White House’s Leavitt: TikTok’s algorithm, data to be controlled ‘by America’

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Saturday provided further details of a deal reached between the U.S. and China over control of TikTok, sharing that six Americans will sit on the seven-seat board that will control the company and that the U.S. would control the app’s algorithm. “This deal does put America first,” Leavitt told Fox News’ “Saturday in America.” “And let me just be very clear. This deal means that TikTok will be majority-owned by Americans in the United States. There will be seven seats on the board that controls the app in the United States, and six of those seats will be Americans.” She added that the data and privacy aspects of the platform handled by Oracle (ORCL), and that the U.S. would maintain control of the app’s algorithm, which curates what users see on the app. President Trump and China’s Xi Jinping agreed to a preliminary framework for the deal on Friday, according to reports. Publicly traded companies in the social media space include Meta Platforms (META), Pinterest (PINS), Reddit (RDDT) and Snap (SNAP).