Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by dodobirdlord » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 4:07 AM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #319

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with speech we don't like, unless (as in this case) it's made at the direction of a foreign government. There's long-standing precedent for preventing that kind of thing.

> There's nothing wrong with speech we don't like, unless (as in this case) it's made at the direction of a foreign government. I mean, we don't ban China Daily. Also, and I'm going to have to check with someone who uses TikTok, but I don't think the Chinese government is giving orders to TikTok users about what to songs they're supposed to dance to on any given day.

> Also, and I'm going to have to check with someone who uses TikTok, but I don't think the Chinese government is giving orders to TikTok users about what to songs they're supposed to dance to on any given day.

They could, though. China is welcome to repeal those laws if they don't want the rest of the world to assume that they use them...

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

#372

Post by BbzzbB » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 4:11 AM UTC

britmob wrote: post #340

crystaln wrote: post #299

Is there any precedent for Microsoft operating a cutting edge consumer software product like TikTok? Welcome to Skype LinkedIn TikTok. We've make networking fun.

Mixer, most likely.

R.I.P.

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

#373

Post by NameDoesntExist » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 4:16 AM UTC

zanmat0 wrote: post #358

throwaway78359 wrote: post #236

Throwaway for obvious reasons. I cannot understand what executive thinks this is a good idea or that it makes any sense in the broader organizational structure of Microsoft. It's been so nice to see five years or so of relatively GOOD acquisitions. LinkedIn made sense: it's allowed for a legitimate Salesforce compete, especially when paired with Dynamics. GitHub was incredibly smart and it aligns well with the resurg…

What are the obvious reasons for a throwaway? I'm genuinely curious.

They work for Microsoft [0]

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22596382

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

#374

Post by justicezyx » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 4:17 AM UTC

jldugger wrote: post #359

justicezyx wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China is an authoritarian state and all companies are subject to secret control by the state, essentially branches of the military. Jumping from authoritarian state, to "all companies are subject to secrete control by the state", that is already a quantum leap. If you believe what Soviet Union's state controlled economy collapsed, because it's impossible for state to control that much of details of the economy, the…

> If you believe what Soviet Union's state controlled economy collapsed, because it's impossible for state to control that much of details of the economy, then you must be having a great faith in Mr. Xijinping being a literal Super human, who can control "all companies". China has discarded many of the Communist philosophies which held the USSR back. It is somewhat difficult to organize an economy when you intend to…

Please be remindful that the statement is that "all companies are branch of military"...

And to be precise, "People's Liberation Army owns and runs many businesses" this is almost certainly a misunderstanding of the organizing structure.

Mr Deng Xiaoping deliberately not disallowing military involving business activities [1], in part it's because the military is starved from support and resources, and they need some form of self-sustaining to maintain the basic infrastructure, especially ensure the continuation of the talent development relevant to high-end military capability.

That was banned in Jiang Zeming's rule [2]. In part, just like the purge done by Xi, was because military with its own finanical sources will become a plitical risk to the party head.

Today, there isn't any military owned business, officially. There are state-owned military equipment companies and research institutes. But their relationship with military is not too different from Locke-martin & US government & US military. (I mean, US system works better, right? Then CCP will happy to copy...)

Of course, there could be grey areas, and exceptions. But it should be common sense, here I repeat, military personnel cannot have financial support in their own control, that threatens the political leaders' authority.

If you can name one "active duty officers serving as executives", I'll be very surprised...

[1] http://congressionalresearch.com/98-197/document.php?study=c... [2] http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/981596.shtml [3] https://www.businessinsider.com/xi-tells-chinas-military-to-...

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

#375

Post by namelosw » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 4:35 AM UTC

jjcon wrote: post #335

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…

> would lose its last bit of moral high ground in China I mean it is no different than the EU requiring US companies to host data in EU data centers. China has banned so many US companies - why is it unfair to retaliate? The use of economic power shouldn’t only be acceptable when done by corporations. Governments with a backbone should use it too (like the EU has done when appropriate)

It is fair to retaliate. But it's a sort of whataboutism. The problem is the direction the competition is heading.

You see, China built the Great Fire Wall. A bizarre thing is more and more countries are considering to do the same seriously.

So what's next? There are also a lot of reports about the concentration camps. I don't know how accurate are those horrible reports, but you definitely don't want your country competing on building more concentration camps.

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

#376

Post by xnx » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 4:37 AM UTC

It appears as though very few Hacker News commenters have spent any time using Tiktok. It is the only enjoyable, enriching social media service I've ever used. Most everything many of us liked about the old/weird internet is present on Tiktok right now: almost no ads or commercial presense, personal content from real people (not hyper produced productions from influencers and pros), weird content, niche content, organically viral content, positive/encouraging comment sections. I've been exposed to such a huge diversity of things on Tiktok: people with physical disabilities, hilarious and creative videos from high schoolers, an elementary school kids frog journal, dance videos with single-digit views, large engine repair tips, home improvement tips, pet ducks, absurdist memes. You owe it to yourself to not dismiss Tiktok as a time-waster for idle teens. Those positive aspects of Tiktok are something we should be figuring out how to expand elsewhere.

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

#377

Post by whoisjuan » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 4:38 AM UTC

notatoad wrote: post #302

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…

>It would help address the spyware concern by moving it to a US company it might help for some people Personally, i'm a little bit concerned that microsoft just received a $10bn DOD contract, and now the US government is essentially forcing a sale of TikTok to Microsoft. I'm not convinced that the company running the hot new social network (as well as all our source code) owing a bunch of favours to the US govermnent…

IMHO anything with more than 400 million users is very hard to fuck up as a platform. You can fuck up the product in many ways but you will preserve the strong network effects.

Yahoo was also an incompetent operator with almost no solid business criteria or long term strategy. For 15 years or more Yahoo was simply a wannabe Google and never managed to find their business character.

I mean, it’s almost criminal to compare the performance of Microsoft vs Yahoo as operators. They are in different leagues.

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

#378

Post by ptx » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 4:42 AM UTC

xnx wrote: post #376

It appears as though very few Hacker News commenters have spent any time using Tiktok. It is the only enjoyable, enriching social media service I've ever used. Most everything many of us liked about the old/weird internet is present on Tiktok right now: almost no ads or commercial presense, personal content from real people (not hyper produced productions from influencers and pros), weird content, niche content, orga…

> almost no ads

It usually starts out that way with any centralized for-profit communications platform. They wouldn't want to spring the trap before luring you in.

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

#379

Post by monocasa » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 4:54 AM UTC

xnx wrote: post #376

It appears as though very few Hacker News commenters have spent any time using Tiktok. It is the only enjoyable, enriching social media service I've ever used. Most everything many of us liked about the old/weird internet is present on Tiktok right now: almost no ads or commercial presense, personal content from real people (not hyper produced productions from influencers and pros), weird content, niche content, orga…

Ads are coming either way the platform goes. I was getting ads on Facebook _from_ TikTok trying to get me to create ads on TikTok. A meta-ad.

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

#380

Post by Causality1 » Sat, Aug 01, 2020, 5:03 AM UTC

xnx wrote: post #376

It appears as though very few Hacker News commenters have spent any time using Tiktok. It is the only enjoyable, enriching social media service I've ever used. Most everything many of us liked about the old/weird internet is present on Tiktok right now: almost no ads or commercial presense, personal content from real people (not hyper produced productions from influencers and pros), weird content, niche content, orga…

But it doesn't make up for the downside, which is installing robust surveillance software on your phone that sends data to and takes orders from China and is subject to their arbitrary control of messaging. You know what else has a super amazing upside that still doesn't make up for the downside? Methamphetamine.