Microsoft is negotiating the purchase of the Chinese social network TikTok, according to sources cited by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The negotiation would be in an advanced stage and would also involve US administration officials. The Wall Street Journal wrote that the negotiations are “fluid”, and that an agreement could arrive by Monday.
Any purchase of TikTok by Microsoft would have important political, as well as economic, implications. For months, in fact, the United States has argued that TikTok is used by the Chinese government to collect sensitive data on US users. moreover, US President Donald Trump had harshly attacked the app, and in particular its users, for the failure of one of its meetings held on June 20 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the first organized in months. Trump had accused the mobilization of thousands of teenagers on TikTok and other social networks of the poor public success of the rally (Trump's theory, however, is very difficult to prove, and is probably false).
Trump said Friday he was considering what to do about TikTok: he added that a hypothesis that is being discussed is to ban access to the app in the United States, a decision that would make the social network and its owner lose the Chinese company ByteDance, a large number of users. Trump's tough stance towards TikTok appears to be part of a broader confrontation between China and the United States, which has escalated in recent weeks and has led, among other things, to the closure of two consulates, one Chinese in the United States and one American in China.
– Read also: The clash between China and the United States, explained
The sale of TikTok to an American company would avoid the hypothesis of banning the app: according to the Wall Street Journal, it would avoid any legal consequences for the federal government.
