AS TikTok has been threatened all over the world by the right-wing governments such as in India and USA – it seems like there is a way for TikTok to save itself after all.
Turns out that Microsoft will be buying TikTok for $50 billion, paving the way for it to break away from the stigma of being a Chinese app that is considered inherently invasive to people’s privacy. But, is there more to this game here than meets the eye? Let’s find out.
Why is TikTok in danger, after all?
After TikTok was banned in India and Donald Trump threatened to ban it in the USA, there has been much talk about what this app really represents. While some said it was stealing personal data and giving it to the Chinese government, people forgot that the major userbase of TikTok were teenagers who didn’t have any sensitive personal data to begin with – except for some embarrassing search histories.
The real reason for this backlash against TikTok is that it was an attack by the upper class and the elites who hold a monopoly over content creation on their Instagram and YouTube – and TikTok had emerged as a great tool for the common people to create content and gain fame.
Read more about it, here.
But since the upper class holds the leash to the government, they managed to get it banned in India and almost threatened its existence in USA since TikTok was also a great tool for teenagers and young people to come against fascism together.
Donald Trump had a meeting with Microsoft about this
After this, Donald Trump and the Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had a meeting – and Microsoft has been planning on buying TikTok now.
Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple have also shown interest in buying TikTok but they are held back by anti-trust scrutiny that would probably mean that even if they manage to buy TikTok, it won’t be able to break the stigma it has been granted by the right-wing propaganda.
TikTok will revive in these countries
Although, even after paying the hefty sum of $50 billion – Microsoft will be able to control only the operations in US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. And to make sure that TikTok enjoys its explosive success, they won’t be rebranding it by calling it “TikTok by Microsoft” or something – because we have seen that not panning out well in the past.
As for the TikTok users in India, there isn’t really much hope when the entire discourse around it is controlled by the elite gang of entitled content creators who want to keep the lower classes out of the foray.
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