TikTok is a wildly successful Chinese company, specializing in (I think) swapping video clips between teenagers. They have been accused of gathering intelligence data for the Chinese government. From what I hear, the Chinese government puts the arm on companies to do this and that, and it is pretty hard for a company to resist. The government requests are backed up by the secret police and concentration camps. And, I don't expect a Chinese company to have many scruples about spying on the Yankees. Things have gotten so bad that the Trump Administration is talking about banning Tik Tok completely.
To avoid Trump's hammer, Tik-Tok is talking about selling itself to Microsoft, hoping that as a wholly owned subsidiary of a US company, they would avoid an open break with the Administration.
Perhaps. But an internet company like Tik-Tok (or Facebook or Twitter or any of them) is largely software. The software controls how much information is gathered, where it is stored on disk, and who has access to it. And the software is controlled by just a few software programmers. Presumably these guys are Chinese nationals, living somewhere in China. And they work for the Chinese CEO of Tik-Tok. Would Microsoft buying up all the stock give them control of the software heart of Tik-Tok? Or would the Chinese software guys keep on doing what they please, or what pleases their boss regardless of what Microsoft might like?
We might be better off just banning Tik-Tok completely.
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