The news late last week that Microsoft has been in negotiations to acquire the short-form video app TikTok was a bit surprising. Hearing business-focused Microsoft mentioned in the same sentence with the dancing and lip-syncing wonder that is TikTok didn’t sound quite right—at first. But upon further reflection, a Microsoft-TikTok tie-up begins to make more sense. In fact, a deal—if both companies are able to appease the Trump administration—could be good news for Microsoft.
As TikTok has grown to 100 million U.S. users and climbed to the top of app store charts, Republicans and the White House have become increasingly worried that the app, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, will share the personal data of U.S. users with the Chinese government if asked. It’s a legitimate concern, as Chinese law gives the government power to demand data from China-based companies (TikTok has long said it has never given U.S. user data to the Chinese government and says it…
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Source : fastcompany.com
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