
Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations - sandGorgon
https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-tiktok-donald-trump-bytedance-2020-7
======
slipheen
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 able to make it work. Microsoft has seemed to
get better at acquisions lately though, so they may be able to pull it off.

The other concern is that youth-based social networks tend to have a short
half-life; Snap isn't exactly taking over the world anymore.

But personally, I absolutely think it'd be worth the gamble. The price is
relatively low (just over 1 quarter of revenue), and if they can keep it going
it's a good hedge against FB, if nothing else.

~~~
notatoad
>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 is really any better than it being subject to the Chinese
government.

~~~
torbital
A company occasionally working together with the US government is very
different than China's state-run companies.

~~~
notatoad
you're right. for me personally, i think it's much worse.

the odds that chinese goverment data collection ever affects me is minimal. as
a canadian citizen who sometimes visits the US and routinely uses services
provided by american companies, the odds that US government data collection
affects me in some way is pretty high.

~~~
smnrchrds
Indeed the US data collection can have a much deeper and more immediate
negative effect on Canadians' lives.

[https://globalnews.ca/news/4461315/will-your-cannabis-
credit...](https://globalnews.ca/news/4461315/will-your-cannabis-credit-card-
purchases-be-visible-to-u-s-border-officials-some-might-some-wont/)

------
Lammy
> Gasparino also reported the White House is "deeply concerned" about
> Microsoft's potential purchase and whether any Chinese investors would
> retain a stake in TikTok's US operations, citing unnamed sources.

And there's the lede. Consider this "story in two headlines" from an earlier
high-profile Microsoft acquisition:

"NSA offering 'billions' for Skype eavesdrop solution"
[https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_f...](https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_for_skype_pwnage/)

"Microsoft Buys Skype for $8.5 Billion. Why, Exactly?"
[https://www.wired.com/2011/05/microsoft-buys-
skype-2/](https://www.wired.com/2011/05/microsoft-buys-skype-2/)

~~~
classified
That's what concerns me. Will that acquisition make MS an appendage of the
Chinese government? Will that create conflicts of interest with serving the
NSA?

~~~
KingMachiavelli
Isn't it just as likely that this is a backhand deal by the NSA to limit
Chinese easedropping? I can't really image any other reason for Microsoft at
the hight of it's profitability to want to enter such a competative and fickle
social media market.

------
throwaway78359
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 resurgent dev tools division and the cloud. Even Beam
(Mixer), which was an utter failure from an execution standpoint, made sense
as a vertical integration play with Xbox. It failed, but the idea behind it
was solid. The OpenAI investment and other AI initiatives have all made tons
of sense. Buying Xamarin was brilliant.

But this? What about Microsoft has any of the same DNA as TikTok?

Insanity. I really, really hope this is just a bad joke and us being used by
TikTok to juice offers from other people.

~~~
jychang
I actually think it’s a good play, the same way buying Minecraft was a good
idea.

You’re talking about a company that made Halo and Minecraft the face of its
consumer gaming brand, calls their AI assistant “Cortana”, and their internal
windows builds “redstone”.

Tiktok doesn’t make sense if you think of Microsoft as “not a social media
company”, but it’s a part of a push to engage the GenZ audience that started
with the Minecraft acquisition.

I’m old enough to remember reading jokes on slashdot on wintel, but for the
younger GenZ audience, that’s not what Microsoft is known for. The brand value
isn’t in the enterprise stuff HN looks at, but in their consumer facing side.

Does microsoft execute well on their consumer side? Results seems mixed, with
Xbox doing ok and Mixer crashing and burning. We’ll see how this plays out.

~~~
throwaway78359
I have absolutely zero faith in our ability to execute on the consumer side
with this type of product. We couldn’t even make an also-ran Twitch
competitor, despite literally owning one of the major consoles and being the
platform for 99.99% of all PC games.

Minecraft was a good acquisition. Xbox, by and large, has made good
acquisitions. But the rumor isn’t Xbox is buying TikTok, it’s Microsoft.

I would argue that with the exception of Xbox, Microsoft doesn’t have a strong
consumer play and I would further argue it doesn’t need it. The re-emphasis on
developer tools (GitHub, WSL2, Windows Terminal, Visual Studio Code) and
productivity (Office 365 and M365, Power Platform) has been a boon for the
business. Pure consumer pursuits like Cortana or Windows Phone or Groove Music
have not worked.

We’re not a company that has social in our DNA. GitHub and LinkedIn are
acquisitions that are run with various degrees of autonomy, but even as
independent entities, neither was ever social the way Twitter or Facebook are.

When you talk about brand value for Gen Z, I understand what you’re saying,
but I fully disagree chasing that potential value has legs. How many times has
Microsoft tried to be “cool” over the last 45 years and how many times has it
failed at it? Microsoft is at its most successful when it stops trying to
chase trends and be cool and just focuses on the stuff it is good at.

~~~
wendyshu
Do companies have a fixed DNA that acquisitions can't change or can companies
use acquisitions to evolve into something different?

------
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.

~~~
ponker
Also of all the big tech companies Microsoft is probably the worst at
psychological warfare to hack into people’s brains and change their behaviors.
As annoying as Microsoft Office is, it’s not trying to manipulate your
political beliefs or get you to buy some shoes you don’t need.

~~~
grazhero99
Well, I can think of at least a couple examples where Microsoft or a
subsidiary _tries_ to do stuff like that. The big difference I think is that
they almost always fail at it, due to how out of touch the higher ups are with
how people actually think. Everyone pretty much knows that Microsoft is not,
nor will they ever be, your friend.

------
zxcvbn4038
I always suspected that the US government had Microsoft buy Skype so they
could centralize it under US authority and monitor the communications. I have
a feeling that TikTok is the same scenario - instead of worrying about TikTok
spying on Americans, the US will have Microsoft buy it and they it'll move the
servers to the US and use it to spy on the Chinese. Google and Facebook will
never get broken up as long as Uncle Sam gets access to everyone's
communications.

~~~
chrisjc
> and use it to spy on the Chinese

How? Are you suggesting that Douyin will be included in the purchase?

~~~
gastlygem
Yeah the international version of TikTok is already restricted here in China.
Last time I tried to use it with VPN but it didn't work.

------
fqye
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 users and if it is allowed to send
the data to third country like China and then enforce them.

And China asked companies to set up jv in some sectors before they entered
China market. They didn't do it after they were already here. Microsoft
destroyed China's local word and spreadsheet editor software developers and
China didn't ask MS to sell its China local business.

This act is pure bullying and imperialism. After that happens, the US wouldn't
be able to command any support from Chinese people when it accuses CCP of
anything.

~~~
crystaln
You obviously don't have much experience with China. China is an authoritarian
state and all companies are subject to secret control by the state,
essentially branches of the military. There is no legal recourse or protection
from such intervention. The government can mandate spy code be inserted and
any data they want.

You're well intended here, but ignorant of how China operates. There is
literally no way to enforce what you suggest.

~~~
graton
The person you are replying to is Chinese and lives in China. Or at least
their post history says so.

~~~
enaaem
Isn't hackernews blocked in China?

------
moreorless
Not a single person seem to think that it is odd that we can simply order a
foreign company to sell their business to an American company.

~~~
ericmay
Well, probably because that's not what is happening.

The US has the right to ban companies from the country (as do other
countries). What the US is saying is that the parent company (Bytedance) bust
divest Tik Tok or they'll lose access to the US market. Microsoft is
interested in it, but it could be a different company buying it. This is
different than "you must sell this company to this other company" because the
US can't force a foreign entity to do that (as long as that foreign government
doesn't also cooperate due to politics of soft power reasons). In the case of
China, Bytedance can absolutely refuse to sell Tik Tok, it'll just get banned
from operating in the United States. Surely they'd rather take a few billion
dollars instead, which is why they are going to sell it.

Actions like this or ones that are similar in spirit happen quite often. And
naturally if you look at China, well, frankly, they are getting a taste of
their own medicine in some sense.

~~~
glglwty
Is there any precedence where the executive branch just ban a foreign company
without citing the violation of law and going through court or WTO, in the
last century?

~~~
ericmay
Yep ->

"That order marked the sixth time a U.S. president has either blocked a deal
or ordered a corporate selloff since Congress authorized the power to
intervene in 1988."

WSJ - [https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-to-sign-order-
demanding-c...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-to-sign-order-demanding-
chinas-bytedance-to-divest-tiktok-11596219920?mod=hp_lead_pos1)

I don't know the details of the others, but one that comes to mind (and maybe
is mentioned in the article?) is the blocked acquisition of Qualcomm by
Broadcom.

-edit-

The circumstances around some of these may not be exactly the same, but the
derivation of power comes from the same source.

Also who cares about the WTO? I don't see the WTO being involved when China
forces majority-owned joint ventures or outright bans US companies from
operating there. Why would a court be involved either? Bytedance is welcome to
sue, I suppose, but Trump (in this case) has the power to issue this order. I
guess if we don't like that since it's being used now, we should have Congress
vote to take that power away from the current and future presidents.

I'm in favor of this move overall. Besides the toxicity of social networking
in general, I just don't see a point in letting Chinese technology companies
operate in the US unless it's strictly under favorable terms for us. If _they
don 't like it_, then I guess maybe they should let US companies operate
freely in their country. This will increasingly end up happening and I say
good. China will grow tech companies, and the US will force them to divest or
not operate in the US once there is significant money at stake until China
plays fair. If they don't want to, well, that's just no big deal. We're doing
just fine.

~~~
yorwba
> 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...](https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds549_e.htm)

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

~~~
throw987542
Did you check? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wholly_foreign-
owned_enterpris...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wholly_foreign-
owned_enterprise)

~~~
ericmay
Yes. Notice that there are restricted enterprises?

It also doesn’t have anything to do with the banning of US companies.

------
mullingitover
I never really understood the panic over TikTok. Is the fear about security,
or is the fear that China might actually have successful social media product
in the US?

~~~
jtmarmon
Speaking personally, here's why TikTok concerns me: TikTok is a Chinese
business, and China has shown no limit to how much it will meddle in the
affairs of and even take control of Chinese businesses for the furthering of
the Chinese state's agenda.

Simultaneously, TikTok has captured the daily attention spans of millions of
Americans, many of them especially young and impressionable. They've captured
their attention in the form of a black box algorithm that promotes content in
whichever way TikTok deems most appropriate.

These two facts mean that the Chinese government now has direct access to the
brains of millions of young Americans, with zero oversight. Imagine China
subtly promoting videos to create outrage and civil unrest in the US, or to
feed anti-US propaganda to germinate terrorist groups in the US. These might
sound like far flung possibilities, but I think it's hard to say what a
country that views the US as its enemy (politically, economically,
philosophically) might do with that kind of power, and I don't think we can
wait to find out.

~~~
thrownaway954
"Imagine China subtly promoting videos to create outrage and civil unrest in
the US, or to feed anti-US propaganda to germinate terrorist groups in the
US."

our president is doing a fine job of that now with his twitter account.

~~~
altaria
Or, you know, our mainstream media exclusively broadcasting videos without
contextualization of white police officers killing black men to the country
and ignoring all other racial configurations of violence in order to stoke
racial tension.

------
mensetmanusman
Hopefully it will be rebranded MikMok or ZuneZok.

This seems like a dumb move, why would MS want to get tied up in the horrors
of social media when they have such a profitable empire.

They couldn’t possibly tie in MicMok to Office 365 and have anything good come
from it.

~~~
hyperdimension
"Microsoft (R) Passport Live TikTok.NET 2020 Datacenter Edition, part of the
Windows Live Social Dynamics suite"

~~~
encom
This reminds me of this old classic.

Microsoft Re-Designs the iPod Packaging
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k)

------
xnx
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.

~~~
kenhwang
On the other hand, Tiktok is the only social media platform I absolutely can't
stand. Low quality content, repeated jokes, people desperate for attention,
impersonal, memes, and all of it video so there's an unavoidable fixed time
cost.

With so much good high content available on the internet and how little time
people have, it saddens me that so much time is spent on the low quality
noise.

~~~
johnchristopher
There's no fixed time cost, every video can be skipped (swiped) within the
first milliseconds. I agree repeated jokes can be boring but it's really easy
to skip. I also don't like videos that pick the influencer style "Hi everyone,
so today I was in the kitchen and then you'll never believe what happened come
on I have to show you, here's the top counter...". Next. As soon as I hear
those kind of intro I skip. On Tiktok I expect the video to show me the
content directly (a skateboarder's tiktok would jump straight to the trick, no
intro). Yes, there's the impersonal challenge culture where people repeat the
same thing... so what, some of them are funny/interesting. It's up to you to
skip. After a while I'd say my feed has maybe 5% of junk. And easily
skippable.

> With so much good high content available on the internet and how little time
> people have, it saddens me that so much time is spent on the low quality
> noise.

No, that's unfair, you are saying all of tiktok content is low quality noise,
which is wrong

~~~
kenhwang
> No, that's unfair, you are saying all of tiktok content is low quality
> noise, which is wrong

In the board world of "video content", yes it is. It might be better than
FB/Instagram/Twitter videos, but those and Tiktok pale in comparison to, say,
HBO. Tiktok is gifs with sound filmed on a cell phone with a refreshing take
on recommendations optimized for stickiness. It's the McDonalds of video
content; maybe better than the niche it competes in, but its still garbage in
a very convenient package. As far as the videos are concerned, they're very
low quality compared to what the medium is capable of.

~~~
johnchristopher
And HBO (which just repackages books into a format lazy people can digest and
turn their brains off to) pales in comparison to the free MITx online video
courses.

That's pseudo-intellectual arrogance.

Even some PhD laugh about stupid memes.

Also: facebook/insta/tw is mainly about re sharing, not producing.

~~~
rumanator
> That's pseudo-intellectual arrogance.

You're out of line here. It is what it is, and just pointing out that stuff
made with cheap passive fast mass consumption in mind is not arrogance or
pseudo-intellectual. Complaining that bubblegum is not nutritional as a good
meal at a nice restaurant is not pseudo-intellectual arrogance. You may argue
that they have different usecases in mind but that's not an intellectual
argument, nor an arrogant statement. Your attempts to resort to name-calling
and ad-hominem attacks also don't help your case or even your ability to
support your accusation.

~~~
johnchristopher
> Complaining that bubblegum is not nutritional as a good meal at a nice
> restaurant is not pseudo-intellectual arrogance.

Expecting bubble-gum at a good meal restaurant is a better analogy of what
that poster said and implied (`As far as the videos are concerned, they're
very low quality compared to what the medium is capable of.` if videos is the
food and restaurant is the medium then it follows you don't go to a MacDonald
and expect a $400 meal). No one is expecting TV shows or HBO content on tiktok
and no one is expecting nutritional content from bubble-gum.

> Your attempts to resort to name-calling and ad-hominem attacks also don't
> help your case or even your ability to support your accusation.

Hey, I am not the one comparing apple to oranges and reducing tiktok content
to MacDonald food in order to make the point that HBO is better and thus
tiktok is garbage.

He doesn't like MacDonald ? Good for him. But this sounds just like the "stop
liking things I don't like" meme.

> It is what it is, and just pointing out that stuff made with cheap passive
> fast mass consumption in mind is not arrogance or pseudo-intellectual.

But reducing tiktok to that is. (quote `Tiktok is gifs with sound filmed on a
cell phone` which is technically wrong and intellectually dishonest since it
conveniently ignores what tiktok content is).

But I see what you did here. You could have written it like “Everyone can now
unlock the power of its smartphones to easily produce and share some kind of
content to audiences that appreciate it, thus realizing one of the web2.0 era
objectives of user generated content".

But no, you used term like "stuff" and "cheap" (go tell that to some teens and
people that put hours into their 10 seconds video that the whole thing is
cheap).

I get it, tiktok is beneath you and you don't like it. Assume it. But don't go
around trying to justify it by comparing it to something it's not and that you
happen to like better and expect no backlash if that's all the critic you can
make.

> Your attempts to resort to name-calling and ad-hominem attacks also don't
> help your case or even your ability to support your accusation.

Except I didn't. Name-calling would have been "you are an arrogant pseudo
intellectual". I clearly stated his claims were pseudo-intellectual arrogance,
which is about a statement not the person.

------
uses
I wonder what the ownership transfer of a multi-billion dollar app looks like?

Like, what emails, button clicks, phone calls, etc, is involved in changing
the ownership of the iOS app from one party to another? Presumably it's a
different process from like, a toy app with zero downloads?

~~~
sanxiyn
Mechanically speaking, App Store has App Transfer functionality. Here is
Apple's documentation on it: [https://help.apple.com/app-store-
connect/#/deved688524f](https://help.apple.com/app-store-
connect/#/deved688524f)

------
crystaln
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.

~~~
britmob
Mixer, most likely.

~~~
BbzzbB
R.I.P.

------
km3r
How does an international app separate its operations enough to have a full
distinct US operation? Will they be able to see post from someone in Canada?
in China? Will China be able to see post from US users? Seems like something
that needs to be all or nothing.

~~~
bigpumpkin
You make another Douyin, but for the US only, call it Musicaly, with US data
sovereignty and censorship. Creators from outside the US can make an account
on it and reach American audiences. But Americans can no longer use the
international version of Tiktok.

~~~
bagacrap
but what happens to past data

------
duaoebg
The one thing I liked about MS was that it didn’t have a successful social
media asset. This allowed it to stay generally apolitical and out of the fray.

This will be the beginning of the end of MS. (As opposed to the middle of the
end of a very drawn out decline.)

I’m sure they see it as another Skype. The US govt subsidizing an acquisition
to get access to data.

TikTok optimizes hard for popularity which involves many unpleasant choices in
their algorithm. MS will feel compelled to ‘fix’ this both for a perceived
social good but also for the benefit of the US government who is no doubt
subsidizing this.

MS will become a target for lobbying by interest groups and the US government
to a degree it has never dealt with and I don’t think MS can handle it. This
is not the same as criticism for being a monopoly or making crappy software.

The best case scenario will be they screw with the algorithm early enough and
bad enough that people leave en mass.

These are the same people who couldn’t leave Skype alone.

------
nashashmi
When a disciplined company like Microsoft buys a creative company like tiktok,
the best Microsoft can do is monetize it. They will establish content
providers. Create distributors. Add a healthy ad network.

But most undoubtedly, the creativity and innovation that tiktok can further
yield will disappear. And this will lay the next foundation for another
company to take over.

------
thedogeye
Satya jealous he didn't get dragged before congress this week.

~~~
techntoke
Didn't make sense. I guess if you pay lobbyist enough you can get away with
anything.

------
amrrs
Microsoft is definitely a good candidate here for TikTok. With them missing
Mobile-rise and Social media-rise, this acquisition seems to be a desperate
attempt to cement their position in a hyper growth consumer product that's
both Mobile and Social Media. Question is, Would it impact Microsoft's image?
I mean, Tik Tok is known for their addictive design and Privacy controversy,
so not sure how it goes well with the recent Good-guy image Microsoft's trying
to portray itself.

~~~
jczhang
How does it fit in with the rest of their products and overall strategy is my
question.

------
alfiedotwtf
Now I see why trump announced he’s banning TikTok this weekend - he’s going
for an ultimatum... let Microsoft buy you out, or we’ll ban you. China doesn’t
usually give in to US bullying, so I can’t see TikTok budging on this

------
ogre_codes
This is not good.

Facebook or Google would be worse, but Microsoft is only marginally less bad
here.

~~~
jonas21
If this is a bad outcome, can I ask what would be good in your opinion?

~~~
ogre_codes
Ideally? TikTok would grow organically and become another viable platform.

I'm a huge fan of competition and the free market. Consolidating social media
platforms under ever-larger corporate banners is just bad.

------
eunos
Will there be any restriction regarding board members or executive
positioning?

For example, are they allowed to offer board/executive position to Zhang
Yiming (original owner of Bytedance)?

------
sushshshsh
This honestly would take the cake for for stupidest purchase ever. I couldn't
think of a way to lose money faster. Maybe they should also purchase Snapchat
too.

~~~
filoleg
> This honestly would take the cake for for stupidest purchase ever. I
> couldn't think of a way to lose money faster.

No comment on the potential TikTok acquisition by MSFT from me, but your quote
reminds me of a lot of HN comments and opinions I heard elsewhere, but
regarding Zuck and his WhatsApp and Instagram acquisition.

Everyone was pretty much clowning him as figuratively the dumbest man on earth
who was simply lucky to make a ton of money off Facebook, who now was just
throwing that money around at random acquisitions without having any idea what
he was doing. A lot of people were also saying that it was all just out of
desperation on his end, given that Facebook was going to die any moment soon.
Six years later, most people agree that it was one of the smartest decisions
he could've made.

In a similar vein, think back to when MSFT acquired Minecraft.

~~~
sushshshsh
I appreciate this response. I agree that there is a parallel between the
virality of WhatsApp and the virality of TikTok. I also thought the WhatsApp
price was high, but now in retrospect we can see that actually it was quite
low, because people around the world are using whatsapp to replace the
functionality of so many different websites (social, ecommerce, gaming, news,
payments, etc).

For TikTok however I think there are two concerns. Number one would be the
political situation between USA and China. Number two would be the fact that
Instagram, Snapchat, Youtube, Twitter, WeChat and so on have already captured
so much of whatever there is to capture in this market. I would be surprised
if TikTok became the next WhatsApp, I think it's much more likely to be the
next Snapchat or Viber.

If I had to buy a Chinese company, it would be Huawei. But Microsoft would
find a way to kill that too.

------
SV_BubbleTime
I’m sure people have better takes on it than I do... seems to me like data
mining service became more popular than anyone would have ever guessed but..

Damn BusinessInsider... showing me a popup over the article on mobile saying:

> _Sorry for the wait. We’re experiencing tremendous demand right now. The
> page will reload in 30 seconds and you will then get a chance to buy your
> access._

... after the article was already fully loaded. That’s some serious anti-
consumer dark pattern bullshit.

------
kumarvvr
What value does Microsoft get out of this?

Looks like a desperate deal pushed by TikTok to get rid of "Chinese spyware"
tag.

The deal makes no absolute sense.

~~~
hellomyguys
A massive video library for computer vision and a huge data set on user
actions taken for each video.

More bullish take... potentially the next YouTube.

~~~
kumarvvr
Doesn't look like it's for the data.

For one thing, user gesture data or user action data can be automated with 3D
software. Provides a far better set of training data.

Data for targeted advertisements? Microsoft is hardly in that business of
selling ads.

I understand Mojang, because Minecraft is a platform that engages kids in
meaningful ways. But TikTok is an app to waste time and shit post.

~~~
hellomyguys
>For one thing, user gesture data or user action data can be automated with 3D
software.

Not sure I get what that means.

>I understand Mojang, because Minecraft is a platform that engages kids in
meaningful ways. But TikTok is an app to waste time and shit post.

Kids are definitely engaging in meaningful and interesting ways on TikTok. It
would be an incredible overgeneralization to say otherwise. Is there a bunch
of crap on there too? Sure, but you can write off the internet with the same
logic. Crap is also fun, which has some value too.

The content on early YouTube wasn't what we have today either...

~~~
kumarvvr
> Not sure I get what that means.

Generation of video clips of human gestures, by automating a 3D modeling
software, like Blender, will give you not only the video, but also depth and
other data related to the video.

If you are looking for sources to train your model to recognize depth /
gestures, videos from TikTok are far less useful, than generating your own
ones by automating or programming them.

~~~
hellomyguys
Sorry, I’m talking about the user generated actions on the consumption side.
Likes, shares, comments, pauses, loops.

Regardless my point on the data aspect of the acquisition wasn't meant to be
the reason for the actual value of TikTok for Microsoft.

------
cable2600
TikTok does the same thing VINE did. Only VINE went out of business as people
stole VINE videos and posted them on YouTube.

~~~
tehwebguy
The companies that ended up consolidating most of the rights to the most
popular Vines ended up printing millions of dollars per month for quite a
while, I’m sure they still do well.

------
peacefulhat
How much value is knocked off the valuation from US govt threatening a ban?

------
11thEarlOfMar
If it is in fact a source of personal information gleaned from Tik Tok users
illicitly made available to China, it may have far more value to the Chinese
government than the market value assigned to it.

------
mrkramer
Imo it doesn't make sense for Microsoft to buy it. They could' ve bought
Facebook back in the day but Zuck probably wouldn't sell. Pls Microsoft buy it
and destroy it by your mismanagement.

------
babesh
How would this work? Splitting off US users would probably result in that part
slowly dying because the non US part will / is going to be larger? Will US
users be blocked from the non US TikTok?

------
swayson
The ever decreasing robustness property of the ecosystem which loses diversity
and becomes more centralized. I don't know if FAANG gaining more and more
power is a good thing for the world.

------
volgo
ByteDance bought Musically for $1B in 2017 and turned it into TikTok. Three
years later they are “forced” to divest it for $50B. They’re laughing their
asses off to the bank

------
mrtksn
What happens when Google is left out of having a social media business when
most of the things are happening in the social media these days? They tried
few times and looks like gave up.

~~~
Ataraxy
They still have youtube which is in a league of its own and while it may not
be consiered a "social network" it's still definitely social media, arguably
more than even TikTok could be considered as.

------
soniman
Microsoft might want to get rid of the advertizing businesses (like Bing) and
merging Bing with Tiktok would create a mini Google-Youtube spinoff that would
be very hot.

------
mrweasel
But why? It doesn't fit into anything. Sure Microsoft has previously bought
weird things, but lately they've been pretty focused. Why would they buy
TikTok+

~~~
todd3834
The allure of a highly used social product seems to always tempt FAANG
companies. The same reason Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook would want this
is why Microsoft wants it too.

------
actuator
This looks like such a mismatch.

Also, does it make sense to pay the rumoured $50 billion for a company with no
moat? Even US revenue expectations for this year were $0.5 billion.

~~~
crystaln
trump's executive order should lower the price...

------
fermienrico
Person confirming this:

[https://twitter.com/CGasparino?s=21](https://twitter.com/CGasparino?s=21)

I don’t know how reputable the source is.

~~~
bdcravens
Seems to have a solid reputation and experience.

[https://www.foxbusiness.com/person/g/charles-
gasparino](https://www.foxbusiness.com/person/g/charles-gasparino)

He doesn't say the source, only reports it, so not sure what the issue is
here.

~~~
AndrewBissell
Gasparino puts forth a lot of very dodgy or outright false "SCOOPS" (as he
calls them on his Twitter account). They're always couched in terms like
"according to my sources" or "this is what I'm hearing" so that he has
plausible deniability if they don't come to pass.

You can even see it in the headline to this story: "Sources speculate one name
to buy TikTok is Microsoft"

------
cellis
TikTok acquired an app called Musically, which was a US app.

Edit: acquired

~~~
throw987542
Musical.ly (stylized as musical.ly) was a social media service headquartered
in Shanghai with a US office in Santa Monica, California.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musically](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musically)

------
knolax
It's amazing the nochalance this forum has as they witness our own GFW being
built around us. In all likelihood TikTok will get neutered, American
teenagers will figure how to use VPNs to access Douyin just like their Chinese
peers already do for Youtube, and some of you HNers will be the ones working
on the anti-VPN systems used to stop them. You will tell yourself that you're
doing good and that you're protecting the country from foreign influence, but
the next generation of Hackers will hate you nonetheless.

------
fareesh
A lot of the comments here seem to forget that the US isn't the only country
that banned TikTok. Also Japan is about to ban it too.

~~~
jerrygoyal
It's also banned in India which probably had the most tiktok users

------
jimbob45
Has MS ever not ruined an acquisition? Even TFS is markedly worse than the
competition if you’re afforded the opportunity to shop around.

------
urda
I don't see how one can trust their Azure platform if Microsoft gets in bed
with TikTok.

It completely deletes all their digital trust.

------
ferest
In short, only American companies can have access to the brains of Americans.

There is no law to prohibit an app of being used in US, and there is no
evidence TikTok broke any existing law operating within US. All the talking
point being so far is because it's a chinese company.

This is literally how black people was treated.

It's interesting to see how protectionism change the country brand of equal
business opportunity and spirit of the law.

~~~
colordrops
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.

~~~
russli1993
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 islands. Yes it is founded by a
Chinese national, but it also have non-Chinese people on its board and in the
management. And Chinese people do not all agree with the government, or ccp's
ideology push.

Bytedance has a Hongkong subsidiary to manage mainland China business, one of
them is douyin. And U.S. subsidiary to manage Tiktok. Douyin and TikTok are
separate products, no data is shared between them. The U.S. subsidiary is
managed by Americans and employs American. Content regulation is managed by
Americans, Data is stored in the U.S. Tiktok is planning for outside review of
the data security and algorithms for recommendation system. There is no way
Chinese government can force their censorship on to tiktok. Why would TikTok
employees agree to Chinese government's demands? They are Americans living in
America. How will Chinese government enforces their demands? The only thing
they could do is force shutting down Douyin in China or arrest the Bytedance's
management in they reside on Chinese soil. But if that happens it would be
another news story. There is no legal means for which Chinese government can
exert control over Tiktok. Therefore I don't think Tiktok being forced to
censor speech or hand data to Chinese government is really realistic.

Source: [https://www.bytedance.com/en/](https://www.bytedance.com/en/) see
corporate structure

~~~
tomp
> There is no way Chinese government can force their censorship on to tiktok.

Really?

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/revealed-
how-tiktok-censors-videos-that-do-not-please-beijing)

 _> TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned social network, instructs its moderators
to censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, or the
banned religious group Falun Gong, according to leaked documents detailing the
site’s moderation guidelines._

Stop with this propaganda please.

------
trollied
Migrate it to Azure. It'll get renamed to TikTok 360 because of the downtime.

------
samfisher83
They should by many metrics it is the fastest growing social media app.

------
TimesOldRoman
Another "If ya can't beat'em, join'em."?

------
chvid
This is from Bloomberg's coverage of the story:

"President Donald Trump plans to announce a decision ordering Bytedance to
divest its U.S. ownership of TikTok, according to people familiar with the
matter. The U.S. has been investigating potential national security risks due
to the Chinese company’s control of the app. Trump’s decision could be
announced as soon as Friday, said the people."

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-31/microsoft...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-31/microsoft-
is-said-to-be-in-talks-to-buy-tiktok-in-u-s?srnd=premium-europe)

Microsoft Is Said to Be in Talks to Buy TikTok in U.S.

------
data4lyfe
Microsoft finally gets their own social media play

------
m0xte
TikTok is politically poisonous. Why would they?!?

~~~
AndrewBissell
Watch as the political "poison" of TikTok's rampant user surveillance is
magically transmuted away once it is acquired by an American tech company!

~~~
xxpor
But that's the exact issue, it's political poison because of who owns it. Why
would it be "magically transmuted away"? That's literally the entire point.

~~~
AndrewBissell
My point is that it's funny that what makes TikTok poisonous is not the
incredibly intrusive surveillance itself, but rather the fact that it's being
done by a foreign company/government (which ultimately can probably do a lot
less harm to Americans with all that info than Microsoft or the US
government).

------
leptoniscool
And so the march towards WW3 hastens..

------
riffic
Microsoft's ownership is a kiss of death. See: WebTV, Skype, Yammer, Hotmail,
Groove, Danger, et cetera.

The kids will always move on to something else.

~~~
hilbertseries
GitHub?

~~~
riffic
Yep, not even GitHub is immune from the Microsoft kiss of death:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub#ICE_Contract](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub#ICE_Contract)

~~~
tomjakubowski
ICE was a GitHub customer beginning in 2016, before the Microsoft acquisition.
[https://github.blog/2019-10-09-github-and-us-government-
deve...](https://github.blog/2019-10-09-github-and-us-government-developers/)

------
billconan
I tried TikTok, I don't think it is as great as what others told me. The
content is very repetitive.

I think imgur has better variations.

------
hujun
what makes you all think ByteDance will agree to sell their top product in 1st
place?

------
JosephHatfield
Just saw in the WSJ: "Microsoft has paused negotiations to buy the U.S.
operations of the video-sharing app TikTok after President Trump said late
Friday he opposed the deal, according to people familiar with the matter."

------
quicklime
Does Trump have the power to just order a company to be broken up like this?

I get that there’s a national security angle to this, but I imagine there
would be outrage if he unilaterally decided to break up Facebook, for example.

~~~
est31
Trump is not acting totally unilaterally here. The intelligence community is
critical of TikTok as well as multiple republican senators.

In fact, it's even possible that the government is involved in this purchase
in some form, by either using their good standing as big MS customers (how
many federal employees run Windows+Ms Office computers?), or by offering money
directly, something that is purported to have happened when Microsoft
purchased Skype a few years ago. Getting rid of E2EE for Skype, which
Microsoft eventually did, was a big request of the US intelligence community.

Ultimately it'd be a good resolution to the issue. No more spying by China and
American teenagers can safely continue using the app.

------
bezmenov
This aged well.

------
creaghpatr
Would they merge it with Linkedin?

~~~
akerro
LinkedIn is already indistinguishable from Facebook. Feels like a dead
platform with no purpose.

Congratz on new cat Mike!

~~~
Closi
Dead platform with no purpose? I’ll assume you aren’t in management or the job
market then

------
chvid
So now the US is nationalising a foreign company because they are communist
...

~~~
logicchains
It's not because they're communist, it's just because they're successful and
not under America's control.

------
muststopmyths
Wait, so I'm going to have to install the TikTok For Business with Sharepoint
integration in my Teams?

I guess anything makes sense to a company that paid $26 billion USD for
LinkedIn.

~~~
lhorie
Jokes aside, it probably would be a nice addition to their consumer-oriented
portfolio (i.e. xbox, minecraft, etc), if they're planning to stay relevant in
the FAANG-taking-over-the-world state of reality these days.

~~~
nothis
Steve Jobs once said about Microsoft that their only problem is that they have
no taste. And it's decisions like this that illustrate what he meant. TikTok
is _such_ a clash with everything Microsoft stands for as a company (if there
is such a thing). It makes no sense.

~~~
Hydraulix989
It's still a $1T+ company, that's the metric that matters when evaluating the
"worth" of a business. So in that sense, the market has a "taste" for
Microsoft.

~~~
kohtatsu
Honestly I don't give a flying fuck about a company's market cap, I care about
what it offers to me and the world.

Markets are a means to an end, not something to fetishize.

~~~
vogre
Market cap is actually a quite precise estimation of what company offers to
the world.

Money is just information about usefulness. If you are useful to other people
you've got money. If someone is useful to you, you give money.

~~~
andresgottlieb
Exactly. Unfortunately we humans have a tendency to believe that we can
understand what's useful for the rest of the people better than themselves.

~~~
johannes1234321
So parenting isn't useful and children should pay their parents? - Just to
show that there are other factors at play as well and not all can be measured
in money.

To go back to the Microsoft case: They played the market well, that there are
no alternatives in some areas and a new owner has hardly a chance to go there.

~~~
vkou
> So parenting isn't useful and children should pay their parents?

They should, most cultures express it in the form of an expectation that
children take care of their parents in their old age.

------
justinzollars
Big story!

------
newbie578
How would that even function in practice? I am honestly baffled at this. If
Trump is so eager to hinder TikTok (China's influence), then he should just
ban the company like he did with Huawei and be done with it. The instant he
does it, TikTok is doomed (internationally), they are a pure digital product.

------
grezql
Not sure if this is good. There is now a new trending app that is eating up
TikTok users, its called Triller. Same concept but US made I think.

What happens if MSFT buy TikTok only for the users to migrate to the new
flavour of the social media app.

~~~
devenblake
I use TikTok a lot (there are >1M combined views on my videos) and I've never
heard of it. A lot of good TikTokers from before the app really took off went
to Byte (made by the dudes that made Vine) and it seems like Byte is the
logical successor.

I expect most users will migrate eventually. TikTok had its charms because it
was completely mismanaged. The discover feed had a mix between popular (>1M
likes) and very unpopular (1-30 likes) videos and very odd videos, like
someone slowly crushing a hornet to death inside a syringe, get popular often.
Microsoft tends to have a "digital gentrification" effect on the services they
take over; for example, when they bought Minecraft, they stopped adding `-
removed Herobrine` to update logs. To a lot of fans it showed a lack of
respect to the game and its culture. Many older players even refuse to play
any Microsoft-created Minecraft versions because they changed a lot of core
gameplay mechanics.

This same effect will probably hit their acquisition of TikTok. They'll make
it so pro-equality posts make it to the feed more often (TikTok has a
semi-4chan-ish culture around its humor rather than an "accepting"
environment, though a minority of users are actually bigoted), polish the
horrid UX, make good video effects rather than the very odd choices available
now, and I expect they'll make it so videos can be longer (the default length
is 15 seconds but you can make videos up to 60). This would ruin TikTok. The
limitations imposed by TikTok's designers are crucial for fostering creativity
(in my opinion, but I've made literally hundreds of videos on the platform).
Without them, TikTok is just another video app.

One more thing- most TikTok users _despise_ America. America, to the youth, is
a rich bastard bully of a country with military bases across the world despite
no other country having bases in America. They believe being spied on by China
is preferable to being spied on by America; if you're spied on by China, what
are they gonna do, try to send you propaganda? If you're spied on by America
and they don't like you, they just send cops in plainclothes to your house to
shoot you, and the cops don't even get charged. Even if Microsoft doesn't hurt
TikTok, TikTok's further association with America alone will be enough to make
users move.

~~~
sanxiyn
> TikTok had its charms because it was completely mismanaged. The discover
> feed had a mix between popular (>1M likes) and very unpopular (1-30 likes)
> videos and very odd videos, like someone slowly crushing a hornet to death
> inside a syringe, get popular often.

Why is that a mismanagement? You said it yourself, it has its charms. (And I
agree with you.) What is the goal of discover feed if not to have "its
charms"? To the contrary, I think TikTok's discover feed is genius. It is very
well managed, and I hope it doesn't change.

~~~
devenblake
That was a bad example. A better one is that TikTok has no consistent
guidelines on what videos are allowed on their platform. A video I made with
"\ _actually buys heroin like a boss\_ " was allowed to stay up on the
platform, but then another one with the same text was `Removed for violating
Community Guidelines`. Someone I knew had their account taken down for
pretending to, well, hump an anime body pillow, and yet they'd been _featured_
in TikTok advertisements months before.

------
rectang
It would take nothing less than a from-scratch rewrite to achieve a high
degree of confidence that all backdoors have been eliminated from the TikTok
codebase. I hope Microsoft is up for that.

~~~
mikkelewis
What gives you the low degree of confidence MS engineers couldn't do a
complete scan of TikTok's codebase?

~~~
rectang
I don't have confidence about scans in general against novel attacks. Scans
are effective against the threat model of off-the-shelf attacks, not a threat
model of highly motivated, highly-skilled attackers capable of inserting
subtle defects anywhere in a giant codebase.

------
mythz
This would be hugely disappointing, the first international appealing social
network outside of US Tech giants and they're potentially being forced to sell
due to US Govt political strong arming. The world could use some diversity
away from the US Tech giants.

As an aside, TikTok is the happiest & most enjoyable social network I've
frequented, a few seconds to show off some talent is a great way to burn some
downtime with unique entertainment. Would hate to see it fragmented &
acquired, especially to a US giant.

~~~
frank2
ICQ was an Israeli company, so there's that.

~~~
mythz
Yeah though much smaller by today's standards, it was a different era where
social networks weren't valued as much as they are now.

I'm meaning to say the world needs more diversity of powerful tech companies
away from US Tech giants, that's relevant today.

