TikTok and Oracle - smoke and mirrors?
TikTok is hyper addictive, super engaging and it's massive fun. Unlike the other social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Insta etc, TikTok does not rely on a friend network to drive traffic. From the get go, this seemingly innocuous little mobile app collects masses of data points from its 30 second short-form videos that feeds the AI magic (aka algorithms) to quickly work out what spikes your interest. And hey presto!, you're hooked.
But this is also the danger point. Because it's not too far a leap to see how this surveillance tech can be used as a propaganda platform. Influencing a generation of voters one way or the other depending on who is paying the piper. And it is so subtle that nobody sees it coming, whether it's through the use of mickey taking humour, fuelling the growing levels of ignorance and idiocy around conspiracy theories, or spreading fake news memes faster than you can swipe left.
To spice things up, the authors and controllers of the algorithms and their ultimate parent are "Chi-naa" (mimicking the way that Trump says it). Queue lots of cause for concern about data privacy in the wrong hands. Which all led to the US President signing an Executive Order compelling TikTok's owners, ByteDance to sell their North American operations.
Seeing the opportunity for an instant hike in stock market valuations, a host of big names threw their hats into the ring. Microsoft were the front runner with aspirations to actually take over NA operations. But it seems that the victor is going to be Oracle, although it's not yet clear exactly what this means going forward. Because instead of it being a sale of the business, the indications are that this is (only) a relationship deal involving a round of financing and Oracle taking over the Cloud operations as a "trusted partner".
If this is how the deal goes through, and it is still dependant on the whim of President Trump, it will be a great coup for Oracle and its cloud business. Oracle was up 5% on the news, adding around $7bn to their stock valuation on the day the news broke. For a cloud business that lags behind the big players in this space, adding TikTok to Zoom as its clients will be a big win for Oracle, It'll also be a win for China and Bytedance, who basically keep what they've already got. And it'll certainly be presented as a win for Trump. But will it address the concerns about data privacy, surveillance and the influence of American users?
Time will tell but my guess is that it wont change that much.
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