Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Microsoft United States Politics

Microsoft in Talks To Buy TikTok, as Trump Weighs Curtailing App (nytimes.com) 49

Microsoft is in talks to acquire TikTok, the Chinese-owned video app, New York Times reported Friday, citing a person with knowledge of the discussions, as President Trump said on Friday that he was considering taking steps that would effectively ban the app from the United States. From a report: It's unclear how advanced the talks between Microsoft and TikTok are, but any deal could help alter TikTok's ownership, said the person with knowledge of the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese internet company that is valued at $100 billion. That has raised scrutiny of the app, with Trump administration officials saying that they have been concerned that TikTok poses a threat to national security.

The Trump administration has been weighing whether to order ByteDance to divest from American assets it acquired in 2017, which were later merged into TikTok. Bloomberg reported Friday that the president was poised to announce an order that would force ByteDance to sell TikTok's U.S. operations. The Trump administration has also been weighing other potential actions against the company, including adding ByteDance to a so-called "entity list," which prevents foreign companies from purchasing American products and services without a special license, according to people familiar with the matter.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Microsoft in Talks To Buy TikTok, as Trump Weighs Curtailing App

Comments Filter:
  • by Anonymous Coward
    Is Microsoft considered less evil than China or not?
    • Less evil. Also more likely to kill Tik Tok dead,
      • I thought so too. I guess it doesn't really matter whether trump bans it, or Microsoft buys it, one way or another, users are going to hop onto the next new thing.
    • The real question is, which one will infect the other more?

    • Microsoft has its faults but it's definitely a lesser evil compared to Facebook, Twitter, and so on.

      • Microsoft has its faults but it's definitely a lesser evil compared to Facebook, Twitter, and so on.

        Windows 10 is the most malicious piece of spyware ever conceived. Facebook only tracks you around the web, Windows can track all your computing activity, and the EULA gives them the right to do so.

        • While I agree with the general concept that windows 10 is horrible and god awful tracking (as I'm typing this from my linux pc). To my knowledge microsoft does not track me on my android phone, my linux PC... and going to most web pages. Facebook however is integrated to most webpages, so unless you are loaded to the brim with the right anti-tracking plugins etc...
          • Considering most people that use a desktop computer use Windows, it's a problem that MS knows everything single thing they do with their computer.

            Normal people that don't use facebook but still have a computer tend to still use MS windows.

            Plus Microsoft has so much blood on its hands from the 90s. Fuck Microsoft.

            • To be fair, MS in the early 2020s is much different than MS in the late 1990s

              Windows is largely a dead-end as a platform, the way going forward for end-user computing is web browsers, and at that point, it doesn't matter much what the underlying OS the browser's running on.

              I mean, it's not *that* out there to say that there may come a point where "Windows" is actually a Linux distro with the Windows API bolted on top.

    • by MobileTatsu-NJG ( 946591 ) on Friday July 31, 2020 @02:40PM (#60352677)

      Is Microsoft considered less evil than China or not?

      We'll find out when Microsoft embarrasses the 'President'.

    • Microsoft being evil is so 20 years ago.
    • by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Friday July 31, 2020 @03:38PM (#60353005) Journal

      Is Microsoft considered less evil than China or not?

      Microsoft is more evil than China as a people, but the Chinese government just cancelled an election, suppresses free speech, jails people for life for protesting, has concentration camps in Xinjiang, and is trying to destroy the culture of Tibet. The CCP is worse than Microsoft.

      • Do you also remember in college, all the hippie girls with the Free Tibet bumper stickers?

        How many do you suppose now have corporate jobs at companies who deal with Tencent or AliBaba, and have traded them for Fuck Tibet bumper stickers?

    • Bill Gates only owns 1.3% of Microsoft and no longer works there .. he's even stepped down from the board of Microsoft. Compare that to Vanguard Group (many people's retirement funds) which owns over 8% of Microsoft. Expect Social Security? Many of retirement funds including Social Security are heavily invested in our tech companies .. if they go bye bye, so does retirement.

    • Between the two of them, in 2020, I can only think of one that does all of the following:

      - Creates concentration camps for ethnic minorities
      - Institutes an ethnic cleansing campaign to make Lebensraum for its favored ethnicity at the expense of untermenchen
      - Maintains a policy of dredging up centuries old claims to land and uses them as excuses to justify military conflict, so as to obtain more lebensraum
      - Originates predatory loans for developing nations that end in land grabs and resource extraction
      - An o

  • by Anachronous Coward ( 6177134 ) on Friday July 31, 2020 @02:11PM (#60352465)
    I'm afraid to read the article.
  • by xack ( 5304745 ) on Friday July 31, 2020 @02:14PM (#60352483)
    I can see this as part of a trend to buy out Chinese apps. Will even parts of Huawei get bought out?
    • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      I can see the bit where the government of China orders all US corporations to sell the operations in China on a public auction market. They have thirty days to comply and they get what ever money they get from Chinese corporations willing to bid for them. Boy will that be messy for M$ and Google and EBay and Amazon and Wallmart. How many US corporations will be forced to sell the assets in China for cents on the dollar. Never forget in economic terms Mainland China has the whip hand when it comes to copyrig

  • that a multinational corporation with a history of abusing its market position wants to buy a spy app from an authoritarian dictatorship?
    • by hjf ( 703092 )

      Would you make this exact same comment if the article was about Google or Apple trying to buy TikTok?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        Yes, actually, because buying an espionage company is automatically suspicious as fuck.
      • Google and Apple are already in bed with the CCP though.
        • It reads like a snarky quip, but this is honestly a good and logical response. However, unless Microsoft is provably more innocent than them I don't think there's an argument that they are a responsible choice to encourage such a deal.

          One could however, suppose that MS is more likely to be a good choice given that the CCP is in the process of purging itself of Windows OS in favor of a CCP-made Linux. This would also officially put Redmond on the to-nuke list since the CCP wouldn't be nuking their OS vendo

  • And if that's the case, it will be an interesting conclusion to TikTok having been in the news so much.
  • I hope they don't, I don't think it will pay off at all. I don't see how TikTok is any different from Vine, which just faded away a few years ago. Because it's something mostly used by teens, it may go in or out of style quickly. For $1 billion dollars, Microsoft could probably spawn 100 alternatives to TikTok and just see what sticks. Hopefully they spend their money on something with more value.
  • after integrating it into Teams and totally ignoring their user base, someone will be able to buy up the scraps for a few million.

  • Sounds more like the Trump admin is testing how to shutdown social media platforms.

May the bluebird of happiness twiddle your bits.

Working...