Oracle and US Investors (Including Microsoft) Discuss Taking Control of TikTok in the US (npr.org) 53
A plan to keep TikTok available in the U.S. "involves tapping software company Oracle and a group of outside investors," reports NPR, "to effectively take control of the app's global operations, according to two people with direct knowledge of the talks..."
"[P]otential investors who are engaged in the talks include Microsoft." Under the deal now being negotiated by the White House, TikTok's China-based owner ByteDance would retain a minority stake in the company, but the app's algorithm, data collection and software updates will be overseen by Oracle, which already provides the foundation of TikTok's web infrastructure... "The goal is for Oracle to effectively monitor and provide oversight with what is going on with TikTok," said the person directly involved in the talks, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the deliberations. "ByteDance wouldn't completely go away, but it would minimize Chinese ownership...." Officials from Oracle and the White House held a meeting on Friday about a potential deal, and another meeting has been scheduled for next week, according to the source involved in the discussions, who said Oracle is interested in a TikTok stake "in the tens of billions," but the rest of the deal is in flux...
Under a law passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court, TikTok must execute what is known as "qualified divestiture" from ByteDance in order to stay in business in the U.S... A congressional staffer involved in talks about TikTok's future, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said binding legal agreements from the White House ensuring ByteDance cannot covertly manipulate the app will prove critical in winning lawmakers' approval. "A key part is showing there is no operational relationship with ByteDance, that they do not have control," the Congressional staffer said. "There needs to be no backdoors where China can potentially gain access...."
Chinese regulators, who have for years opposed the selling of TikTok, recently signaled that they would not stand in the way of a TikTok ownership change, saying acquisitions "should be independently decided by the enterprises and based on market principles." The statement, at first, does not seem to say much, but negotiators in the White House believe it indicates that Beijing is not planning to block a deal that gives American investors a majority-stake position in the company.
"Meanwhile, Apple and Google still have not returned TikTok to app stores..."
"[P]otential investors who are engaged in the talks include Microsoft." Under the deal now being negotiated by the White House, TikTok's China-based owner ByteDance would retain a minority stake in the company, but the app's algorithm, data collection and software updates will be overseen by Oracle, which already provides the foundation of TikTok's web infrastructure... "The goal is for Oracle to effectively monitor and provide oversight with what is going on with TikTok," said the person directly involved in the talks, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the deliberations. "ByteDance wouldn't completely go away, but it would minimize Chinese ownership...." Officials from Oracle and the White House held a meeting on Friday about a potential deal, and another meeting has been scheduled for next week, according to the source involved in the discussions, who said Oracle is interested in a TikTok stake "in the tens of billions," but the rest of the deal is in flux...
Under a law passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court, TikTok must execute what is known as "qualified divestiture" from ByteDance in order to stay in business in the U.S... A congressional staffer involved in talks about TikTok's future, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said binding legal agreements from the White House ensuring ByteDance cannot covertly manipulate the app will prove critical in winning lawmakers' approval. "A key part is showing there is no operational relationship with ByteDance, that they do not have control," the Congressional staffer said. "There needs to be no backdoors where China can potentially gain access...."
Chinese regulators, who have for years opposed the selling of TikTok, recently signaled that they would not stand in the way of a TikTok ownership change, saying acquisitions "should be independently decided by the enterprises and based on market principles." The statement, at first, does not seem to say much, but negotiators in the White House believe it indicates that Beijing is not planning to block a deal that gives American investors a majority-stake position in the company.
"Meanwhile, Apple and Google still have not returned TikTok to app stores..."
oracle licensing will fuck it up! (Score:4, Funny)
oracle licensing will fuck it up!
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
One thing American teens love is Larry Ellison financing another yacht. /s
Re:oracle licensing will fuck it up! (Score:4, Insightful)
Titkok was happily financing Larry's yet another island long before this attempt to expropriate it from its owners happened.
I'm curious which two owners of failed neo-Nazi "Social Networks" could be behind a "Perfect Deal" of Such Magnitude.
Any ideas?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a bit extreme, and is not really correct.
Most of the right-wing political creatures in the US are members of some Christian-fundamentalist sect or other and not Jews. Neither trump nor musk are religious Jews, and the current attempt to grab Titkok is quite obviously lead by them. Now, these two may not be really god-fearing people in private (most of the fundamentalists aren't anyway), but they have to maintain the pretense in front of their electorate, which is all that matters. They now belong to
Re: (Score:2)
Learn to read, really.
Re:oracle licensing will fuck it up! (Score:4)
This is a bit extreme, and is not really correct.
Most of the right-wing political creatures in the US are members of some Christian-fundamentalist sect or other and not Jews.
he said zionists, not jews. christian zionists are a thing and in many regards are the worst of the bunch. they wouldn't live in a shithole like israel nor get their hands bloody - that's for jewish zionists and drones - but want it to be the center of civilization. for these people religion is an ideology, it's not really about believing in god, but about identity, they believe in the superiority and exceptionality of the master race. "the promised land of god" is a mythical metaphor for just that.
Re: (Score:2)
in terms of practical politics there is zero difference between the various christianist crusaders, especially in a deep delving on the topic of whether their beliefs are literal or metaphorical
Re: (Score:2)
In terms of practical politics there is zero difference between the various christianist crusaders, so there's no need for a deep delving into the topic of whether their beliefs are literal or metaphorical. It doesn't matter.
Dunno how this became that...
Re: (Score:2)
Damn, you mean those sneaky Jews are behind this? Next thing we'll learn is that they are using their space lasers to whack ...whack...please let us know what they will whack with them; you seem to know their plans.
Re: (Score:2)
Damn, you mean those sneaky Jews are behind this? Next thing we'll learn is that they are using their space lasers to whack ...whack...please let us know what they will whack with them; you seem to know their plans.
They're not wrong. Ellison has openly admitted he wants a vast surveillance system in place to monitor citizens [imgur.com], has offered Bibi a job [imgur.com] despite his war crimes, and has control over the UK's most sensitive data [imgur.com] (link [mintpressnews.com]).
So yes, the Jews are behind this whether one wants to admit it or not.
Re: (Score:2)
Oracle should stay extremely far away from TikTok, because they will do what they did with Java to it. (Basically make everyone flee.)
Oracle destroys everything it owns with god awful license mechanics.
As for Microsoft. No, Microsoft should also not be involved. Microsoft would do what it did to Skype and MSN, they would merge it into their SSO system and then when you get banned off TikTok you get locked out of all your cloud services.
These two companies should not be involved with TikTok, Ever.
cloud providers (Score:1)
lol imagine using a cloud provider, then your product gets too good, and the government forces you to sell it to the provider.
one more reason to self host I suppose
Re: (Score:3)
Clouds are not threatened. (Score:3)
They already belong to the right interests.
You should look at how a takeover over the next independent social network will develop. Maybe it is going to be bsky, maybe something else.
Either way, y'all will make it easy, in the presence of a free and federated alternative that you can actually self-host, you'll flock to a service run by a company.
And they'll buy you out just like that again.
Upsides, downsides... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Upsides, downsides... (Score:5, Insightful)
American tech companies are in a race to get more training data, and they've already strip mined the public web, public libraries, and popular forums such as reddit. And still they need more to chase their dream of becoming superhuman villains. I blame Marvel comics.
Re: (Score:3)
They already run the TikTok backend. You think they haven't been datamining it already?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What about DC Comics? :P
Re: (Score:2)
Marvel villains are typically more competent than the tech CEOs. They have real motivations that are somewhat coherent. These guys are all, "GIMME MORE OF MORE! GIMME GIMME!" When asked why, the best response they seem capable of is, "BECAUSE!" There's no coherent plan, no end game, no goal to reach. Just an ever increasing greed. Thanos would wanna beat these losers for not understanding the game.
We can't censor your content, or compete with you (Score:1)
Deja Vu (Score:4, Informative)
Seems this was talked about back in 2020. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/1... [cnbc.com]
Maybe ByteDance would rather shut TikTok down (Score:3)
ByteDance has implied they're not interested in selling at all. Otherwise, they would have done so already and cashed out with billions. So why haven't they? Sounds like the U.S. may attempt a rapid hostile takeover, kick out TikTok's engineers, and secure the data before ByteDance can shut down this operation.
Re: (Score:3)
ByteDance wanted to sell, Xi didn't.
Trump's delay might have seemed close enough to a compromise he's willing to let it go.
Re:Maybe ByteDance would rather shut TikTok down (Score:5, Interesting)
this is possible too.
bytedance should quietly replace the core algorithm for some quick trivial contraption, back it up, delete any traces, sell for billions and humbly concede victory, sit back and watch how tik-tok implodes under the new management and then relaunch from another company elsewhere and take the audience back.
Re: (Score:1)
this is possible too.
bytedance should quietly replace the core algorithm for some quick trivial contraption, back it up, delete any traces, sell for billions and humbly concede victory, sit back and watch how tik-tok implodes under the new management and then relaunch from another company elsewhere and take the audience back.
Chinese companies can act far faster that US ones and they innovate more. By the time Oracle and a group of other Trump sanctioned US investors are done destroying TikTok by infusing it with large doses of MAGA TikTok will be last years bargain bin product anyway. Meanwhile either ByteDance or some other Chinese media company is working on an AI powered TikTok killer faster than the oligarch owned US social media behemoths ever could.
Re: (Score:1)
But they can't take over global operations like that, there are servers in Singapore and Malaysia if I'm not mistaken. And while they can do a hostile takeover of US part (if they manage to keep admins and experts on how to operate it) but without developers and all the source code (+ training data etc.) that comes from Chinese engineers they will not be able to update and improve it.
Re: (Score:1)
No doubt some CCP cadre get a chance to position themselves for a payout now, too.
LOL much worse than China. (Score:1)
Billionaire Larry Ellison says a vast AI-fueled surveillance system can ensure 'citizens will be on their best behavior'
" -- Larry Ellison says AI will enable a vast surveillance system that can monitor citizens.
-- Ellison, the billionaire cofounder of Oracle, shared his thoughts on AI during a recent meeting.
-- Oracle, a software company, is aggressively pursuing AI projects."
"But this is only the start of our surveillance dystopia, according to Larry Ellison, the billionai
More China than China (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it just me, or does this action seem to make America seem more China than China?
Re:More China than China (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it just me, or does this action seem to make America seem more China than China?
No, it's not just you. The interesting aspect of this is that the US regards TikTok having access to the data of US citizens is an existential threat to the national interests of the USA and a mortal threat to the safety and well being the US citizenry because they might be exposed to other points of view by contact with Chinese people in an environment where the latter cannot be censored by US oligarchs (Shock!! ... HORROR!!) and the current US administration does not credit the US citizenry with the mental acuity to be able to handle that (Which, incidentally, the current US administration is wrong about). However, at the same time the US sees no issues with the US internet giants hoarding and misusing the data of people of other nations around the world in the exact same manner they worry about TikTok doing. One is tempted to wonder what would happen if large nations around the world started bullying the likes of Google, Meta, Amazon, X, and other US internet giants into selling a majority stake of their various overseas operations to local investors exactly like the US is doing to ByteDance or face being banned locally? I expect Trump for one would go absolutely ape-shit, so would Elon Musk. A delegation from Google, Meta, Amazon, and other US internet giants would show up in the Oval Office (and Elon would obviously trudge down the hallway to represent X) slam fists down on the resolute desk and shout: "Mr. President SOMETHING MUST BE DONE!!". The next thing you know threats would be flying out of the oval office of anything from 100% tariffs and right up to military consequences because that seems to be the way Trump 2.0 seems to react to anything. Whether those threats would materialize is another question but they would certainly be made by the Trump admin simply because like Trump him self, his administration is also full of hot air. The hypocrisy and level of cognitive dissonance of the US position in this whole affair is absolutely incredible but then again the US is an imperial power whose unchallenged hegemony is being threatened so this was rather predictable too.
Re: (Score:2)
the current US administration does not credit the US citizenry with the mental acuity to be able to handle that
They rely on it.
Look out! the immigrants are eating all the cats... Only a vote for Trump can save them !!!
The CARAVANS a re coming for you!! VOTE TRUMP to foil their EVIL PLOT!
Re: More China than China (Score:2)
Does this sound like the technology transfer that occurred, from "the west" as they "invested" in China
But in reverse... Murica is buying Chinese technology now ?
Re: More China than China (Score:2)
China will wait (Score:2)
That means handing-over the source-code which means handing over trade-secrets, which is total stupidity for any business. It's one reason China has refused to sell. The other is, sooner or later, there will be a US government disinterested in China's control of US data.
Called it (Score:2)
It wasn't hard for anyone who wasn't a brainwased Trumpkin to see this coming a mile away, but I did call it:
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
user data (Score:1)
Perhaps the EU (Score:2)
Its then no longer "Chinese" , it removes the monopoly the USA has over social media
The Europeans have actual privacy policies
Solves many problems.
so legalised theft of (Score:2)
This is the problem with US nowadays (Score:2)
said the person directly involved in the talks, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the deliberations
There's always someone speaking out about something even through they're not authorized to do so. I don't give a crap when it's in the private sector. But in political sense, speaking out while not authorized is literally committing traitor offense to me. These people don't give a damn about loyalty to themselves, let alone to any organization or country they're supposed to protect. I'm sure the information becomes available eventually. But in order to make a few bucks, they spoke out early with condition