The U.S. Congress has shown that it can move quickly when it wants to. Unfortunately, one of the clearest recent examples of bipartisan speed was the passage of a bill targeting a single social media company: TikTok.
In April 2024, lawmakers overwhelmingly approved the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. Framed as a necessary response to national security and data privacy risks, the law forced TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to divest or face a nationwide ban. Supporters argued the measure would protect Americans from foreign surveillance and influence. In practice, it handed sweeping discretion to the executive branch to decide who would control one of the most influential communications platforms in the world.
That discretion is now being exercised. TikTok announced last week that it has closed a $14 billion deal establishing a new U.S.-based subsidiary to avoid a nationwide ban. The arrangement transfers majority ownership to a consortium that includes U.S. private equity firm Silver Lake, Abu Dhabi-based artificial intelligence company MGX, and Oracle, the technology giant founded by Larry Ellison, a close ally of President Donald Trump. ByteDance, TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, will retain a nearly 20 percent stake.
The outcome underscores the core flaw in Congress’s approach. A law promoted as a safeguard against foreign control has instead produced a politically brokered ownership structure, negotiated under direct presidential supervision and finalized through executive discretion. TikTok has become not just a national security case study, but a domestic political prize.
What Congress Could Have Done
If Congress wanted to protect Americans’ privacy, the solution was not to ban one app; it was to create clear, baseline rules for how companies collect, share, and safeguard personal data. Americans’ privacy shouldn’t depend on which platform they use or where that company is headquartered. Establishing consistent standards for data use and security would have closed the loopholes that allow companies to trade or sell sensitive information.
If Congress wanted to prevent manipulation of online speech, it could have strengthened transparency and accountability across all major platforms. Requiring public transparency reports, independent audits of recommendation systems, and privacy-protective researcher access to platform data would allow the public to understand how information is prioritized and shared online. These reforms would address disinformation and influence operations directly, rather than relying on bans that can be easily politicized or undone.
If lawmakers were concerned about the growing concentration of power in the tech sector, they could have advanced competition and interoperability measures that open the market to new entrants. Requiring dominant platforms to support interoperability and prohibiting them from unfairly discriminating against competitors would make the internet more open, more innovative, and less dependent on any single platform.
Finally, Congress could have confronted the broader governance gap that allows these crises to repeat. Policymaking around technology continues to happen in fits and starts, often driven by political outrage rather than expert oversight.
What We Have Instead
Instead of systemic reform, we have a performative policy that has done little to protect users and everything to politicize one company’s fate. The 2024 TikTok law tied enforcement to presidential discretion, ensuring that any sale or delay would be driven as much by politics as by principle. Although the statute required a sale or ban by January 19, 2025, President Trump delayed the ban five separate times while negotiations continued. In September, he signed an executive order approving the deal framework and granting the parties additional time to finalize its terms.
The finalized agreement places TikTok’s U.S. operations into a newly created subsidiary controlled by a small group of powerful investors. Silver Lake and Oracle are joined by MGX, an Abu Dhabi-based artificial intelligence firm, while ByteDance retains a significant minority stake just under the statutory threshold. According to TikTok, the structure complies with the divestiture requirements set out in the 2024 law; however key elements of deal remain opaque.
This outcome was avoidable. Lawmakers could have seized a rare bipartisan moment to create durable digital policy. Instead, Congress opted for a fast and flashy response that left the hard work undone.
The Work Still to Be Done
There are real problems with how large technology platforms operate. Americans deserve strong privacy protections, fair competition, and confidence that online spaces serve the public interest rather than narrow commercial or political goals. Those outcomes will only come from clear, enforceable rules that apply across the digital ecosystem; not from one-off bans or politically negotiated sales.
Picking a single company to blame may make for good headlines, but it is not a substitute for comprehensive technology policy. Congress has the tools and the expertise it needs to build a safer, fairer internet. It simply needs the will to use them.