Q&A: What does a deal between TikTok and Oracle mean?
HONG KONG (AP) — TikTok’s parent company ByteDance has chosen Oracle over Microsoft as a new American technology partner to help keep the popular video-sharing app operating in the U.S., according to a source familiar with the deal.
Microsoft, which had been vying for a deal, said in a statement dated Sept. 13 that its bid to acquire TikTok's U.S. operations was rejected. That came a week before the Sept. 20 deadline for ByteDance to sell TikTok to an American company or risk being banned in the U.S. over national security concerns.
Q. What is TikTok?
A. The app is a home for fun, goofy videos that are easy to make and to watch. That’s made it immensely popular, particularly with young people, and U.S. tech giants like Facebook and Snapchat see it as a competitive threat. TikTok says it has 100 million U.S. users and hundreds of millions globally. It has its own influencer culture, enabling people to make a living from posting videos on the service, and hosts ads from major U.S. companies.
ByteDance Ltd., a Chinese company, launched TikTok in 2017, then bought Musical.ly, a video service popular with teens in the U.S. and Europe, and combined the two. A twin service, Douyin, is available for Chinese users.
Q. What concerns U.S. officials about the app?
A. TikTok, like most other social networks, collects user data and moderates what’s posted. It grabs people’s locations and messages they send one another, for example, and tracks what people watch to discern what kinds of videos they like and how best to target ads to them.
Similar concerns apply to American social networks, but Chinese ownership adds an extra wrinkle because the Chinese government could order companies to help it gather intelligence. In TikTok's case, that's a hypothetical threat, Samm...
