07/31/2020 - 22:53
- Clarín.com
- Technology
United States President Donald Trump is preparing to order the TikTok app to be separated from its Chinese parent company for "national security reasons." And Microsoft appears as a potential buyer, in a context where there is talk of a floor value of $ 50 billion.
The Wall Street Journal and the Bloomberg agency reported that Trump arranged for the sale of TikTok's U.S. operations by China- based ByteDance , estimating that the service could be used by Chinese intelligence.
Other reports, including one from Fox News, said Microsoft was in talks to acquire TikTok , the value of which could reach several in the tens of billions of dollars.
TikTok: in the sights of Microsoft. (AFP)
Neither TikTok nor Microsoft immediately commented.
TikTok, a video application very popular with young people , has around a billion users worldwide.
" We are looking at TikTok. We could be banning TikTok. We could be doing other things," Trump told reporters recently.
"There are a couple of options, but a lot is happening."
US officials and lawmakers have expressed concern in recent weeks about the possibility that TikTok may be used by China for espionage purposes, but the company denied any ties to the Beijing government.
Consulted by the AFP news agency, TikTok declined to comment on the press reports.
"We are confident in TikTok's long-term success. Hundreds of millions of people come to TikTok to entertain and connect, including our community of creators and artists," he said.
TikTok this week promised a high level of transparency, including allowing revisions of its algorithms, to assure users and regulators that it is not used for any purpose other than entertainment.
The information was published by Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal: they give it as very likely. (Bloomberg)
"We are not politicians, we do not accept political publicity and we do not have a political agenda ; our sole objective is to remain a dynamic platform for everyone to enjoy," TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer said in a post this week.
TikTok's popularity increased after ByteDance acquired the American app Musical.ly in 2017 and merged it with its own video service.
James Lewis, head of the technology policy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said he believes the security risk of using TikTok is "close to zero," but that ByteDance could be pressured by Beijing.
"Making them get rid of it makes sense," he said. "They could start censoring things."
In the sights of the United States
Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State of the United States. (DPA)
"It is something we are evaluating." With those words Trump had referred to the possibility of banning TikTok in early July.
"It is big business. Look, what happened to China with this virus, what they have done to this country and to the whole world is shameful," he had said, limiting himself to stating that the ban is "one of many options." in study against China, which it accuses of lack of transparency regarding the pandemic.
His statements had echoed those of his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, who had claimed that the United States "considered" banning Chinese social media applications, including TikTok, on suspicion that Beijing uses them to spy on users.
Now a possibility opens up for Microsoft, another of the big tech giants that, in this case, plays with a very favorable one: it is out of the investigations for possible monopoly that Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple faced this week.
With information from AFP