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Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

businessinsider.com

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Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#321

Post by grazhero99 »

I think this would probably one of the better outcomes for this situation, outside of somehow convincing every teenager in the world to stop using garbage spyware apps (good luck with that).

Microsoft and the US government are at least more of a "devil you know" than China I'd say. Obviously far from ideal, but cutting off the CCP's direct access to the personal data and impressionable minds of millions of young people seems a pressing matter to me.

I mean ultimately my hope is that this dumb fad app's relevance just passes in 1 or 2 years. But considering how we've seen similar such abusive, shallow apps have long term success, that may be overly wishful thinking on my part.

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#322

Post by justicezyx »

Nightshaxx wrote: post #261
fqye wrote: post #258

If the US forced ByteDance to sell Tiktok, the US would lose its last bit of moral high ground in China, the spirit of free market and rule by law. If you are worried about data leakage to China, you set rules and law and enforce them. That is what China is doing. They asked Apple and other cloud service provider to store data in China. The US could setup clear rules and regulations about where to put data of US user…

The accusations against China is that they do not follow the rules. Stealing IP is very illegal in the US but that didn't (allegedly) stop Waweii. So just saying "make more rules" is not a valid solution if the accusations are true. Byte dance already does store data in the US, but the only way to 100% prove they aren't sending data to China is to regularly audit ISP logs.

https://law.stanford.edu/2018/04/10/intellectual-property-ch...

Quote: Eventually what happened was that, as China’s domestic copyright industries found themselves competing with cheap knock-offs of foreign goods, they pressed the Chinese government to fortify the IP enforcement process on its own. (To put this in perspective, this is also what happened a century earlier in the US, which until 1890 failed to protect foreign works, and then waited yet another century before joining the major international copyright treaty.)

Let's just not pretend that IP theft was not prosecuted, and IP was not protected in China. That's simply not possible in such a fast-growing economy, which we can all agree that can only be sustained through innovation.

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#323

Post by rabuse »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #279
slipheen wrote: post #64

I think it's a clever play. It would help address the spyware concern by moving it to a US company, and give them a better foothold in Social Networking than Linked-in provides. I'd have a few concerns about if MS can keep it growing- For one, I worry that Microsoft may mismanage it, similar to how they treated Skype. We saw Yahoo buy many reasonable smaller social networks (Flickr, Delicious, Tumblr) and was never a…

Difference is yahoo had arguably one of the worst CEOs ever: Marissa Mayer where as Microsoft has a wizard: Satya Nadella.

Nobody kills a product like Yahoo. I've always said that everything they acquire dies, and then they sell it for near nothing.

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#324

Post by mullingitover »

khuey wrote: post #318
mullingitover wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if TikTok was openly promoting socialism - so what? The constitution doesn't split hairs about free speech. We're free to use speech to promote the political philosophy of our choosing in this country. The antidote to 'bad' speech, as per the constitution, is more speech, not to outlaw the speech you don't like.

The government of China doesn't have a First Amendment right to free speech in the United States.

It's a huge relief that ByteDance is not the government of China. What level of foreign ownership makes a company purely foreign controlled? If funds controlled by Chinese nationals bought stakes in Facebook/Twitter/Alphabet, wouldn't that put them in the same category? What portion of ByteDance would have to be owned by non-Chinese people before it would be in the clear?

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#325

Post by colordrops »

ferest wrote: post #134
colordrops wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy would only make sense if black people were a foreign economic and nuclear powerhouse that have been blocking US apps with even more prejudice. Tit for tat restrictions are standard practice with international trade and not evidence of racism.

fwiw china didn't block US apps, it's china blocks apps decide not to follow the chinese law, regardless if it's US app or from any other country. If tiktok has child porn or some other illegal stuff, i'm totally fine with blocking it. But in this case, the only evidence so far is, it's a chinese app, not because it's breaking any law.

That is absolutely not true. China has blocked and shut down plenty of services that are following the law simply for protectionist or narrative control reasons. When twitter clones started popping up in China they shut down 11 services and chose a single one to survive, that being Weibo.

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#326

Post by colordrops »

russli1993 wrote: post #222
colordrops wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy would only make sense if black people were a foreign economic and nuclear powerhouse that have been blocking US apps with even more prejudice. Tit for tat restrictions are standard practice with international trade and not evidence of racism.

It would be equivalent if Tiktok is banned in the US and only in the US. But this forced sale of Tiktok would definitely include TikTok's non US business as well. The intention from the U.S. government is to not allow Chinese nationals to own any impactful business or technology not only in the US but internationally. Huawei's case was 5G, tiktok and bytedance is social media. Bytedance is incorporated in the Cayman…

It doesn't necessarily have to be the case. Uber was sold off in china without selling off operations elsewhere.

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#327

Post by colordrops »

sanxiyn wrote: post #144
colordrops wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy would only make sense if black people were a foreign economic and nuclear powerhouse that have been blocking US apps with even more prejudice. Tit for tat restrictions are standard practice with international trade and not evidence of racism.

China does not block US apps.

That is one of the most ignorant things I have ever read on HN. Pretty much everything out out by Facebook, Google, and Twitter does not work in china. It's common knowledge.

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#328

Post by mullingitover »

dtech wrote: post #196
cheez wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the trend here is they left them alone...

Github seems to have gotten some fire in their ass in the last 1-2 years. Hard to say whether that is because of Microsoft or competition of Gitlab, or both.

I comparison shopped Gitlab vs Github a few years back, and it was a joke: Gitlab killed Github on features and price. They still do. I'm not overly attached to either platform, but clearly Github has ridden on their laurels hard for a long time and Gitlab has not.

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#329

Post by throw987542 »

ericmay wrote: post #259
yorwba wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see the WTO being involved when China forces majority-owned joint ventures Did you check? https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds549_e...

I don’t care what they do. I know China bans Facebook, google, etc. and then requires >50% ventures

Did you check? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wholly_foreign-owned_enterpris...

Re: Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

#330

Post by cheez »

rubber_duck wrote: post #311
cheez wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you can still talk about them as separate is what I mean. It isn't some MS brand Xamarin. It's still Xamarin. Github is still Github. Of course Microsoft played a part in the progress. Try to be more generous with your nitpicking.

What ? Xamarin is defacto Microsoft Xamarin, it's even integrated in to their domain and Xamarin Studio got rebranded to Visual Studio Mac. Github is a separate issue, they can't rebrand without huge value loss.

I see the nitpicking continues.

Is the Xamarin brand still strong?

Yes.

Nothing else is important. It is clearly a separate brand which is OBVIOUSLY going to be integrated (otherwise why buy it?)

But it remains a differentiable entity with the power of Microsoft behind it.

Continue nitpicking.

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