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Walmart Teams Up With Microsoft In A Bid To Buy TikTok 

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Walmart announced this week that they would be collaborating with Microsoft in a bid to acquire TikTok. Currently ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company which is based in Beijing, is nearing an agreement to sell its American, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand operations in a deal that’s projected to earn the company up to $30 billion. 

Walmart and Microsoft are just one team placing a bid for the app in America, as many are looking to take advantage of buying one of the most popular social media platforms in 2020. Walmart spokesperson Randy Hargrove recently spoke with the media, and while he denied to comment on how the two companies would be dividing their ownership of the app, he claims this acquisition would be an amazing opportunity for both companies to compete against other giant corporations such as Amazon. 

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Walmart and Amazon have been competing as major “superstore” type retailers for years now. In fact, Walmart recently announced plans to launch its own membership program similar to Amazon Prime, called Walmart+, which will also include original content. 

“We believe a potential relationship with TikTok US in partnership with Microsoft could add this key functionality and provide Walmart a way to reach and serve omnichannel customers as well as grow our third-party marketplace and advertising businesses.”

Walmart went on in their statement to also claim that they were confident in their ability to meet both the expectations of current TikTok users, and the US government; who has recently been attacking TikTok for its potential sharing of personal data with China; which has not been proven. 

In the US, TikTok currently has around 100 million active users. When compared to the amount of users the app had in 2018 there’s an 800% increase in use. Daniel Ives, managing director and technology analyst, claims that there’s a 90% chance TikTok will accept the bid from Microsoft and Walmart, and the acquisition of the app will be a major step in Walmarts constant expansion of services. 

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This will not be the first time Walmart and Microsoft work together either. In 2018, Walmart announced a five-year “cloud deal” with Microsoft, allowing the retailer to adopt Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure and include bundles in certain devices that would include Office 365 with every purchase. 

After TikTok was under major threat of being banned by Donald Trump and his administration, the app knew it had to find a new buyer so that the app would remain alive in one of its most lucrative markets worldwide. The Pentagon has already banned TikTok from being downloaded on any government-issued devices due to security concerns; the US House of Representatives and Senate were also ordered to follow suit. 

Despite the many allegations from Trump himself, TikTok has went on record multiple times that they have never shared personal data with China, it’s parent company, or any other company for that matter. They then explained how TikTok is run within each country it’s available, and all US user data is stored in the US. 

There’s no real timeline as to when TikTok will accept or deny Microsoft and Walmart’s bid, however, with the 2020 election getting closer, it’s likely the app will make a decision sooner rather than later in order to keep it alive. 

Tiktok on Phone

House Of Representatives Votes To Ban Federal Employees From Downloading TikTok

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The House of Representatives voted yesterday to pass a proposal that bars all federal employees from downloading video-sharing social media app TikTok on government-issued devices. The proposal, which passed with a vote of 336-71, is a part of a much larger $741 billion defense policy bill.

In general, National security concerns about TikTok have risen within the past few weeks. The concerns stem from the fact that the app is owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, and like with most social media apps, many are concerned that their personal information is falling into the wrong hands. TikTok has made countless statements refuting that any users personal information from the US is sent to where the apps headquarters are based in Beijing, and even claimed that for US users TikTok has their own CEO based in America. 

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“TikTok is led by an American CEO, with hundreds of employees and key leaders across safety, security, product, and public policy here in the US,” one spokesperson said.

The initial proposal was brought to the table by Republican Colorado Representative Ken Buck as a part of other “bipartisan amendments to be made to the National Defense Authorization Act.” The proposal would ban TikTok on government-issued devices for employees that extend into Congress as well as congressional staff. 

Despite TikTok’s claims that they haven’t given any user information to the Chinese government, and would refute if asked to do so, federal government workers in Washington aren’t so convinced, and have continued to push for the app, along with other Chinese run social media apps, to be banned in the US completely. 

Buck made a floor speech before the House voted on the proposal where he expressed his major concerns over the app especially in regards to government employees who have sensitive and classified information on their devices. 

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“TikTok is a serious national security threat…the data the company collects from US consumers could be used in a cyber attack against our republic.” 

The US is not alone in their security concerns over TikTok specifically either. India recently announced they would be banning the app along with 58 other apps that are developed by Chinese firms. The banning comes after similar concerns arose among the federal government in India, claiming that the apps “threatened the national security and defense of India.”

As previously mentioned this proposal is just one of many amendments that will be made to the National Defense Authorization Act. The next step will be the House passing their new version of the NDAA with the new amendments implemented. Once passed, the Senate will then decide whether or not to pass it along further later this week; it’s expected that both groups will approve of the new amendments. 

Beyond the NDAA, the Senate of Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is expected to consider new legislation that will be presented by Senators Rick Scott and Josh Hawley this Wednesday. This new legislation is similar to the proposal that was passed yesterday, barring federal employees from using TikTok on government-issued devices, but if passed by both federal groups, the prohibition could soon become law in the US. 

Even further, the Trump administration has been very public about their consideration of a national ban on TikTok and other Chinese-linked social media apps. However, only time will tell how easy that would actually be for the administration to accomplish. 

TikTok

TikTok: The Future of Social Media?

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The expansion of social media into our everyday lives seems to be unstoppable. Even for those of us who stubbornly refuse to sign up for platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, these services influence us on a daily basis: Twitter has become the platform of choice for companies, celebrities, and politicians to give their immediate reactions to current events; and major events like parties and reunions are planned via Facebook, causing headaches and potential missed opportunities for those without an account. And as this expansion continues, new social networking services are popping up that re-write the rules of how social apps should operate, exploiting our collective human desire for connection and stimulation with increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence programs. One such app is TikTok, which paves the way for the future of social media by doing away with the traditional framework of aggregating content from accounts selected by the user in exchange for pursuing engagement as its primary goal.

Unlike most popular social media services, TikTok was created not in the United States but in China, and not as an independent start-up but as the flagship product of an established artificial-intelligence and machine learning company called ByteDance. Whereas other platforms onboard new users by encouraging them to connect with the accounts of people they know, TikTok drops you straight into a never-ending stream of content, aggregated seemingly at random, before you even make an account. You’re not immediately invited to view the content created by people you know, as you might expect; rather, the app invites you to follow trends, organized by hashtags under the “Discover” tab, and create content befitting these trends to gather an audience, albeit an often-ephemeral one.

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While the short videos you see in the app seem to be hand-picked for their humor, creativity, or charm, they are in fact curated by complex algorithms fed by data collected on the app’s massive user base. Over time, the app leverages machine learning and artificial intelligence to build a profile of your viewing and engagement habits, fueling an ever-more addictive and engaging stream of content tailored to your preferences. This shift away from content posted by your friends towards content the app predicts you’d enjoy is representative of a larger overall trend in the evolution of social media; as platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have grown, their feeds began to organize and select content according to a set of rules defined by the company, rather than by the user.

This approach has proven to be an overwhelmingly successful one for ByteDance, so much so that concerns have been raised about the app’s addictive qualities, particularly among the community’s younger members. In response to these concerns, the company introduced a “Digital Wellbeing” section of the app’s Privacy and Settings menu, enabling users and their parents to set restrictions on how long the app can be used per day. Additionally, many have expressed worries about the app’s potential to show inappropriate or dangerous content to a young audience, and TikTok was fined for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection App in the US, leading the company to implement a kids-only mode which prevents children from uploading data to the app. These concerns, and the resulting updates to the app, represent the exceedingly few instances in which TikTok’s developers have taken a direct approach in managing the spread and proliferation of content, which is almost entirely directed by a combination of the community’s contributions and the algorithm’s attempts to proliferate attention-grabbing content.

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TikTok represents a fundamental shift in the social app ecosystem, away from the goal of connecting users to one another and towards the goal of generating engagement for its own sake. All aspects of the app’s design, from its content-focused front-end to its leverage of sophisticated algorithms to curate content, are engineered to maximize engagement while remaining completely agnostic as to what type of content gains traction. This focus on engagement explains the app’s resounding success, especially among young people: in the modern social app ecosystem, developers compete with one another not for your money but for your attention, and as TikTok is singularly focused on maximizing its share of your attention, it sucks the life out of competing social apps. As such, one can expect other platforms to continue to gravitate towards this engagement-centered philosophy, and while the greater social ramifications of this approach are as of yet hard to predict, they are bound to be substantial.