For more than six years, Amazon Web Services, the largest cloud computing company in the world, has provided technical support to provide Tiktok videos with tens of millions of Americans.
But during the weekend, Amazon faced a dilemma. A new law was entering into force by banning Tiktok, owned by the Chinese company Bytedance, in the United States. Technological companies have been prohibited distribution and updating or would have to face financial penalties. At the same time, the president elected Donald J. Trump was saying to the technological companies that had planned to pause the application of the law with an executive order.
A few hours before the ban entered into force, Amazon seemed to respect the law, according to a revision of the New York Times of the way TikTok’s web traffic is managed. Instead, Akamai Technologies, a company based in Massachusetts who was already helping to provide Tiktok videos to phones, has taken on greater technical support.
The change, which was collected by the digital forensic conducted by the Times, was one of the small handlersieghi behind the scenes that showed how the technological companies diverged to their approach to the ban on Tiktok.
Apple and Google have also chosen to follow the law. They quickly removed Tiktok and other bytes owned apps from their app stores. But Oracle, another giant of technology, was still elaborating and serving Tiktok’s user data. Even Akamai and quickly, that the speed processing times for Tiktok’s videos were still doing it.
The schism highlights the dilemma that Tiktok’s prohibition forced to the main American technological companies: risks to alienate a mercurial president who made his support to Tiktok an extremely public part of his inaugural politician or risk breaking the federal law and united to billions of dollars in sanctions. Several legal experts have said that it is not clear whether the executive order of Trump protects companies from the monetary sanctions of the law or from the potential legal causes.
“On the one hand, you have this enormous theoretical responsibility up to $ 850 billion and on the other side, you have the potential benefits of respecting Trump’s wishes and being in his good graces,” said Neil Suri, Capstone analyst, to society of political research.
Technological companies have made a different assessment of this risk. Apple did not believe that the executive order of Mr. Trump would have been sufficient to climb over their responsibility to follow the law, according to two people who spoke with the representatives of Apple of his plans but had no permission to speak publicly. Google made a similar decision, said one of these people, who also spoke to its representatives and a person who is familiar with the company’s thoughts.
Oracle and others were hesitant to violate the law under the Biden administration, two people said in their work during the weekend that they did not permit to speak publicly – a key reason why the app stopped working for half Day during the weekend, when the ban entered into force.
But they believed that the promise of an executive order of Mr. Trump brought a new power, pushing them to help the app restart the operations in the United States, the people said.
Amazon, Fastly and Tiktok did not respond to requests for comment. Google, Apple, Oracle and Akamai refused to comment.
The different answers seem to be guided by money, politics and fear.
Apple and Google have undergone intense control in the weeks that precede the ban on Tiktok. They control the software that feeds millions of American smartphones.
They also have a financial interest in the app, as they profit from the use of Tiktok of their payment services in-app. Last year, Apple gained $ 354 million commissions from Tiktok, while Google collected $ 63 million, according to Appfigures, a market research company focused on the app sector. This has been mainly through digital coins on Tiktok that users can buy and give to the creators who like them, said the company.
But the removal of the app would be consistent with the positions that Apple and Google had assumed in the past, all over the world, to follow the laws of the countries in which they operate.
And it was likely that Tiktok could survive for several months without their support. Over the years, Tiktok has moved much of the function of the app to the servers, mainly managed by Oracle, so that it is less based on smartphone software, said Ariel Michaeli, founder of Appfigures. He said he also updated the app in the previous days the ban, offering the latest version as possible.
Oracle and Akamai both have told investors who are losing significant sales and profits if they stop hosting and distributing Tiktok content.
Critical roles also play in ensuring that the Tiktok app is operational. If they stopped working with Tiktok, the app would not work and would follow a protest. Much of the internet exploded on Saturday and Sunday when Tiktok became briefly dark.
Oracle also has an extraordinarily narrow relationship with Mr. Trump and Tiktok. Larry Ellison, founder and Chief Technology Officer of the company, joined Trump for an announcement on Tuesday about a new artificial intelligence initiative from $ 100 billion. At the event, Mr. Trump said that Elon Musk or Oracle could buy Tiktok and underlined his “right to make an agreement”.
Oracle also collaborates with Tiktok to archive sensitive American users and has been in negotiations with Tiktok to help review the company’s video recommendations in the United States as part of a wider security plan.
The role of Amazon was small but important. He had hosted a critical figure, called service record record, which directs hundreds of millions of web browser and smartphone apps to Tiktok servers.
But the consequences of breaking the law, which was approved with a broad bipartisan support to the congress and unanimously confirmed by the Supreme Court, could be painful. Oracle and other companies could open up to new responsibilities based on the executive order, the legal experts say. Trump could change his mind or selectively apply the law against companies that fall from favor, and a future administration could subsequently pursue financial penalties pursuant to the temporal sequence of the law, they say.
Senator Tom Cotton, ARKANSAS Republican and President of the Senate Intelligence Committee, made calls to some important technological companies in the last week to say that they had to respect the law. He said on X that they could face “hundreds of billions of dollars of ruinous responsibilities pursuant to the law”, not only by the federal government, but even if the lawyers of the state general moved to have it respected or if the shareholders had sued the decision of violation.
Senator John Thune, a South Dakota republican and leader of the majority, said this week that “the law is the law” and “in the end it will have to be followed”.
A group of Tiktok users or social media companies such as Meta or Snap could also bring due to the causes that challenge the executive order. Users could argue that the United States government was inadequately protecting their data, unable to enforce the statute, wrote Capstone analysts, stating that it was the most likely type of emerging.
“Oracle is claiming that the probability that they are considered responsible is quite minimal,” said Suri di Capstone. “Obviously, Apple and Google did not do that calculation. It is a question that saw the risk of risk differently.”
David McCabe AND Nico Grant Contributed relationships.