As TikTok prepares for its legal battle against the United States Justice Department, its source code is coming under scrutiny. According to a report in Reuters, the app is following parent company ByteDance‘s orders by splitting its code into two distinct bases: One for TikTok users in the United States, and another for the rest of the world.
The report cites multiple anonymous sources, who told Reuters that efforts to create a copy version of TikTok’s code have been in the works since “last year.” That’s when ByteDance allegedly asked engineers to start separating TikTok’s code base by doing “dirty work” that could take over a year to complete.
According to Reuters, the goal of this project is to create a version of TikTok’s source code that is not connected to any Chinese users and doesn’t share any of the systems used by TikTok’s Chinese counterpart Douyin. The addictive recommendation algorithm that has become TikTok’s signature tech was initially developed in China and customized for regions like the U.S.
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TikTok flatly denied the validity of the Reuters report. In a statement published on TikTok’s policy account on X, the app described the article as “misleading and factually inaccurate.” TikTok continues to claim that a divestiture from ByteDance, which is the aim of the new U.S. law PAFFAA, is “simply not possible.”
The Reuters story published today is misleading and factually inaccurate. As we said in our court filing, the ‘qualified divestiture’ demanded by the Act to allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States is simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not…
— TikTok Policy (@TikTokPolicy) May 30, 2024
Reuters quickly responded to TikTok’s statement. “We stand by our reporting,” said a company spokesperson.
If the “divest-or-ban” law holds up in court, TikTok would have to make the impossible possible (i.e. complete the divestable code base) to continue operating in the U.S. But if the app is in fact working on that project, it’s not necessarily preparing to capitulate to Congressional demands. The code-copying initiative could be part of TikTok’s plan to prove that Project Texas, its original proposal for U.S. government oversight, is viable.
As TikTok’s lawsuit against the U.S. has taken shape, Project Texas has emerged as a potential focal point for the app’s legal arguments. TikTok is expected to characterize the proposal — which would have installed a U.S.-based team as the shepherd of the app’s American user data — as a logical plan that was unfairly ignored by the U.S. government.
Perhaps, when the dust of this legal fight settles, TikTok will use its split code base to initiate Project Texas after all. In that situation, the work currently being doing by ByteDance and TikTok engineers would speed up the timeline.
