TikTok’s immediate future may rest in the hands of a tech company that has largely avoided the spotlight: Oracle. The company is one of the app’s leading server providers, managing the data centers where billions of 40-second videos are stored.
“It could become a digital roadblock that prevents people from getting access to the content, if they make the decision to shut it down, which is uncertain,” said Bob O’Donnell, founder of TECHnalysis Research, a market research firm.
An Oracle spokesman didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment. The company, which has close ties to the incoming Trump administration, has said in the past that its sales and profits would be hurt by a TikTok ban.
Mr. O’Donnell said there were a few ways the process could work. First, he suggested that TikTok could issue a software update this weekend that would prevent the app from sending traffic to Oracle’s servers. If that doesn’t happen, then Oracle may need to block traffic from the app, so that TikTok videos couldn’t be retrieved from its data centers.
Some of that process is handled by Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud computing business, and Akamai Technologies, a content delivery company. Amazon and Akamai help distribute TikTok content, alongside Oracle. Under the law, they also have to stop providing services to TikTok.
“My guess is that they may have to do a little of both, where Oracle has to provide essentially a 404 where it says, ‘Website not found,’” Mr. O’Donnell said.
Akamai declined to comment. Amazon didn’t immediately provide comment.
Oracle is also facing pressure in Washington to make sure that people who have created TikTok videos can download them and keep them, he said. From a technical perspective, Mr. O’Donnell continued, it means that Oracle would have to create guardrails, allowing people to log in to their personal account and see their own videos but preventing them from viewing other people’s videos.
“Conceptually, this is relatively straightforward,” he said.
There are a lot of variables that could change the direction Oracle goes. The Biden administration has said that it won’t enforce the act, so the company could decide not to take action on Sunday, Mr. O’Donnell said. And the Trump administration has raised the possibility of exercising a clause in the law that would keep the app running for at least 90 days.
“We’re entering the wild wild West,” Mr. O’Donnell said. “No one has any idea what will happen when Trump’s presidency starts.”
