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ByteDance backpedals after Seedance 2.0 turned Hollywood icons into AI “clip art”

AI, ai deepfake, Artificial Intelligence, bytedance, Policy, seedance, seedance 2.0, video generator / Kelly Newman / February 16, 2026

Misstep or marketing tactic?

Hollywood backlash puts spotlight on ByteDance’s sketchy launch of Seedance 2.0.

ByteDance says that it’s rushing to add safeguards to block Seedance 2.0 from generating iconic characters and deepfaking celebrities, after substantial Hollywood backlash after launching the latest version of its AI video tool.

The changes come after Disney and Paramount Skydance sent cease-and-desist letters to ByteDance urging the Chinese company to promptly end the allegedly vast and blatant infringement.

Studios claimed the infringement was widescale and immediate, with Seedance 2.0 users across social media sharing AI videos featuring copyrighted characters like Spider-Man, Darth Vader, and SpongeBob Square Pants. In its letter, Disney fumed that Seedance was “hijacking” its characters, accusing ByteDance of treating Disney characters like they were “free public domain clip art,” Axios reported.

“ByteDance’s virtual smash-and-grab of Disney’s IP is willful, pervasive, and totally unacceptable,” Disney’s letter said.

Defending intellectual property from franchises like Star Trek and The Godfather, Paramount Skydance pointed out that Seedance’s outputs are “often indistinguishable, both visually and audibly” from the original characters, Variety reported. Similarly frustrated, Japan’s AI minister Kimi Onoda, sought to protect popular anime and manga characters, officially launching a probe last week into ByteDance over the copyright violations, the South China Morning Post reported.

“We cannot overlook a situation in which content is being used without the copyright holder’s permission,” Onoda said at a press conference Friday.

Facing legal threats and Japan’s investigation, ByteDance issued a statement Monday, CNBC reported. In it, the company claimed that it “respects intellectual property rights” and has “heard the concerns regarding Seedance 2.0.”

“We are taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent the unauthorized use of intellectual property and likeness by users,” ByteDance said.

However, Disney seems unlikely to accept that ByteDance inadvertently released its tool without implementing such safeguards in advance. In its letter, Disney alleged that “Seedance has infringed on Disney’s copyrighted materials to benefit its commercial service without permission.”

After all, what better way to illustrate Seedance 2.0’s latest features than by generating some of the best-known IP in the world? At least one tech consultant has suggested that ByteDance planned to benefit from inciting Hollywood outrage. The founder of San Francisco-based consultancy Tech Buzz China, Rui Ma, told SCMP that “the controversy surrounding Seedance is likely part of ByteDance’s initial distribution strategy to showcase its underlying technical capabilities.”

Seedance 2.0 is an “attack” on creators

Studios aren’t the only ones sounding alarms.

Several industry groups expressed concerns, including the Motion Picture Association, which accused ByteDance of engaging in massive copyright infringement within “a single day,” CNBC reported.

Sean Astin, an actor and president of the actors union, SAG-AFTRA, was directly impacted by the scandal. A video that has since been removed from X showed Astin in the role of Samwise Gamgee from The Lord of the Rings, delivering a line he never said, Variety reported. Condemning Seedance’s infringement, SAG-AFTRA issued a statement emphasizing that ByteDance did not act responsibly in releasing the model without safeguards:

“SAG-AFTRA stands with the studios in condemning the blatant infringement enabled by ByteDance’s new AI video model Seedance 2.0. The infringement includes the unauthorized use of our members’ voices and likenesses. This is unacceptable and undercuts the ability of human talent to earn a livelihood. Seedance 2.0 disregards law, ethics, industry standards and basic principles of consent. Responsible AI development demands responsibility, and that is nonexistent here.”

Echoing that, a group representing Hollywood creators, the Human Artistry Campaign, declared that “the launch of Seedance 2.0” was “an attack on every creator around the world.”

“Stealing human creators’ work in an attempt to replace them with AI generated slop is destructive to our culture: stealing isn’t innovation,” the group said. “These unauthorized deepfakes and voice clones of actors violate the most basic aspects of personal autonomy and should be deeply concerning to everyone. Authorities should use every legal tool at their disposal to stop this wholesale theft.”

Ars could not immediately reach any of these groups to comment on whether ByteDance’s post-launch efforts to add safeguards addressed industry concerns.

MPA chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin has previously accused ByteDance of disregarding “well-established copyright law that protects the rights of creators and underpins millions of American jobs.”

While Disney and other studios are clearly ready to take down any tools that could hurt their revenue or reputation without an agreement in place, they aren’t opposed to all AI uses of their characters. In December, Disney struck a deal with OpenAI, giving Sora access to 200 characters for three years, while investing $1 billion in the technology.

At that time, Disney CEO Robert A. Iger, said that “the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence marks an important moment for our industry, and through this collaboration with OpenAI, we will thoughtfully and responsibly extend the reach of our storytelling through generative AI, while respecting and protecting creators and their works.”

Creators disagree Seedance 2.0 is a game changer

In a blog announcing Seedance 2.0, ByteDance boasted that the new model “delivers a substantial leap in generation quality,” particularly in close-up shots and action sequences.

The company acknowledged that further refinements were needed and the model is “still far from perfect” but hyped that “its generated videos possess a distinct cinematic aesthetic; the textures of objects, lighting, and composition, as well as costume, makeup, and prop designs, all show high degrees of finish.”

ByteDance likely hoped that the earliest outputs from Seedance 2.0 would produce headlines wowed by the model’s capabilities, and it got what it wanted when a single Hollywood stakeholder’s social media comment went viral.

Shortly after Seedance 2.0’s rollout, Deadpool co-writer, Rhett Reese, declared on X that “it’s likely over for us,” The Guardian reported. The screenwriter was impressed by an AI video created by Irish director Ruairi Robinson, which realistically depicted Tom Cruise fighting Brad Pitt. “[I]n next to no time, one person is going to be able to sit at a computer and create a movie indistinguishable from what Hollywood now releases,” Reese opined. “True, if that person is no good, it will suck. But if that person possesses Christopher Nolan’s talent and taste (and someone like that will rapidly come along), it will be tremendous.”

However, some AI critics rejected the notion that Seedance 2.0 is capable of replacing artists in the way that Reese warned. On Bluesky and X, they pushed back on ByteDance claims that this model doomed Hollywood, with some accusing outlets of too quickly ascribing Reese’s reaction to the whole industry.

Among them was longtime AI critic, Reid Southen, a film concept artist who works on major motion pictures and TV. Responding directly to Reese’s X thread, Southen contradicted the notion that a great filmmaker could be born from fiddling with AI prompts alone.

“Nolan is capable of doing great work because he’s put in the work,” Southen said. “AI is an automation tool, it’s literally removing key, fundamental work from the process, how does one become good at anything if they insist on using nothing but shortcuts?”

Perhaps the strongest evidence in Southen’s favor is Darren Aronofsky’s recent AI-generated historical docudrama. Speaking anonymously to Ars following backlash declaring that “AI slop is ruining American history,” one source close to production on that project confirmed that it took “weeks” to produce minutes of usable video using a variety of AI tools.

That source noted that the creative team went into the project expecting they had a lot to learn but also expecting that tools would continue to evolve, as could audience reactions to AI-assisted movies.

“It’s a huge experiment, really,” the source told Ars.

Notably, for both creators and rights-holders concerned about copyright infringement and career threats, questions remain on how Seedance 2.0 was trained. ByteDance has yet to release a technical report for Seedance 2.0 and “has never disclosed the data sets it uses to train its powerful video-generation Seedance models and image-generation Seedream models,” SCMP reported.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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TikTok deal is done; Trump wants praise while users fear MAGA tweaks

bytedance, china, Donald Trump, Policy, tiktok, us-china trade war / 9u50fv / January 23, 2026

US will soon retrain TikTok

“I am so happy”: Trump closes deal that hands TikTok US to his allies.

The TikTok deal is done, and Donald Trump is claiming a win, although it remains unclear if the joint venture he arranged with ByteDance and the Chinese government actually resolves Congress’ national security concerns.

In a press release Thursday, TikTok announced the “TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC,” an entity established to keep TikTok operating in the US.

Giving Americans majority ownership, ByteDance retains 19.9 percent of the joint venture, the release said, which has been valued at $14 billion. Three managing investors—Silver Lake, Oracle, and MGX—each hold 15 percent, while other investors, including Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell’s investment firm, Dell Family Office, hold smaller, undisclosed stakes.

Americans will also have majority control over the joint venture’s seven-member board. TikTok CEO Shou Chew holds ByteDance’s only seat. Finalizing the deal was a “great move,” Chew told TikTok employees in an internal memo, The New York Times reported.

Two former TikTok employees will lead the joint venture. Adam Presser, who previously served as TikTok’s global head of Operations and Trust & Safety, has been named CEO. And Kim Farrell, TikTok’s former global head of Business Operations Protection, will serve as chief security officer.

Trump has claimed the deal meets requirements for “qualified divestiture” to avoid a TikTok ban otherwise required under the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. However, questions remain, as lawmakers have not yet analyzed the terms of the deal to determine whether that’s true.

The law requires the divestment “to end any ‘operational relationship’ between ByteDance and TikTok in the United States,” critics told the NYT. That could be a problem, since TikTok’s release makes it clear that ByteDance will maintain some control over the TikTok US app’s operations.

For example, while the US owners will retrain the algorithm and manage data security, ByteDance owns the algorithm and “will manage global product interoperability and certain commercial activities, including e-commerce, advertising, and marketing.” The Trump administration seemingly agreed to these terms to ensure that the US TikTok isn’t cut off from the rest of the world on the app.

“Interoperability enables the Joint Venture to provide US users with a global TikTok experience, ensuring US creators can be discovered and businesses can operate on a global scale,” the release said.

Perhaps also concerning to Congress, Slate noted, while ByteDance may be a minority owner, it remains the largest individual shareholder.

Michael Sobolik, an expert on US-China policy and senior fellow at the right-leaning think tank the Hudson Institute, told the NYT that the Trump administration “may have saved TikTok, but the national security concerns are still going to continue.”

Some critics, including Republicans, have vowed to scrutinize the deal.

On Thursday, Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass.) complained that the White House had repeatedly denied requests for information about the deal. They’ve provided “virtually no details about this agreement, including whether TikTok’s algorithm is truly free of Chinese influence,” Markey said.

“This lack of transparency reeks,” Markey said. “Congress has a responsibility to investigate this deal, demand transparency, and ensure that any arrangement truly protects national security while keeping TikTok online.”

In December, Representative John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the House Select Committee on China, said that he wants to hold a hearing with TikTok leadership to discuss how the deal addresses national security concerns. On Thursday, Moolenaar said he “has two specific questions for TikTok’s new American owners,” Punchbowl News reported.

“Can we ensure that the algorithm is not influenced by the Chinese Communist Party?” Moolenaar said. “And two, can we ensure that the data of Americans is secure?”

Moolenaar may be satisfied by the terms, as the NYT suggested that China hawks in Washington appeared to trust that Trump’s arrangement is a qualified divestiture. TikTok’s release said that Oracle will protect US user data in a secure US cloud data environment that will regularly be audited by third-party cybersecurity experts. The algorithm will be licensed from ByteDance and retrained on US user data, the release said, and Vice President JD Vance has confirmed that the joint venture “will have control over how the algorithm pushes content to users.”

Last September, a spokesperson for the House China Committee told Politico that “any agreement must comply with the historic bipartisan law passed last year to protect the American people, including the complete divestment of ByteDance control and a fully decoupled algorithm.”

Users brace for MAGA tweaks to algorithm

“I am so happy to have helped in saving TikTok!” Trump said on Truth Social after the deal was finalized. “It will now be owned by a group of Great American Patriots and Investors, the Biggest in the World, and will be an important Voice.”

However, it’s unclear to TikTokers how the app might change as Trump allies take control of the addictive algorithm that drew millions to the app. Lawmakers had feared the Chinese Communist Party could influence the algorithm to target US users with propaganda, and Trump’s deal was supposed to mitigate that.

Not only do critics worry that if ByteDance maintains ownership of the algorithm, it could allow the company to continue to influence content, but there is now concern that the app’s recommendations could take a right-leaning slant under US control.

Trump has already said that he’d like to see TikTok go “100 percent MAGA,” and his allies will now be in charge of “deciding which posts to leave up and which to take down,” the NYT noted. Anupam Chander, a law and technology professor at Georgetown University, told the NYT that the TikTok deal offered Trump and his allies “more theoretical room for one side’s views to get a greater airing.”

“My worry all along is that we may have traded fears of foreign propaganda for the reality of domestic propaganda,” Chander said.

For business owners who rely on the app, there’s also the potential that the app could be glitchy after US owners start porting data and retraining the algorithm.

Trump clearly hopes the deal will endear him to TikTok users. He sought praise on Truth Social, writing, “I only hope that long into the future I will be remembered by those who use and love TikTok.”

China “played” Trump, expert says

So far, the Chinese government has not commented on the deal’s finalization, but Trump thanked Chinese President Xi Jinping in his Truth Social post “for working with us and, ultimately, approving the Deal.”

“He could have gone the other way, but didn’t, and is appreciated for his decision,” Trump said.

Experts have suggested that China benefits from the deal by keeping the most lucrative part of TikTok while the world watches it export its technology to the US.

When Trump first announced the deal in September, critics immediately attacked him for letting China keep the algorithm. One US advisor close to the deal told the Financial Times that “Trump always chickens out,” noting that “after all this, China keeps the algorithm.”

On Thursday, Sobolik told Politico that Trump “got played” by Xi after taking “terrible advice from his staff” during trade negotiations that some critics said gave China the upper hand.

Trump sees things differently, writing on Truth Social that the TikTok deal came to “a very dramatic, final, and beautiful conclusion.”

Whether the deal is “dramatic,” “final,” or “beautiful” depends on who you ask, though, as it could face legal challenges and disrupt TikTok’s beloved content feeds. The NYT suggested that the deal took so long to finalize that TikTokers don’t even care anymore, while several outlets noted that Trump’s deal is very close to the Project Texas arrangement that Joe Biden pushed until it was deemed inadequate to address national security risks.

Through Project Texas, Oracle was supposed to oversee TikTok US user data, auditing for security risks while ByteDance controlled the code. The joint venture’s “USDS” “coinage even originated from Project Texas,” Slate noted.

Lindsay Gorman, a former senior advisor in the Biden administration, told NYT that “we’ve gone round and round and ended up not too far from where we started.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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Big Tech basically took Trump’s unpredictable trade war lying down

AMD, Apple, bytedance, china, Donald Trump, Features, intel, NVIDIA, Policy, reciprocal tariffs, tariffs, tiktok, trade war / Mike M. / December 29, 2025

From Apple gifting a gold statue to the US taking a stake in Intel.

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

As the first year of Donald Trump’s chaotic trade war winds down, the tech industry is stuck scratching its head, with no practical way to anticipate what twists and turns to expect in 2026.

Tech companies may have already grown numb to Trump’s unpredictable moves. Back in February, Trump warned Americans to expect “a little pain” after he issued executive orders imposing 10–25 percent tariffs on imports from America’s biggest trading partners, including Canada, China, and Mexico. Immediately, industry associations sounded the alarm, warning that the costs of consumer tech could increase significantly. By April, Trump had ordered tariffs on all US trade partners to correct claimed trade deficits, using odd math that critics suspected came from a chatbot. (Those tariffs bizarrely targeted uninhabited islands that exported nothing and were populated by penguins.)

Costs of tariffs only got higher as the year wore on. But the tech industry has done very little to push back against them. Instead, some of the biggest companies made their own surprising moves after Trump’s trade war put them in deeply uncomfortable positions.

Apple gives Trump a gold statue instead of US-made iPhone

Right from the jump in February, Apple got backed into a corner after Trump threatened a “flat” 60 percent tariff on all Chinese imports, which experts said could have substantially taxed Apple’s business. Moving to appease Trump, Apple promised to invest $500 billion in the US in hopes of avoiding tariffs, but that didn’t take the pressure off for long.

By April, Apple stood by and said nothing as Trump promised the company would make “made in the USA” iPhones. Analysts suggested such a goal was “impossible,” calling the idea “impossible at worst and highly expensive at best.”

Apple’s silence did not spare the company Trump’s scrutiny. The next month, Trump threatened Apple with a 25 percent tariff on any iPhones sold in the US that were not manufactured in America. Experts were baffled by the threat, which appeared to be the first time a US company was threatened directly with tariffs.

Typically, tariffs are imposed on a country or category of goods, like smartphones. It remains unclear if it would even be legal to levy a tariff on an individual company like Apple, but Trump never tested those waters. Instead, Trump stopped demanding the American-made iPhone and withdrew other tariff threats after he was apparently lulled into submission by a gold statue that Apple gifted him in August. The engraved glass disc featured an Apple logo and Tim Cook’s signature above a “Made in USA” stamp, celebrating Donald Trump for his “Apple American Manufacturing Program.”

Trump’s wild deals shake down chipmakers

Around the same time that Trump eased pressure on Apple, he turned his attention to Intel. On social media in August, Trump ordered Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to “resign immediately,” claiming he was “highly conflicted.” In response, Tan did not resign but instead met with Trump and struck a deal that gave the US a 10 percent stake in Intel. Online, Trump bragged that he let Tan “keep his job” while hyping the deal—which The New York Times described as one of the “largest government interventions in a US company since the rescue of the auto industry after the 2008 financial crisis.”

But unlike the auto industry, Intel didn’t need the money. And rather than helping an ailing company survive a tough spot, the deal risked disrupting Intel’s finances in ways that spooked shareholders. It was therefore a relief to no one when Intel detailed everything that could go wrong in an SEC filing, including the possible dilution of investors’ stock due to discounting US shares and other risks of dilution, if certain terms of the deal kick in at some point in the future.

The company also warned of potential lawsuits challenging the legality of the deal, which Intel fears could come from third parties, the US government, or foreign governments. Most ominous, Intel admitted there was no way to predict what other risks may come, both in the short-term and long-term.

Of course, Intel wasn’t the only company Trump sought to control, and not every company caved. He tried to strong-arm the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) in September into moving half its chip manufacturing into the US, but TSMC firmly rejected his demand. And in October, when Trump began eyeing stakes in quantum computing firms, several companies were open to negotiating, but with no deals immediately struck, it was hard to ascertain how seriously they were entertaining Trump’s talks.

Trump struck another particularly wild deal the same month as the Intel agreement. That deal found chipmakers Nvidia and AMD agreeing to give 15 percent of revenue to the US from sales to China of advanced computer chips that could be used to fuel frontier AI. By December, Nvidia’s deal only drew more scrutiny, as the chipmaker agreed to give the US an even bigger cut—25 percent—of sales of its second most advanced AI chips, the H200.

Again, experts were confused, noting that export curbs on Nvidia’s H20 chips, for example, were imposed to prevent US technology thefts, maintain US tech dominance, and protect US national security. Those chips are six times less powerful than the H200. To them, it appeared that the Trump administration was taking payments to overlook risks without a clear understanding of how that might give China a leg-up in the AI race. It also did not appear to be legal, since export licenses cannot be sold under existing federal law, but government lawyers have supposedly been researching a new policy that would allow the US to collect the fees.

Trump finally closed TikTok deal

As the end of 2025 nears, the tech company likely sweating Trump’s impulses most may be TikTok owner ByteDance. In October, Trump confirmed that China agreed to a deal that allows the US to take majority ownership of TikTok and license the TikTok algorithm to build a US version of the app.

Trump has been trying to close this deal all year, while ByteDance remained largely quiet. Prior to the start of Trump’s term, the company had expressed resistance to selling TikTok to US owners, and as recently as January, a ByteDance board member floated the idea that Trump could save TikTok without forcing a sale. But China’s approval was needed to proceed with the sale, and near the end of December, ByteDance finally agreed to close the deal, paving the way for Trump’s hand-picked investors to take control in 2026.

It’s unclear how TikTok may change under US control, perhaps shedding users if US owners cave to Trump’s suggestion that he’d like to see the app go “100 percent MAGA” under his hand-picked US owners. It’s possible that the US version of the app could be glitchy, too.

Whether Trump’s deal actually complies with a US law requiring that ByteDance divest control of TikTok or else face a US ban has yet to be seen. Lawmaker scrutiny and possible legal challenges are expected in 2026, likely leaving both TikTok users and ByteDance on the edge of their seats waiting to see how the globally cherished short video app may change.

Trump may owe $1 trillion in tariff refunds

The TikTok deal was once viewed as a meaningful bargaining chip during Trump’s tensest negotiations with China, which has quickly emerged as America’s fiercest rival in the AI race and Trump’s biggest target in his trade war.

But as closing the deal remained elusive for most of the year, analysts suggested that Trump grew “desperate” to end tit-for-tat retaliations that he started, while China appeared more resilient to US curbs than the US was to China’s.

In one obvious example, many Americans’ first tariff pains came when Trump ended a duty-free exemption in February for low-value packages imported from cheap online retailers, like Shein and Temu. Unable to quickly adapt to the policy change, USPS abruptly stopped accepting all inbound packages from Hong Kong and China. After a chaotic 24 hours, USPS started slowly processing parcels again while promising Americans that it would work with customs to “implement an efficient collection mechanism for the new China tariffs to ensure the least disruption to package delivery.”

Trump has several legal tools to impose tariffs, but the most controversial path appears to be his favorite. The Supreme Court is currently weighing whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) grants a US president unilateral authority to impose tariffs.

Seizing this authority, Trump imposed so-called “reciprocal tariffs” at whim, the Consumer Technology Association and the Chamber of Commerce told the Supreme Court in a friend-of-the-court brief in which they urged the justices to end the “perfect storm of uncertainty.”

Unlike other paths that would limit how quickly Trump could shift tariff rates or how high the tariff rate could go, under IEEPA, Trump has imposed tariff rates as high as 125 percent. Deferring to Trump will cost US businesses, CTA and CoC warned. CTA CEO Gary Shapiro estimated that Trump has changed these tariff rates 100 times since his trade war began, affecting $223 billion of US exports.

Meanwhile, one of Trump’s biggest stated goals of his trade war—forcing more manufacturing into the US—is utterly failing, many outlets have reported.

Likely due to US companies seeking more stable supply chains, “reshoring progress is nowhere to be seen,” Fortune reported in November. That month, a dismal Bureau of Labor Statistics released a jobs report that an expert summarized as showing that the “US is losing blue-collar jobs for the first time since the pandemic.”

A month earlier, the nonpartisan policy group the Center for American Progress drew on government labor data to conclude that US employers cut 12,000 manufacturing jobs in August, and payrolls for manufacturing jobs had decreased by 42,000 since April.

As tech companies take tech tariffs on the chin, perhaps out of fears that rattling Trump could impact lucrative government contracts, other US companies have taken Trump to court. Most recently, Costco became one of the biggest corporations to sue Trump to ensure that US businesses get refunded if Trump loses the Supreme Court case, Bloomberg reported. Other recognizable companies like Revlon and Kawasaki have also sued, but small businesses have largely driven opposition to Trump’s tariffs, Bloomberg noted.

Should the Supreme Court side with businesses—analysts predict favorable odds—the US could owe up to $1 trillion in refunds. Dozens of economists told SCOTUS that Trump simply doesn’t understand why having trade deficits with certain countries isn’t a threat to US dominance, pointing out that the US “has been running a persistent surplus in trade in services for decades” precisely because the US “has the dominant technology sector in the world.”

Justices seem skeptical that IEEPA grants Trump the authority, ordinarily reserved for Congress, to impose taxes. However, during oral arguments, Justice Amy Coney Barrett fretted that undoing Trump’s tariffs could be “messy.” Countering that, small businesses have argued that it’s possible for Customs and Border Patrol to set up automatic refunds.

While waiting for the SCOTUS verdict (now expected in January), the CTA ended the year by advising tech companies to keep their receipts in case refunds require requests for tariffs line by line—potentially complicated by tariff rates changing so drastically and so often.

Biggest tariff nightmare may come in 2026

Looking into 2026, tech companies cannot breathe a sigh of relief even if the SCOTUS ruling swings their way, though. Under a separate, legally viable authority, Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on semiconductors and any products containing them, a move the semiconductor industry fears could cost $1 billion.

And if Trump continues imposing tariffs on materials used in popular tech products, the CTA told Ars in September that potential “tariff stacking” could become the industry’s biggest nightmare. Should that occur, US manufacturers could end up double-, triple-, or possibly even quadruple-taxed on products that may contain materials subject to individual tariffs, like semiconductors, polysilicon, or copper.

Predicting tariff costs could become so challenging that companies will have no choice but to raise prices, the CTA warned. That could threaten US tech competitiveness if, possibly over the long term, companies lose significant sales on their most popular products.

For many badly bruised by the first year of tariffs, it’s hard to see how tariffs could ever become a winning strategy for US tech dominance, as Trump has long claimed. And Americans continue to feel more than “a little pain,” as Trump forecasted, causing many to shift their views on the president.

Americans banding together to oppose tariffs could help prevent the worst possible outcomes. With prices already rising on certain goods in the US, the president reversed some tariffs as his approval ratings hit record lows. But so far, Big Tech hasn’t shown much interest in joining the fight, instead throwing money at the problem by making generous donations to things like Trump’s inaugural fund or his ballroom.

A bright light for the tech industry could be the midterm elections, which could pressure Trump to ease off aggressive tariff regimes, but that’s not a given. Trump allies have previously noted that the president typically responds to pushback on tariffs by doubling down. And one of Trump’s on-again-off-again allies, Elon Musk, noted in December in an interview that Trump ignored his warnings that tariffs would drive manufacturing out of the US.

“The president has made it clear he loves tariffs,” Musk said.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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ByteDance confirms TikTok will be controlled by US owners

bytedance, china, Donald Trump, national security, Policy, tiktok, tiktok us / DJ Henderson / December 20, 2025

According to Trump, the deal ensures that TikTok complies with the divest-or-ban law, but the White House is still not providing more details. Instead, the Trump administration “referred questions about the deal to TikTok,” Reuters reported.

If the deal closes as expected on January 22, the new US company will have an estimated value of $14 billion, Vice President JD Vance noted in September.

At that point, the deal will likely face mounting scrutiny from lawmakers, including Republicans, who aren’t yet sure if the US operation resolves all national security concerns. Chinese control of the algorithm was a particular sticking point for critics, who claimed that Trump was giving China exactly what it wanted: international recognition for exporting leading technology to the US.

In September, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R.-Iowa) vowed to take a “hard line” and oppose the deal’s framework if it violates the divest-or-ban law. Already, Representative John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the House Select Committee on China, is planning to hold a hearing next year with US TikTok leadership.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has accused Trump of handing over “even more control of what you watch to his billionaire buddies,” through the TikTok deal, which she likened to enabling a “billionaire takeover of TikTok.” Many TikTokers likely share her concerns, after Trump suggested he’d like to see his hand-picked investors tweak the algorithm to be “100 percent MAGA.”

Questions remain until the exact terms of the deal become public, Warren said.

ByteDance did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.

With the terms obscured, it’s unclear how quickly TikTok may change in 2026 under US ownership. In July, the Information reported that when approximately 170 million US users get ported over to the new US-owned app, it could be buggy.

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TikTok may become more right-wing as China signals approval for US sale

bytedance, Donald Trump, Policy, tiktok, tiktok us, us-china trade war / Shannon Garcia / October 30, 2025

TikTok US app may look radically different

If the sale goes through without major changes to the terms, TikTok could radically change for US users.

After US owners take over, they will have to retrain TikTok’s algorithm, perhaps shifting what content Americans see on the platform.

Some speculate that TikTokers may only connect with American users through the app, but that’s likely inaccurate, as global content will remain available.

While global content will still be displayed on TikTok’s US app, it’s unclear how it may be filtered, Kelley Cotter, an assistant professor who studies social media algorithms in the Department of Human-Centered Computing and Social Informatics at Pennsylvania State University, told Scientific American.

Cotter suggested that TikTok’s US owners may also tweak the algorithm or change community guidelines to potentially alter what content is accessed on the app. For example, during conversations leading up to the law that requires either the sale of TikTok to US allies or a nationwide ban, Republican lawmakers voiced concerns “that there were greater visibility of Palestinian hashtags on TikTok over Israeli hashtags.”

If Trump’s deal goes through, the president has already suggested that he’d like to see the app go “100 percent MAGA.” And Cotter suggested that the conservative slant of Trump’s hand-picked TikTok US investors—including Oracle, Silver Lake, and Andreessen Horowitz—could help Trump achieve that goal.

“An owner that has a strong ideological point of view and has the will to make that a part of the app, it is possible, through tweaking the algorithm, to sort of reshape the overall composition of content on the platform,” Cotter said.

If left-leaning users abandon TikTok as the app shifts to US ownership, TikTok’s content could change meaningfully, Cotter said.

“It could result in a situation,” Cotter suggested, where TikTok would be “an app that is composed by only people based in the US but only a subset of American users and particularly ones that perhaps might be right-leaning.” That could “have very big impact on the kinds of content that you see there.”

For TikTok’s US users bracing for a feared right-wing overhaul of their feeds, there’s also the potential for the app to become glitchy as all US users are hastily transferred over to the new app. Any technical issues could also drive users off the app, perhaps further altering content.

Ars updated this story on Oct. 30 to note that speculation that American users will be siloed off is inaccurate.

TikTok may become more right-wing as China signals approval for US sale Read More »

Trump says TikTok should be tweaked to become “100% MAGA”

bytedance, china, Donald Trump, national security, Policy, tiktok, us-china trade war / 9u50fv / September 26, 2025

Previously, experts had suggested that China had little incentive to follow through with the deal, while as recently as July, ByteDance denied reports that it agreed to sell TikTok to the US, the South China Morning Post reported. Yesterday, Reuters noted that Vice President JD Vance confirmed that the “new US company will be valued at around $14 billion,” a price tag “far below some analyst estimates,” which might frustrate ByteDance. Questions also remain over what potential concessions Trump may have made to get Xi’s sign-off.

It’s also unclear if Trump’s deal meets the legal requirements of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, with Reuters reporting that “numerous details” still need to be “fleshed out.” Last Friday, James Sullivan of JP Morgan suggested on CNBC that “Trump’s proposed TikTok deal lacked clarity on who is in control of the algorithm, leaving the national security concerns wide open,” CNBC reported.

Other critics, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s civil liberties director David Greene, warned in a statement to Ars that the US now risks “turning over” TikTok “to the allies of a President who seems to have no respect for the First Amendment.”

Jennifer Huddleston, a senior fellow in technology policy at the Cato Institute, agreed. “The arrangement creates uncertainty about what influence or oversight the US government might require over this separate algorithm that could raise potential First Amendment concerns regarding government influence over a private actor,” Huddleston said.

Will TikTok become right-wing?

The Guardian recently conducted a deep dive into how the Murdochs’ and Ellisons’ involvement could “gift Trump’s billionaire allies a degree of control over US media that would be vast and unprecedented” by allowing “the owners of the US’s most powerful cable TV channels” to “steer the nation’s most influential social network.”

Trump says TikTok should be tweaked to become “100% MAGA” Read More »

“China keeps the algorithm”: Critics attack Trump’s TikTok deal

bytedance, Donald Trump, national security, Policy, tiktok / DJ Henderson / September 17, 2025

However, Trump seems to think that longtime TikTok partner Oracle taking a bigger stake while handling Americans’ user data at its facilities in Texas will be enough to prevent remaining China-based owners—which will maintain less than a 20 percent stake—from allegedly spying, launching disinformation campaigns, or spreading other kinds of propaganda.

China previously was resistant to a forced sale of TikTok, FT reported, even going so far as to place export controls on algorithms to keep the most lucrative part of TikTok in the country. And “it remains unclear to what extent TikTok’s Chinese parent would retain control of the algorithm in the US as part of a licensing deal,” FT noted.

On Tuesday, Wang Jingtao, deputy head of China’s cyber security regulator, did not go into any detail on how China’s access to US user data would be restricted under the deal. Instead, Wang only noted that ByteDance would “entrust the operation of TikTok’s US user data and content security,” presumably to US owners, FT reported.

One Asia-based investor told FT that the US would use “at least part of the Chinese algorithm” but train it on US user data, while a US advisor accused Trump of chickening out and accepting a deal that didn’t force a sale of the algorithm.

“After all this, China keeps the algorithm,” the US advisor said.

To the Asia-based investor, it seemed like Trump gave China exactly what it wants, since “Beijing wants to be seen as exporting Chinese technology to the US and the world.”

It’s likely more details will be announced once Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping hold a phone conference on Friday. ByteDance has yet to comment on the deal and did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.

“China keeps the algorithm”: Critics attack Trump’s TikTok deal Read More »

Will TikTok go dark Wednesday? Trump claims deal with China avoids shutdown.

bytedance, china, Donald Trump, national security, Policy, tiktok, trump administration, trump tariffs, us-china trade war / Mike M. / September 15, 2025

According to Bessent, China agreed to “commercial terms” and “technical details” of a deal “between two parties,” but Xi and Trump still needed to discuss the terms—as well as possibly China’s demands to ease export controls on chips and other high-tech goods—before the deal can be finalized, Reuters reported.

ByteDance, TikTok’s current owner, which in the past has opposed the sale, did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment.

While experts told Reuters that finalizing the TikTok deal this week could be challenging, Trump seems confident. On Truth Social, the US president boasted that talks with China have been going “very well” and claimed that TikTok users will soon be “very happy.”

“A deal was also reached on a ‘certain’ company that young people in our Country very much wanted to save,” Trump said, confirming that he would speak to Xi on Friday and claiming that their relationship “remains a very strong one!!!”

China accuses US of “economic coercion”

However, China’s Ministry of Commerce spokesperson on Monday continued to slam US export controls and tariffs that are frustrating China. The spokesperson suggested that those trade restrictions “constitute the containment and suppression of China’s development of high-tech industries,” like advanced computer chips and artificial intelligence, NBC News reported.

“This is a typical act of unilateral bullying and economic coercion,” the spokesperson said, indicating it may even be viewed as a retaliation violating the temporary truce.

Rather than committing to de-escalate tensions, both countries have recently taken fresh jabs in the trade war. On Monday, China announced two probes into US semiconductors, as well as an antitrust ruling against Nvidia and “an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector,” NBC News reported.

Will TikTok go dark Wednesday? Trump claims deal with China avoids shutdown. Read More »

US may get its own glitchy version of TikTok if Trump’s deal works out

bytedance, Donald Trump, Policy, tariffs, tiktok, TikTok ban, us-china trade war / 9u50fv / July 7, 2025

“Even if Beijing would choose to overlook the recent tariff hikes and ratcheting up of US export controls on chip technologies, they still wouldn’t grant export licenses for the algorithms,” Capri said.

US version of TikTok may be buggy

Trump claims that he has found US buyers for TikTok, which Bloomberg reported is believed to be the same group behind the prior stalled deal, including Oracle, Blackstone Inc., and the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

If a sale is approved, a new US version of TikTok would roll out on September 5, The Information reported. All US-based TikTok users would be prompted to switch over to the new app by March 2026, at which point the original app would stop working, sources told The Information.

It’s unclear how different the US app will be from the global app, but The Information noted that transferring up to 170 million US users’ profiles to address US fears of China using the app to spy on or manipulate Americans may not be easy. Once source suggested the transfers “could pose technical issues in practice,” possibly negatively affecting the US experience of the app from the start.

That, in turn, could drive users to alternative apps if too much content is lost or the algorithm is viewed as less effective at recommending content.

For ByteDance—which The Information reported has been “finalizing the legal and financial details” of the deal with Trump’s chosen buyers—losing US users could risk disrupting the growth of TikTok Shop, which is the company’s major focus globally as the fastest-growing part of its business, the SCMP reported. Prioritizing TikTok Shop’s growth could motivate ByteDance to back down from refusing to sell the app, but ultimately, China would still need to sign off, Trump has said.

Although critics and Trump himself continue to doubt that China will agree to Trump’s deal, the preparation of a US app sets up one potential timeline for when big changes may be coming to TikTok.

For TikTok users—many of whom depend on TikTok for income—this fall could make or break their online businesses, depending on how the deal ultimately affects TikTok’s algorithm.

US may get its own glitchy version of TikTok if Trump’s deal works out Read More »

Meta, TikTok can’t toss wrongful death suit from mom of “subway surfing” teen

algorithm, bytedance, Meta, Policy, recommended content, Section 230, tiktok, wrongful death / DJ Henderson / June 30, 2025

Section 230 has so far failed to shield Meta and TikTok owner ByteDance from a lawsuit raised by a mother who alleged that her son’s wrongful death followed a flood of “subway surfing” videos platforms intentionally targeted to teens in New York.

In a decision Monday, New York State Supreme Court Judge Paul Goetz largely denied social media companies’ motions to dismiss claims they argued should be barred under Section 230 and the First Amendment. Goetz said that the mother, Norma Nazario, had adequately alleged that subway surfing content “was purposefully fed” to her son Zackery “because of his age” and “not because of any user inputs that indicated he was interested in seeing such content.”

Unlike other Section 230 cases in which platforms’ algorithms were determined to be content-neutral, Goetz wrote that in this case, “it is plausible that the social media defendants’ role exceeded that of neutral assistance in promoting content and constituted active identification of users who would be most impacted by the content.”

Platforms may be forced to demystify algorithms

Moving forward, Nazario will have a chance to seek discovery that could show exactly how Zackery came to interact with the subway surfing content. In her complaint, she did not ask for the removal of all subway surfing content but rather wants to see platforms held accountable for allegedly dangerous design choices that supposedly target unwitting teens.

“Social media defendants should not be permitted to actively target young users of its applications with dangerous ‘challenges’ before the user gives any indication that they are specifically interested in such content and without warning,” Nazario has argued.

And if she’s proven right, that means platforms won’t be forced to censor any content but must instead update algorithms to stop sending “dangerous” challenges to keep teens engaged at a time when they’re more likely to make reckless decisions, Goetz suggested.

Meta, TikTok can’t toss wrongful death suit from mom of “subway surfing” teen Read More »

Trump suggests he needs China to sign off on TikTok sale, delays deal again

bytedance, Donald Trump, national security, Policy, rare earths, semiconductors, tariffs, tiktok, TikTok ban, us-china trade war / 9u50fv / June 18, 2025

For many Americans, losing TikTok would be disruptive. TikTok has warned that US businesses could lose $1 billion in one month if TikTok shuts down. As these businesses wait in limbo for a resolution to the situation, it’s getting harder to take the alleged national security threat seriously, as clinching the deal appears to lack urgency.

On Wednesday, the White House continued to warn that Americans are not safe using TikTok, though, despite leaving Americans vulnerable for an extended period that could now stretch to eight months.

In a statement, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt only explained that “President Trump does not want TikTok to go dark” and would sign an executive order “to keep TikTok up and running” through mid-September. Leavitt confirmed that the Trump administration would focus on finishing the deal in this three-month period, “making sure the sale closes so that Americans can keep using TikTok with the assurance that their data is safe and secure,” Reuters reported.

US-China tensions continue, despite truce

Trump’s negotiations with China have been shaky, but a truce was reestablished last week that could potentially pave the way for a TikTok deal.

Initially, Trump had planned to use the TikTok deal as a bargaining chip, but the tit-for-tat retaliations between the US and China all spring reportedly left China hesitant to agree to any deal. Perhaps sensing the power shift in negotiations, Trump offered to reduce China’s highest tariffs to complete the deal in March. But by April, analysts opined that Trump was still “desperate” to close, while China saw no advantage in letting go of TikTok any time soon.

Despite the current truce, tensions between the US and China continue, as China has begun setting its own deadlines to maintain leverage in the trade war. According to The Wall Street Journal, China put a six-month limit “on the sales of rare earths to US carmakers and manufacturers, giving Beijing leverage if the trade conflict flares up again.”

Trump suggests he needs China to sign off on TikTok sale, delays deal again Read More »

Privacy-problematic DeepSeek pulled from app stores in South Korea

AI, bytedance, china, DeepSeek, deepthink, infosec, llm, privacy / Mike M. / February 18, 2025

In a media briefing held Monday, the South Korean Personal Information Protection Commission indicated that it had paused new downloads within the country of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek’s mobile app. The restriction took effect on Saturday and doesn’t affect South Korean users who already have the app installed on their devices. The DeepSeek service also remains accessible in South Korea via the web.

Per Reuters, PIPC explained that representatives from DeepSeek acknowledged the company had “partially neglected” some of its obligations under South Korea’s data protection laws, which provide South Koreans some of the strictest privacy protections globally.

PIPC investigation division director Nam Seok is quoted by the Associated Press as saying DeepSeek “lacked transparency about third-party data transfers and potentially collected excessive personal information.” DeepSeek reportedly has dispatched a representative to South Korea to work through any issues and bring the app into compliance.

It’s unclear how long the app will remain unavailable in South Korea, with PIPC saying only that the privacy issues it identified with the app might take “a considerable amount of time” to resolve.

Western infosec sources have also expressed dissatisfaction with aspects of DeepSeek’s security. Mobile security company NowSecure reported two weeks ago that the app sends information unencrypted to servers located in China and controlled by TikTok owner ByteDance; the week before that, another security company found an open, web-accessible database filled with DeepSeek customer chat history and other sensitive data.

Ars attempted to ask DeepSeek’s DeepThink (R1) model about the Tiananmen Square massacre or its favorite “Winnie the Pooh” movie, but the LLM continued to have no comment.

Privacy-problematic DeepSeek pulled from app stores in South Korea Read More »