare the popular video app from a looming order to shut operations in the country. Article content So far, its pleas have fallen on deaf ears, said Steve de Eyre, director of TikTok's government affairs for Canada, in an interview. 'We are still looking to get to the table,' he said. Article content Article content TikTok, owned by China-based ByteDance Ltd., started this month to freeze spending on cultural programs and sponsorships, following a November directive to close its Canadian unit, which cited national security concerns. TikTok would still be available on app stores for Canadians to use after the shutdown. Article content Article content 'Time is running out,' de Eyre said, though the company declined to share its deadline. TikTok has challenged the order in court. Article content Article content TikTok Chief Executive Officer Shou Zi Chew wrote to Industry Minister Melanie Joly on July 2 requesting an urgent in-person meeting within the next two weeks. Article content According to a copy of the letter seen by Bloomberg, he wrote: 'The windup process is rapidly approaching a critical juncture where, unless you intervene, TikTok will be forced to fire all of its Canadian employees' as well as halting investment and support for creators. Article content De Eyre confirmed the contents of the letter, and said the company hasn't yet received an official response. The Industry Ministry didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Article content In other countries where it's faced concerns, TikTok has set up systems to fence off user data to prevent it from being sent to China. These were dubbed Project Texas in the US and Project Clover in the EU. Article content Article content Asked if TikTok has pitched Canada an equivalent like 'Project Maple,' de Eyre said: 'Maybe it would be Project Maple. But we need to sit down, understand the concerns that Canada has, and we want to build a solution that would provide greater data security, greater oversight and accountability where there are these concerns.' Article content In the UK, TikTok hired a British firm to audit its data controls and protections to allay concerns. Article content Right now, TikTok says it stores Canadian user data in the US, Ireland, Singapore and Malaysia. The company said it paid C$340 million ($248 million) in Canadian tax from 2019 to 2024, employs about 350 people across Toronto and Vancouver, and has 14 million Canadian users. Article content 'We've had people who have unfortunately left for other opportunities because of this order being out there, and we haven't been able to rehire for those roles because of the order,' de Eyre said.
Yahoo
01-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's prospective TikTok buyer reportedly includes Oracle, Blackstone, a16z
After pushing the TikTok sale date back yet again, President Donald Trump said in an interview on Sunday that he had found a potential buyer for the ByteDance-owned platform. Though the president said he will not reveal the identities of the buyers for another couple of weeks, Bloomberg is reporting that the buyer is a group of investors from Oracle, Blackstone, and VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). According to the report, these investors had made a bid, but it lost momentum amid tensions between the U.S. and China due to Trump's tariff proposals. Oracle has long been engaged with TikTok as part of its Project Texas initiative to make sure that U.S. user data is stored in the States. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Forbes
28-03-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Trump's Deadline For A TikTok Deal Is Almost Up. Here Are 5 Things To Watch
A phone loading the TikTok app at the foreground with Donald Trump grinning in the background. NurPhoto via Getty Images Next week, the White House is expected to announce a 'high level' deal between TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, and some group of U.S. investors, to save the app from enforcement of a law, beginning April 5, that bans TikTok in the U.S.. In broad strokes, the deal will reportedly create a new company ('NewCo') to handle TikTok's U.S. operations, which will be majority-owned by U.S. investors — but it won't get rid of ByteDance completely, which might mean it doesn't satisfy the law. Some reports have characterized the deal under consideration as a version of Project Texas, ByteDance's internal name for a set of security protocols it would put in place to keep Americans' data out of Chinese control. The Biden Administration considered a Project Texas proposal in 2023, but was so unsatisfied with it that they ended up working with Congress to pass a law forcing ByteDance to sell TikTok or see it banned in the United States. Under binding U.S. law, TikTok should be banned right now. The only reason it isn't is that President Donald Trump ordered his Department of Justice not to enforce the law until April 5, and asked three of America's largest tech companies — Apple, Google, and Oracle — to knowingly violate it, on the promise that DOJ wouldn't prosecute them. All three have done so. Unless he extends it, Trump's pause on enforcement of the sell-or-ban law comes to an end next week on April 5. That means we can expect further action from the Trump Administration soon. Whether that action will be legal, however, is another matter. So here are 5 questions we'll be asking about any deal they announce. U.S. law prevents 'NewCo' from operating TikTok in the United States if it maintains 'any operational relationship' with ByteDance or any of its subsidiaries. Today, TikTok has an extensive operational relationship with ByteDance: ByteDance controls virtually everything that makes the app run, from its internal databases, documents, and algorithms to its legal and HR departments. NewCo can't have any of that overlap, if it intends to comply with the law. But: the President is the one who gets to decide whether an 'operational relationship' exists or not. So we'll be watching to see if Trump actually prevents ByteDance from meddling in TikTok's operations, or if he just tries to get out of this one by refusing to call a spade a spade. When ByteDance pitched Project Texas to the Biden Administration, it also offered White House officials extensive control over TikTok U.S., including veto power over the hiring of executives and the ability to block changes to the app's privacy and content policies — as Forbes first reported in 2023. Under the agreement, White House staff could claim national security as a rationale for blocking changes to the app's content policies about social issues like abortion, immigration, or the war in Gaza. They could also invoke national security to prevent someone from becoming a TikTok executive. This raises questions about whether the deal would enable the White House to 'jawbone' TikTok, coercing the company into promoting pro-government messages or demoting dissent. Neither the White House nor ByteDance immediately responded to questions from Forbes about whether the deal under current consideration would allow the White House to control content moderation, policymaking, or executive hiring. The deal under consideration will reportedly create a new entity that will be majority owned by U.S. investors. In the proposed deal with the Biden Administration, there was a new entity too — called TikTok U.S.D.S. — but it only had jurisdiction over a narrow subset of TikTok's U.S. operations. Will this NewCo have a broader mandate than the last one? Will it control TikTok U.S.'s internal tools? What about its recommendation algorithm? If NewCo doesn't control these things — and if ByteDance or a ByteDance subsidiary continues to control any of them — then we are back to Question 1. You'd think the answer to this question would be easy: the US investors who take a majority stake in it! But it's not always that simple. When Zhang Yiming founded ByteDance in 2012, he granted himself 'supervoting shares' that would allow him to control ByteDance, even if he didn't continue to own a majority of the company. This is a pretty common maneuver in tech — Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, former WeWork CEO Adam Neumann and former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick all gave themselves this power too (though it's noteworthy that only Zuckerberg continues to control his company today). If the goal of the TikTok deal is to ensure that TikTok is ultimately not controlled by a Chinese person (who could be forced to act on behalf of the Chinese government), then we'll want to see details on both who owns NewCo and who gets to make decisions for it. If ByteDance is making any of those decisions, then we return to Question 1. ByteDance can't sell TikTok's For You algorithm without the Chinese government's permission. But if ByteDance doesn't sell the algorithm, then NewCo can't (legally) use it. Under U.S. law, NewCo can't engage in 'any cooperation [with ByteDance] with respect to the operation of a content recommendation algorithm.' The only way NewCo will be able to use the For You algorithm is if the Chinese government lets ByteDance sell. Trump has suggested he might lift tariffs if Beijing approves a sale. But Beijing could also hold permission back, in an effort to draw further concessions from the U.S. President. After all, Trump was so eager to avoid a ban he asked American companies to ignore the law to keep TikTok online. Who knows what else he might concede to get a deal.
