Karlston Posted September 14, 2020 Share Posted September 14, 2020 Oracle’s TikTok deal accomplishes nothing Adding a ‘trusted tech partner’ only addresses a sliver of the national security concerns Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images On Sunday night — just two days before the deadline set by Microsoft — the TikTok deal finally came through. Oracle will be taking over stewardship of TikTok’s US operations, after Chinese parent company ByteDance turned down a more ambitious bid from Microsoft. This morning, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin confirmed the deal and said it would be presented to President Trump with a recommendation later this week. But barring a complete catastrophe, TikTok will keep operating in the US. However weird the details are, TikTok’s 1,400 US employees and tens of millions of US users are breathing a sigh of relief this morning. But the last-minute sale is strange in a number of ways — for a start, it’s not a sale at all. After months of insistence that TikTok sever its US operations from Chinese ownership, we’re now settling for a vague partnership between Oracle and the US TikTok operation. It’s still unclear exactly what Oracle’s “trusted tech partner” status entails, but it’s definitively not a sale, and it’s unlikely Oracle is taking over any significant operations from the US TikTok offices. Microsoft’s version of the deal would have severed American TikTok from Europe and Asia entirely, but Oracle’s version of the deal leaves it mostly intact. US TikTok will stay the same as Korean TikTok and Nigerian TikTok; it’s just getting an extra babysitter. That makes it less of a sale and more of a glorified hosting deal. It lets Trump say he’s solved the problem but doesn’t do much else. Microsoft underlined this point in its official statement announcing it had not been chosen. “We would have made significant changes to ensure the service met the highest standards for security, privacy, online safety, and combatting misinformation,” the company said in its statement. “We look forward to seeing how the service evolves in these important areas.” The implicit message is clear: we wanted to change TikTok to actually make it safe, and ByteDance said no. There’s no indication that Oracle’s partnership makes those changes, which makes the whole deal seem suspect. “A deal where Oracle takes over hosting without source code and significant operational changes would not address any of the legitimate concerns about TikTok,” former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos said on Twitter, “and the White House accepting such a deal would demonstrate that this exercise was pure grift.” Having Oracle take over TikTok’s US hosting only addresses a sliver of the problem. It means China can’t directly siphon user data — but it probably couldn’t have before, given the app’s US headquarters. Oracle’s trusted partner status could include some code audits, but as long as the company isn’t writing the code, it will be hard to stop ByteDance from smuggling in some tracking malware if it wants to. Oracle won’t be rewriting the TikTok algorithm or handling moderation, so it will be just as easy for ByteDance to push Chinese propaganda or censor embarrassing messages. Oracle will be a contractor rather than a subsidiary, but it’s not clear that will make them any less vulnerable to pressure or subterfuge. If you were concerned about TikTok before, there’s no obvious reason you should be less concerned now. The clear winner is Oracle, which will presumably get paid handsomely by TikTok for its trust-partnering services and for making this whole nightmare go away. An infrastructure and cloud software business, Oracle has usually been out-muscled by larger players like Microsoft and Amazon. At the same time, Oracle co-founder and chairman Larry Ellison has been an outspoken Trump supporter within Silicon Valley, hosting a fundraiser for the president at his Palm Springs compound in February, and telling Forbes in April, “I support him and I want him to do well.” Given the president’s track record, it will be hard to dismiss the concern that he’s steered a cushy contract to a political ally instead of taking the national security concerns seriously. The initial prospect of a US-focused buyout had grown more difficult in the past week after China placed export controls on algorithms like the one that powers TikTok’s For You page. Recent reports suggested ByteDance simply wasn’t interested in a sale and would prefer to have the app shut down than have the US portions cleaved off and sold. It’s hard to know if that was a real position or just a negotiating tactic, but the result is the same: China was calling Trump’s bluff. A different leader might have pushed harder for a full sale or found some compromise that addressed more of the national security concerns — but finding that the drama had turned against him, it seems like Trump simply folded his hand and moved on. It’s an anticlimactic end, but things could be worse. TikTok faced the real risk of being shut down in the US, which seems unlikely to happen now. The Treasury Department was prepared to block US transactions to ByteDance starting on September 20th (that is, next Sunday). And absent some kind of compromise, TikTok could have easily become collateral damage in Trump’s feud with China. That would have been a gross abuse of power, as I wrote last month, and it’s good we avoided it. But every time someone calls your bluff and wins, it gets a little harder to play the game. We’re still in the early days of a long fight over Chinese technology — how much we can trust it and how much we can afford not to. That fight is bigger than TikTok or Trump. Because of the TikTok fiasco, it will be harder to take a future president seriously when they raise the alarm about a piece of network hardware or a tracking cookie leaking data back across the great firewall. In this game, America’s strength is its credibility and its ability to influence allies. Both of those have taken a clear hit from the Oracle deal. Trump himself stepped away with only a minor loss — but like so many of his deals, he was playing with someone else’s money. Oracle’s TikTok deal accomplishes nothing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steven36 Posted September 15, 2020 Share Posted September 15, 2020 TikTok users dont care about if China is spying on them or not they just dont want it too die , And most are tech illiterate so they dont know who Oracle is .Only thing they care about is getting 1000s of followers and makeing money from the app. It dont take a genius to install a free aap from Google or Apple store and not even bother to read the privacy policy . That crowd is the same people you see on Instagram , Facebook ,Twitter and YouTube for years they sold out to data harvesting years ago just like there parents did and they profit off it . They not Linux nerds that are tech savvy and there not Microsoft and Google fanboy's who are Anti Oracle because Oracle sues them for stealing Java . They dont even know what Oracle is so i doubt they know what Java is . More info: What’s Oracle? TikTok users react to proposed Oracle deal https://fortune.com/2020/09/14/tiktok-users-react-oracle-deal-microsoft-walmart-china-bytedance/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
halvgris Posted September 15, 2020 Share Posted September 15, 2020 this must be this years dumbest deal ever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BimBamSmash Posted September 16, 2020 Share Posted September 16, 2020 As long as it gets the current PotUS's name on the deal in one way or another, he will be content. He is all "me, me, me", after all. I think matters of national security were never his true concern in this particular case. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steven36 Posted September 17, 2020 Share Posted September 17, 2020 11 hours ago, BimBamSmash said: As long as it gets the current PotUS's name on the deal in one way or another, he will be content This don't seem to be True he dont be content with the offer at all. Trump is not going to sign off on the deal yet he says Quote "I'm not prepared to sign off on anything," Trump told a press briefing at the White House, adding that he expected the deal to be presented to him on Thursday. He emphasized the deal "has to be 100% as far as national security is concerned." Trump suggested he had misgivings about a deal that allows ByteDance to keep a majority stake in TikTok. Quote "Conceptually, I can tell you I don't like that," he said. "If that's the case, I'm not gonna be happy." This is crazy , this sign off dont have nothing to do with software it has to do with politics Trump even wanted the Government to get a cut of it being sold tell his lawyers told him the government had no authority to require such a payment. The users dont care . Even if the app got banned in the USA Byte dance will be fine they have more users on the China version than they have on western version anyways but its USA base is Huge. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steven36 Posted September 17, 2020 Share Posted September 17, 2020 from what i get from the NYT Article that politics is going to end up killing the deal we will see. Trump can't make such decisions without his own party turning on him .He likes Larry Ellison, Oracle’s founder a lot .Maybe that the reason Bytedance chose Oracle but it not that simple as long as Bytedance owns any part of it he takes a chance of the Republicans turning on him so he changed his tune about it , because it's too close to Nov. for this . Personally i wish he would take the deal and dig his own grave were he has almost no chance in us worrying about him for the next 4 years .I'm tired of hearing his name and I'm tired of him. I guess this link is OK to post here? it's technology news and this is a forum of technical nature Backlash Grows to TikTok-Oracle Deal https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/16/technology/tiktok-oracle-opposition.html Quote That proposal is now under review by a secretive, multi-agency national security panel, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which is expected to submit its recommendation to President Trump for a final decision on Thursday. But the catch 22 is if they don't approve it it has 0 change of going trough , If they do approve it has very little chance of going trough, Quote But while the proposal winds its way through the review process, some lawmakers are increasingly up in arms about it. Trump going make some people mad no matter what he does . PS : Any Chinese business in the USA is screwed if it gets ban if they want to flat out sell that part of it and you can thank China for that because of new regulations that can block the sale of Chinese Tech . The Chinese Government has to approve it's sale and there that Government does get a cut of it all. Big Tech in USA the Government gets very little not even taxes there all being investigated by the IRS for not paying taxes for years and the government dont have the money it takes to take them to court too make them pay, then Google founders want to complain about China is going to get ahead in Tech because lack of Government funding. Of course they are going to get ahead because Big Tech not paying there taxes and storing the money in offshore accounts is going to brake capitalism in a few years from now. Profit over advancement is going to be the stick in the wheel that brakes it. It's simple Quote Under capitalism, companies live by the motivation for profit. They exist to make money. No more motivation , no more profit , that the end of capitalism. the very core of it is rotten anyway all the money goes to the 1% while the others work for them and make it successful just to make ends meat . the middle class and the poor . You can already see it dying slowly Microsoft former CEO once said Linux was a cancer and due to lack of motivation for profit BIG Tech now comes to the open source community (non profit) for motivation and ideas they are mixed economy Technologies . Microsoft CEO today says he loves Linux. the USA government can ban all the stuff they want from China but that's going stop them from moving forward because the open source community dont hide code for profit and is not controlled by any government and were glad to have China on our Team as long as they give back. That were most Google projects build there software from if they didn't they wouldn't be Chrome EDGE from M$. China has the very advantages they do and they use them too. A ban of TIKTOC , Huawei etc breaks up Tech companies sharing with each other ideas and money . It is incentive for China to become tech independent and in the process they will surpass the US in a few years. Huawei phones never was sold in the USA in stores or by carriers only you could buy unlocked ones online . What happen was when Huawei announced they was going to start selling them state side and they got banned. https://www.androidauthority.com/huawei-confirms-phones-will-sold-us-wireless-carriers-2018-824304/ It dont have nothing to do with national security if it does , why do they sell One track phones and Lenvo PCs in the USA? if that was the case . Fact is China dont need to sell software or phones to hack the USA they easier ways they find plenty of backdoors in existing USA based software .If that software would be open source the back doors would get closed faster. I posted a article the other day were China state hackers are exploiting USA based VPN Software and Microsoft Exchange because people are to stupid to do updates . Same reason wantacry infected all them people because they never update. What good does it do to get rid of the China supply chain when the USA supply chain is vulnerable ? If you dont want get to hacked go back to using paper . The federal government security is so shitty they dont even need 0 days to hack them let alone make special Chinese software to do it. What do F5, Citrix, Pulse Secure all have in common? China exploiting their flaws to hack govt, biz – Feds https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/14/chinas_hackers_f5_citrix/ How many exploits have Java had over the years I know I got infected by a Java Virus back in the early 2000s before that back when websites still used it, so hows it any safer with Oracle ? If Google thought they was any danger of hacks you think they would host TikToc i doubt it.? Google is one of the few that took a stand against China for being hacked . In fact when Google came forward in 2010 they was 35 companies was hacked and only Google would come forward in public about it. The rest of the companies want admit to China hacking them because they got too much money invested in China to get ban like Google did . Tech has been protecting China stealing for years for the sake of profit so they just as much as fault as China for not reporting cyber crimes when they happen. That fact is most China theft was not done trough China supply chain but trough the USA supply chain . As China Hacked, U.S. Businesses Turned A Blind Eye https://www.npr.org/2019/04/12/711779130/as-china-hacked-u-s-businesses-turned-a-blind-eye No wonder many people dont thank China hacks anyone because there victims protect them An investigation by NPR and the PBS television show Frontline into why three successive administrations failed to stop cyberhacking from China found an unlikely obstacle for the government — the victims themselves. In dozens of interviews with U.S. government and business representatives, officials involved in commerce with China said hacking and theft were an open secret for almost two decades, allowed to quietly continue because U.S. companies had too much money at stake to make waves. So there is no real proof because the crimes go unreported and this among other stuff like trade wars is the only way they know how to punish them for it . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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