111–120 of 151 posts
Are we supposed to believe that the algorithms that a bunch of Chinese blokes came up with for a viral video platform are so complex that the US Govt. wants to intervene and help Microsoft buy it?
The United States loses the moral high ground moving forward and Microsoft gets a blemished gem. The machinations of this deal are unsightly. Just because this is how the game is played in China doesn't mean we have to do it too.
“Nice rapidly-growing foreign service you have there. It would be a shame if we called it a ‘national security risk’ and made you sell it to us for pennies on the dime!”
for all you know they will end up overpaying
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you're downplaying the number of people who feel that way. You're also saying that their feelings are not genuine, and only forced upon them. All this does not bode well for world peace. Be careful of what you're wishing for. A democratic China may not be so different in terms of geopolitics as you would think (or they would be different, just not in the way you expect). Try reading what Kishore Mahbubani — ex-Sin…
with democracy and ability to speak your mind without goverment's persecution everyone is playing on the same field. i'd much rather take democratic china's disdain than dictator's china friendly overtures. you can work towards a long term solution of common understanding under democracy.
Unless the Chinese people overthrow their government, and succesfully install a democratic government, they do not deserve to gain wealth through business with the rest of the world, and do not deserve to live a good life. The chaos and suffering that such a process brings is not important. The unknown chance that a post-overthrow government is both democratic and competent, is also not important. The fact that the Chinese people's lives in the past 30 years have become tremendously more free and more prosperous, and that these are the best 30 years in the past 3000 years, is also not important.
In the words of Kishore Mahbubani: do you want to FEEL good, or DO good? Condemning China on a single ideological issue, while ignoring the complexity of the context as a whole, feels good because it aligns with your values, but doesn't do anybody anything good.
Actual good changes are achieved through more dialog, better mutual understanding, better relations and rational approaches.
Beside all the political issues, what is Microsoft actually supposedly buying here? The data centre, data and access to it? Because it does not seem to me that they are buying any of the developers, am I right? At least there is no talk about that. How well can you run a platform by buying its software without any of the people that run it, at least from my developer point of view that seems a very strange idea. Basi…
TikTok users. Microsoft is bidding to purchase Tiktok's user base. Data centers, even engineering talent, is fungible. They are replaceable and therefore have no special value worth haggling over. But attractive young people wanting to dump their lives into a video app for pennies? That is the real asset in this deal.
I do not expect much technical depth in an app such as TikTok, nevertheless you will need dozens (and more) of engineers to run it and how do you organize those to a previously unknown structure. In theory that is simple but anyone with who manages code for someone no longer in the company knows otherwise. And the engineers that wrote the code weren't native in english either ...
Wonder if the Chinese government will retaliate and ban US companies like Tesla or Apple from selling goods there unless they fork over ownership to Alibaba, haha.
They probably will retaliate on American entertainment/content, considering those are more replaceable.
Beside all the political issues, what is Microsoft actually supposedly buying here? The data centre, data and access to it? Because it does not seem to me that they are buying any of the developers, am I right? At least there is no talk about that. How well can you run a platform by buying its software without any of the people that run it, at least from my developer point of view that seems a very strange idea. Basi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a solution even to that. That's what the Microsoft sale is all about. That's why Bytedance proposed to sell ALL shares of their US branch. Replace the entire US branch staff with US employees. Vet every line of code. Don't send any data to China. This is the ultimate solution. And yet nobody seems to be interested in this solution. People are still cooking up new reasons to ban Tiktok. Or ignoring the existe…
That does not actually solve the problem. Yes, maybe I find it a little easier to trust Microsoft than Bytedance. But the problem is not who holds the data that I generate about myself. The problem is that I have zero (or very little) agency to view or manage this data. That lack of agency is important because this data will have a tangible impact on my life.
Privacy is a legit angle, but why focus on Tiktok alone? Talk about privacy law reforms so that Twitter and Facebook are also included.
Beside all the political issues, what is Microsoft actually supposedly buying here? The data centre, data and access to it? Because it does not seem to me that they are buying any of the developers, am I right? At least there is no talk about that. How well can you run a platform by buying its software without any of the people that run it, at least from my developer point of view that seems a very strange idea. Basi…
It’s surprising the UK isn’t part of the deal. I wonder if it’s another sign of the US’s foreign influence waning under Trump.