US tells ByteDance to sell TikTok or be banned: report

SAN FRANCISCO, United States - The US government has told China-based ByteDance to sell its shares in the blockbuster TikTok app or face a national ban, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

Western powers, including the European Union and the United States, have been taking an increasingly tough approach to the app, citing fears user data could be used or abused by Chinese officials.

Concern here ramped up earlier this year after a Chinese spy balloon was shot down in US airspace.

The White House last week welcomed a bill that would allow President Joe Biden to ban TikTok, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in a statement.

A bipartisan bill "would empower the United States government to prevent certain foreign governments from exploiting technology services... in a way that poses risks to Americans' sensitive data and our national security," Sullivan said.

The Senate bill and the backing of the White House accelerated the political momentum against TikTok, which is also the target of a separate piece of legislation in the US House of Representatives.

Appearing tough on China is one of the rare issues with potential for bipartisan support in both the Republican-run House and the Senate, where Biden's Democratic Party holds a majority.

TikTok claims it has more than a billion users worldwide including over 100 million in the US, where it has become a cultural force, especially for young people.

Activists argue a ban would be an attack on free speech, and stifle the export of American culture and values to TikTok users around the world.

US government workers in January were banned from installing TikTok on their devices.

Civil servants in the European Union, as well as in Canada are also barred from having TikTok on their phones.

According to the Journal report, the ultimatum to TikTok came from the US agency charged with assessing risks foreign investments represent to national security.

US officials as well as TikTok declined to comment on the report.

TikTok has consistently denied sharing data with Chinese officials, and says it has been working with the US for nearly two years to address national security concerns.

Time spent by users on TikTok has surpassed that spent on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter and is closing in on streaming television titan Netflix, according to market tracker Insider Intelligence.

Agence France-Presse

White House gives federal agencies 30 days to enforce TikTok ban

WASHINGTON — The White House on Monday gave federal agencies 30 days to purge Chinese-owned video-snippet sharing app TikTok from all government-issued devices, setting a deadline to comply with a ban ordered by the US Congress.

Office of Management and Budget director Shalanda Young in a memorandum called on government agencies within 30 days to "remove and disallow installations" of the application on agency-owned or operated IT devices, and to "prohibit internet traffic" from such devices to the app.

The ban does not apply to businesses in the United States not associated with the federal government, or to the millions of private citizens who use the hugely popular app.

However, a recently introduced bill in Congress would "effectively ban TikTok" in this country, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

"Congress must not censor entire platforms and strip Americans of their constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression," ACLU senior policy counsel Jenna Leventoff said in a release.

"We have a right to use TikTok and other platforms to exchange our thoughts, ideas, and opinions with people around the country and around the world."

Owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, TikTok has become a political target due to concerns the app can be circumvented for spying or propaganda by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The company did not immediately respond to the White House guidance.

China's foreign ministry slammed the ban.

"We firmly oppose the wrong practice of the United States to generalize the concept of national security, abuse state power, and unreasonably suppress firms from other countries," spokeswoman Mao Ning said Tuesday.

The law signed by US President Joe Biden last month bans the use of TikTok on government-issued devices. It also bans TikTok use in the US House of Representatives and Senate.

National security concerns over alleged Chinese spying have grown over the past month after a Chinese balloon traversed US airspace and was eventually shot down.

CANADA, EU BANS

The Canadian government on Monday banned TikTok from all of its phones and other devices, citing fears about how much access Beijing has to user data.

Effective Tuesday, "the TikTok application will be removed from government-issued mobile devices. Users of these devices will also be blocked from downloading the application in the future," the government said in a statement.

The European Commission banned the app from its equipment too.

TikTok has repeatedly rejected accusations it shares data or cedes control to the Chinese government. 

TikTok's breakneck rise from a niche video-sharing app to global social media behemoth has brought plenty of scrutiny, particularly over its links to China.

The company was forced to admit ByteDance employees in China had accessed Americans' data but it has always denied turning over personal information to the Chinese authorities.

TikTok has moved to soothe US fears, announcing in June 2022 that it would store all data on American users on US-based servers.

Bans have not halted TikTok's growth.

With more than one billion active users, it is the sixth-most used social platform in the world, according to the We Are Social marketing agency.

Although it lags behind the likes of Meta's long-dominant trio of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, its growth among young people far outstrips its competitors.

Agence France-Presse

TikTok Sounds used to spread COVID vaccine misinformation - think tank

A TikTok feature that allows users to add another person's audio to their videos is being used to promote misleading and harmful content about COVID-19 vaccines, a think tank said in a new report.

The London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue analyzed 124 videos that used speech from four original TikTok videos, including two that were removed by the company for breaking its COVID misinformation rules, to push misinformation and stoke fears about vaccine side-effects. The 124 videos had more than 20 million views.

"There's a part of the content which is still able to travel," said Ciaran O'Connor, an analyst at the counter-extremism think tank. He likened the spread of misinformation though TikTok's "Sounds" feature to WhatsApp audio messages that proliferated during the pandemic.

Viral trends where users create their own videos by riffing off the same music or speech clip are a central part of TikTok. The popular social video platform, which saw explosive growth during the pandemic, said it reviews the audio of rule-breaking videos and may prevent these being used as Sounds by other users. It said these cases were caused by human content moderation errors. It also said Sounds can be reported on the app.

Audio from one video of a user implying the COVID vaccine's fast development made it unsafe and making misleading comparisons to other illnesses has been used in more than 4,500 videos, ISD found.

TikTok said it had previously limited the distribution of videos using this Sound, rather than remove it completely, as it was only deemed to be potentially misleading. Even so, the top 25 videos on the TikTok page for this Sound have been viewed a total of 16.7 million times.

ISD found many of the videos used the Sound to signal support for the statement. TikTok said it took down some of the videos using the Sound and made the Sound more difficult to find in searches after reviewing the report's findings. It removed the three other Sounds identified in the report.

"We strive to promote an authentic TikTok experience by limiting the spread of misleading content, including audio, and promoting authoritative information about COVID-19 and vaccines across our app," a TikTok spokesperson said.

ISD found the app had added labels directing to authoritative COVID information on only two of the 124 videos. The company said this was because labels were only added on videos with specific hashtags.

TikTok last week announced changes to its content-moderation systems for certain content, moving to fully automated reviewing systems for categories like nudity and violent or graphic material. (Reporting by Elizabeth Culliford; Editing by Stephen Coates)

-reuters-

TikTok owner ByteDance's 2020 revenue soars, net loss at $45 billion

BEIJING - TikTok owner ByteDance's total revenue more than doubled last year to $34.3 billion but its net loss widened to $45 billion, according to a company memo seen by Reuters.

The widening of the loss was partly attributable to accounting norms for share-based compensation of employees, a person familiar with the matter said.

Reuters has reported that ByteDance, one of the world's biggest private tech companies with an estimated value of about $300 billion in recent trades, had a revenue goal of around $30 billion for 2020.

ByteDance posted an operating loss of $2 billion and a gross profit of $19 billion, representing a 93 percent growth year over year, the company told employees in a staff meeting, upon which the memo was based.

Beijing-based ByteDance declined to comment on its financials.

It had 1.9 billion global monthly users in December 2020 for all its apps including TikTok, its Chinese version Douyin and news aggregator Jinri Toutiao.

In May, company founder Zhang Yiming unexpectedly announced that he will step down as CEO, a move that comes as Chinese regulators are increasing scrutiny of the country's biggest technology firms. 

-reuters-

ByteDance says India's freeze on bank accounts is harassment - court filing

MUMBAI - China's ByteDance has told an Indian court that a government freeze on its bank accounts in a probe of possible tax evasion amounts to harassment and was done illegally, according to a filing seen by Reuters.

ByteDance in January reduced its Indian workforce after New Delhi maintained a ban on its popular video app TikTok, imposed last year after a border clash between India and China. Beijing has repeatedly criticized India over that ban and those of other Chinese apps.

An Indian tax intelligence unit in mid-March ordered HSBC and Citibank in Mumbai to freeze bank accounts of ByteDance India as it probed some of the unit's financial dealings. ByteDance has challenged the freeze on the four accounts in a Mumbai court.

None of ByteDance India's employees have been paid their March salaries due to the account freeze, said two people familiar with the matter. The company told the court it has a workforce of 1,335, including outsourced personnel.

In the 209-page court filing lodged on March 25, ByteDance told the High Court in Mumbai the authorities acted against the company without any material evidence and gave no prior notice, as required by Indian law, before such "drastic action".

Blocking accounts "during the process of investigation amounts (to) applying undue coercion," ByteDance argued. It is "intended, improperly, to harass the petitioner."

India's Directorate General of Goods & Services Tax Intelligence, and the finance ministry which oversees it, did not immediately respond to requests for comment over the weekend.

The details of the tax investigation have not previously been reported. The tax agency told ByteDance last year it had reasons to believe the company suppressed certain transactions and claimed excessive tax credits, the filing shows.

ByteDance declined to comment on its court filing but told Reuters on Tuesday it disagrees with the decision of the tax authority. HSBC declined to comment, while Citibank did not respond.

ADVERTISING, OTHER DEALS SCRUTINISED

The court declined to grant ByteDance immediate relief in a brief hearing on Wednesday. The next hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.

The investigation centres on potential evasion of taxes related to online advertising and other financial dealings between ByteDance India and its parent entity in Singapore, TikTok Pte Ltd. TikTok did not respond to an email seeking comment.

ByteDance told the court its India workforce includes 800 people working in its "trust and safety" team that supports activities like content moderation overseas.

The company has "robust business plans in India and is not contemplating winding up," it said, urging the court to lift the freeze on the accounts.

The tax agency started investigating the company in July. It inspected documents at the company's office and summoned and questioned at least three executives, the filing says. Authorities also asked ByteDance to submit documents, including invoices and agreements signed with some clients.

ByteDance representatives "appeared multiple times" before tax officers and provided documents, the filing says.

TikTok, one of India's most popular video apps before it was banned, has faced scrutiny around the world.

Under then-President Donald Trump, the United States alleged the app posed national security concerns. The new administration of Joe Biden has paused a government lawsuit that could have resulted in a de facto ban on TikTok's use there.

-reuters-

TikTok rival Triller weighs going public

NEW YORK, United States - Triller, an app similar to TikTok that allows users to share short video clips online, is in talks with several companies about a possible merger that would allow them to go public on Wall Street, a source close to the discussions said Monday. 

The group was looking to raise capital from private investors when it was approached by several special purpose acquisition companies, a kind of publicly listed shell company that aims to merge with promising start-ups, the source told AFP. 

The sudden interest coincided with a crackdown on TikTok by President Donald Trump, who has threatened to ban the Chinese-owned social media giant if it doesn't hand over control of its US business to an American company by Nov. 12, citing national security concerns.

TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance is in negotiations with Silicon Valley company Oracle and retail giant Walmart over its US operations, which include some 100 million users.

The talks are taking place against a backdrop of increasing friction after Trump accused the company, without providing proof, of spying on US users for Beijing. 

Triller, launched in 2015, says it currently has 65 million monthly users around the world.

Its subscribers, which include celebrities such as Alicia Keys, Lil Wayne and Snoop Dogg, can easily pick music to go with a video clip.

The Los Angeles-based company is being advised by the merchant bank Farvahar Partners.

Its main shareholder is Proxima Media, which is currently valued at $1.25 billion, according to the same source.

The business is evaluating its various options, and there is no guarantee it will go public, the source said.

Neither Triller nor Farvahar Partners responded to an AFP request for comment.

Agence France-Presse

YouTube tests TikTok rival in India

SAN FRANCISCO - YouTube on Monday began testing a TikTok rival in India, saying it would refine its short video format and roll it out in more countries in coming months.

YouTube Shorts made its debut as TikTok pursues a partnership with Oracle that it hopes will spare it from being shut-down in the US by President Donald Trump.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Monday confirmed a bid from Oracle concerning TikTok's American operations after the video-sharing app's parent ByteDance rejected a proposal from Microsoft.

But it remained unclear whether the venture would pass muster with Washington regulators.

"Shorts is a new short-form video experience for creators and artists who want to shoot short, catchy videos using nothing but their mobile phones," YouTube vice president of product management Chris Jaffe said in a blog.

"Over the next few days in India, we're launching an early beta of Shorts with a handful of new creation tools to test this out."

YouTube Shorts videos are limited to 15 seconds, according to the Google-owned platform used by some 2 billion people worldwide.

Jaffe noted that Shorts will be modified based on user feedback before being made more broadly available.

TikTok's brand of brief, quirky videos made on users' cellphones has grown hugely popular.

But Trump's claims that TikTok could be used by China to track US federal employees, build dossiers for blackmail and conduct corporate espionage has sparked a diplomatic storm between Washington and Beijing.

TikTok has rejected the charges and sued over the crackdown, contending that the US order was a misuse of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act because the platform is not "an unusual and extraordinary threat."

Trump effectively ordered the sale of the Chinese company's US operations by September 20, after which the app would shut down.

Agence France-Presse

The woman taking over TikTok at the toughest time

Six weeks ago, as TikTok grappled with escalating tensions between the United States and China, the social media app’s top executives huddled together to figure out their next steps.

Vanessa Pappas, 41, was worried. TikTok’s North American business, which she has run since 2018, was dealing with an uproar. President Donald Trump had threatened to ban TikTok because of its Chinese owner, ByteDance, and many of the more than 100 million people who use TikTok in the United States were up in arms.

So in the early hours of Aug. 1, Pappas recorded a 59-second video from her home office in Los Angeles to calm the creators on TikTok and its fans. “We’ve heard your outpouring of support, and we wanted to say thank you,” she said in the video, which quickly went viral under the hashtag #SaveTikTok. “We’re not planning on going anywhere.”

Pappas is now repeating that message as she lands in an even hotter hot seat. Last month, Kevin Mayer, TikTok’s chief executive, said he was leaving the company, citing its uncertain political status. Pappas was appointed TikTok’s interim global head, just as the app faces an even murkier future.

Under an executive order from Trump, ByteDance must essentially strike a deal to sell off TikTok’s U.S. operations by Sept. 20; it will have a few weeks after that to close a sale. Yet after weeks of negotiations with potential buyers such as Microsoft, Walmart and Oracle, the discussions were thrown into disarray when the Chinese government signaled that it would weigh in on TikTok’s future.

In a recent 30-minute interview over Zoom from her home, Pappas said TikTok’s predicament was “unique” and described what it was like to navigate it through “a challenging time.” She declined to discuss specifics about TikTok’s deal talks and said she was not involved in them.

Instead, Pappas said, she is focused on what TikTok’s future could look like if the app’s ownership is bifurcated. Most of all, she said, she is doubling down on putting TikTok’s community of creators and users — ranging from those who post videos of cake decorating to those who break dance — first. Pappas later added that she regularly talked to Zhang Yiming, ByteDance’s founder and chief executive, about all of these issues.

To focus on its community, TikTok in July formed a Creator Fund, where creators can earn cash for views, starting with $200 million. And with the pandemic forcing people indoors for the foreseeable future, Pappas said she and her team were working on making TikTok an uplifting place to visit. Last month, the company launched a largest national advertising campaign on television and digital media, highlighting more than 30 popular creators under the tagline “It starts on TikTok.”

“We’ve built this product for hundreds of millions of people, and we’re not looking for that to change,” said Pappas, a former YouTube executive.

But keeping TikTok’s community happy in such a turbulent period may be challenging. Some creators and fans have been rattled by Trump’s moves against the app. Since his executive order, people in the United States have installed TikTok about 6.5 million times, down 13% from a year earlier, according to Sensor Tower, an app analytics firm.

Competitors have also pounced. Facebook introduced Reels, a TikTok clone inside Instagram, in August. The social network has also doled out millions of dollars to some of TikTok’s biggest stars to lure them over to using Reels.

Pappas said she wasn’t worried about Facebook and Instagram Reels. “You can certainly copy a feature, but you can’t copy a community,” she said. “I think that’s really hard to replicate.”

Tom Keiser, chief executive of Hootsuite, a social media management company, said TikTok was right to make its power users a priority.

“They need to be investing in those folks,” he said. “There’s so many things out of their control, but their future growth is based on influencers and content creators continuing to evolve and grow and leverage the new capabilities TikTok is rolling out.”

Pappas has worked in the online influencer world since some of its earliest days. Half Greek by birth, she grew up in Australia and speaks with an Aussie twang. She moved to London when she was 20, and eventually migrated to New York. In 2007, she joined Next New Networks, a company that helped web video creators earn money from their efforts.

YouTube bought Next New Networks in 2011. Pappas joined YouTube and quickly rose through the ranks. She was YouTube’s first audience development lead, a role that led her to connect with video makers. Her division at YouTube developed and popularized the term “creator” and helped transform video blogging, or vlogging, into a full-time job.

Pappas also wrote a book, “The YouTube Creator Playbook,” on how creators could make money from their followings, in 2011. She went on to develop YouTube’s Creator Academy, an educational content portal that teaches creators how to build a business on YouTube, and a channel certification program, which teaches creators about digital rights management, legal issues and advanced analytics.

TikTok lured her from YouTube at the end of 2018 to be its general manager and head of North America, based in Los Angeles. At the time, TikTok had just expanded globally. It was a new challenge for Pappas, who said she had wanted to get in on the ground floor of the next big creator movement.

Pappas said that unlike Facebook or Twitter, TikTok wasn’t wholly dependent on one’s social graph, or how many friends someone had. The app’s discovery algorithm instead surfaces popular trending content from people with followings both large and small, keeping users in the app longer and coming back more frequently.

“Anyone feels like they can be a creator,” said Greg Justice, TikTok’s head of content programming. “I’ve had friends with only a few followers who have gone viral.”

Justice, who works closely with Pappas, said that her leadership style was driven by data and that she often asked people to provide information to back up their projects and proposals. That helped the company avoid allowing dominant personalities and workplace politics dictate the way it was run, he said.

“She really democratizes the decision-making and leads to more objectivity at the company,” Justice said.

The American entertainment industry soon began reorienting itself around TikTok. Top Hollywood agents, casting directors and modeling scouts scoured the app for up-and-coming stars. Brands paid millions of dollars to tap into TikTok’s coveted Gen Z audience. Thousands of TikTok creators have made the pilgrimage to Los Angeles to live full time as creators.

The coronavirus has strengthened the ties among the TikTok community, Pappas said. Videos have trended under the #HappyAtHome hashtag, as creators riff off one another’s indoor experiments.

But Pappas has also had to deal with TikTok videos that are not all sunshine and rainbows. This month, a woman spoke out against TikTok for a viral meme in which thousands of users — including parents and their children — mocked people with physical disabilities across the platform.

TikTok noted that its community guidelines prohibit bullying and harassment, and encouraged its users to “exercise care and good judgment when it comes to the content they post, including parents and others who set an example through their behavior,” a spokeswoman said.

Nick Tangorra, 22, a TikTok creator with 1.2 million followers, said he had met Pappas only once but believed that she was the only tech leader who understood the creator community’s needs.

“It starts at the top,” he said. “TikTok knows fully that this app is what it is because of its creators. Vanessa is putting such an emphasis on creators, making sure we feel supported by the platform.”

-Mike Isaac and Taylor Lorenz, New York Times-

ByteDance in talks with US to avoid selling TikTok: report

SAN FRANCISCO - Chinese internet giant ByteDance is in talks with the US about ways it might avoid having to sell its TikTok operations here, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

TikTok has been at the center of a diplomatic storm between Washington and Beijing, and President Donald Trump gave Americans a deadline to stop doing business with TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance -- effectively compelling a sale of the app to a US company.

Walmart has joined forces with Microsoft in negotiations to buy TikTok. Oracle is also reported to be interested in TikTok.

TikTok -- which has been downloaded 175 million times in the US and more than a billion times around the world -- has filed a lawsuit challenging the crackdown by the US government.

The suit contends that Trump's order was a misuse of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act because the platform is not "an unusual and extraordinary threat."

Trump claims that TikTok could be used by China to track the locations of federal employees, build dossiers on people for blackmail and conduct corporate espionage.

TikTok -- used by as many as a billion people worldwide to make quirky, short-form videos on their cellphones -- has repeatedly denied sharing data with Beijing.

Talks between ByteDance and the US have been taking place for months but have grown more urgent as the deadline set by Trump nears, according to the Journal report.

At least one of TikTok’s major investors was part of a group that met recently with representatives from the Central Intelligence Agency to discuss data security, the Journal reported, citing someone familiar with the matter.

Trump last week repeated his demand for a piece of the action from any sale of TikTok's US operations for forcing such a deal.

"Well, I told them that they have until September 15th to make a deal; after that, we close it up in this country," Trump told journalists.

"And I said that the United States has to be compensated -- well compensated -- because we are the ones that are making it possible, and so we should be compensated."

Critics have slammed Trump's call for the US government to get a cut of the deal, contending that it appears unconstitutional and akin to extortion.

Meanwhile, ByteDance has vowed to "strictly abide" by new export rules in China which could potentially complicate a sale of the business as demanded by Trump.

China's commerce ministry added "civilian use" to a list of technologies that are restricted for export.

The new regulations could make it more difficult for ByteDance to sell the wildly popular video app, which features clips of everything from dance routines and hair-dye tutorials to jokes about daily life and politics.

Agence France-Presse

Walmart teaming with Microsoft in bid for TikTok

SAN FRANCISCO - US retail giant Walmart said Thursday it had teamed with Microsoft in a bid to buy Chinese-owned short-form video app TikTok.

The app has been at the center of a diplomatic storm between Washington and Beijing after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on August 6 giving Americans 45 days to stop doing business with its Chinese parent company ByteDance. 

The move effectively set a deadline for a sale of TikTok to a US company.

"We are confident that a Walmart and Microsoft partnership would meet both the expectations of US TikTok users while satisfying the concerns of US government regulators," the retailer told AFP.

Walmart is likely interested in TikTok to better connect with younger shoppers who turn to the internet for lifestyle trends, according to analysts.

Younger people are much less likely to shop at Walmart, whether online or in real-world stores, according to GlobalData Retail managing director Neil Saunders.

"A social platform like TikTok would give Walmart easy access to the very audience it wants and needs to attract," Saunders said.

Having access to the social media sensation could help Walmart's marketing campaigns while tapping into "a rich seam of data" or product development and more, according to Saunders.

Walmart teaming with US technology colossus Microsoft was "the final piece of the puzzle that ultimately cements Microsoft successfully acquiring TikTok's US operations for likely $35 billion to $40 billion," according to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.

'HIGH-STAKES POKER'

"While deal negotiations will be complex with a number of technology and data privacy issues that need to be worked out before an agreement is inked, we believe ByteDance is playing a game of high stakes poker with Microsoft looking like the only true white knight around," Ives said in a note to investors.

TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer said Wednesday he had quit the company as tensions soar between Washington and Beijing over the Chinese-owned video platform.

Mayer's departure was taken by some in the market as a sign that a deal to sell TikTok is imminent. Oracle is also said to be in the bidding

Mayer's resignation came just days after TikTok filed a lawsuit challenging a crackdown by the US government over claims the wildly popular social media app can be used to spy on Americans.

TikTok, which has been downloaded 175 million times in the US and more than a billion times around the world, argued in the suit that Trump's order was a misuse of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

The platform -- on which users share often playful short-form videos -- is not "an unusual and extraordinary threat," it said.

The platform's kaleidoscopic feeds of clips feature everything from dance routines and hair-dye tutorials to jokes about daily life and politics. 

The company holds firm that it has never provided any US user data to the Chinese government, and Beijing has blasted Trump's crackdown as political.

Agence France-Presse

Twitter, TikTok discuss potential combination: WSJ

NEW YORK, United States - Twitter is in preliminary discussions for a possible combination with TikTok, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, after US President Donald Trump said he would ban the app, calling it a threat to national security.

Trump declared Thursday that the popular Chinese video app TikTok and social network WeChat "threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States."

In an executive order, Trump gave Americans 45 days to stop doing business with the platforms, effectively setting a deadline for a sale of TikTok by its Chinese parent firm ByteDance.

He has also demanded that a significant portion of the sale go to the US Treasury.

Microsoft has been the primary suitor for TikTok, saying it was in talks to buy the company's US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand operations.

The Financial Times reported Thursday that Microsoft has expanded negotiations and was now after the app's entire global operations.

As a smaller company, Twitter would have a long-shot bid for TikTok, but the social media platform believes it would come under less antitrust scrutiny than larger corporations such as Microsoft, the WSJ said, citing people familiar with the talks.

Twitter, however, would likely need the support of other investors to complete the combination.

While Twitter does allow for the sharing of videos, most posts contain short text messages and photos or GIFs. 

In 2012, Twitter acquired the platform Vine, which allowed users to share short videos, but shut down the service in 2016.

Agence France-Presse

TikTok gave rural Indian women fame, fun and more

NEW DELHI - When India banned TikTok, it closed a window to the wider world for legions of women outside the big cities that provided fun, fame and even fortune.

The government outlawed the video-sharing platform, and 58 other Chinese apps, this month citing data security fears.

TikTok is also reportedly under greater scrutiny elsewhere including in the United States and Australia.

Married soon after she completed college, 27-year-old stay-at-home mother Mamta Verma lives in a small town in Madhya Pradesh state.

One day, her daughter got her to install TikTok on her phone to watch the dizzying array of zany videos uploaded from across what used to be the app's biggest international market.

Instagram and YouTube are for "the big people", Verma told AFP by phone, but TikTok she liked.

She started to record and upload videos of her own.

"I started with five likes on my first video. That was a big boost for me," Verma said.

Soon, she had more than a million followers and was earning about 4,000 rupees ($50) per video with her slick robot dance routines shot inside her small, simple home.

"It's not a lot but my earnings from TikTok helped in running the house and also in managing finances for the new house. You know even 10 rupees is a huge amount for us," she said.

Breaking a glass ceiling

But it wasn't just the money.

"Before TikTok, I didn't have the confidence to talk to people. I would just do my work, and as a stay-at-home wife I never made eye contact with people or even spoke much," Verma said.

Speaking a vast number of languages and dialects, around 70 percent of India's 1.3 billion people live in rural areas, a world away from big cities such as Mumbai and New Delhi.

Amitabh Kumar from Social Media Matters, a group encouraging "social media for social change", said that for many people in this huge hinterland, TikTok was a "glass ceiling breaker".

"Instead of Bollywood and rich people, finally there was a chance for common people to create something in 15 seconds which makes you laugh or cry or think or engage," he told AFP.

Its different tools were simple to use for those who don't speak or read English or Hindi, and the app worked well on low-speed internet.

"Twitter cracked the short-form storytelling in text -- with 140 and then 280 (characters). I think TikTok did it with 15 seconds," he added.

And it reminded the urban elite of India's vast diversity and chasmic differences in wealth.

"What we, people sitting in Delhi, probably judged and made fun of was high-class entertainment for a lot of people who never got a chance to express themselves," he said.

"Here was for the first time a space that rural India was enjoying."

'Not a big person'

Another minor star was Rupali Manoj Bhandole, 29, a housewife and mother who left school at 14 living in a small town in Maharashtra state that gets piped water for an hour a day and endures frequent power cuts.

She would upload videos of herself poking fun at her weak economic status -- and soon amassed 300,000 followers.

"A person who works with a Marathi TV show called me a star... I can't tell you happy I felt," she told AFP.

"I only studied until Class 9. I'm not a big person."

Bhandole said she wept when TikTok was banned.

Conservative family

Archana Arvind Dhormise hopes the benefits she derived from the platform will last.

The 35-year-old from Pimpalgaon in Maharashtra seldom left home for fear of censure from her conservative family and neighbours.

But then the home beautician became the "Rani Mukherji of TikTok" -- a reference to a famous Bollywood actress -- dancing and miming to famous songs, and gaining 75,000 fans.

She won a local competition for one of her TikTok videos. Now she has landed a part in a short film.

"I had never in my life gone up on stage and spoken or even initiated a conversation without having a million thoughts in my head," Dhormise told AFP.

"But being on TikTok and seeing all the love I was getting gave me the confidence to keep that going, and also be confident in the real world."

Agence France-Presse

TikTok, Gates pledge $20 million to help Africa tackle COVID-19

LONDON - Social media platform TikTok and the philanthropic Gates Foundation donated $10 million each on Wednesday to the vaccine alliance GAVI to help fund efforts to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa.

GAVI said the funds would be used to distribute and deploy any new vaccines against COVID-19 once they are developed, trialed and licensed.

It would also help prevent "a potentially catastrophic impact on immunization programs across the developing world," GAVI Chief Executive Seth Berkley said in a statement.

GAVI is a public-private partnership backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Health Organization, the World Bank, UNICEF and others, which arranges bulk buys to reduce vaccine costs for poor countries.

Speaking to Reuters last week Berkley said he was encouraged by the sheer number of potential COVID-19 vaccines in the early stages of development around the world, which he said would slim down to a smaller number as some progressed and some failed.

"Today there are 76 vaccines on WHO website listed, of which six are already in clinical trials, but actually the number is substantially higher than that, it is well over 100," he said.

"That is really good, because what is bubbling up is science from around the world.

"The challenge is going to be now, once all of the science bubbles up, is to have some standardized criteria that one can narrow it down to a smaller number. And what is going to be important is being able to make those choices based on science and not politics."

GAVI said this month it planned to disburse $29 million to support health systems in 13 lower-income countries to fight COVID-19. 

-reuters-

Chinese movie to premiere online as virus closes cinemas

BEIJING -- Chinese movie fans can catch the premier of much-anticipated new comedy this holiday weekend under a 630 million yuan ($91.25 million) deal to issue the film over the internet, as fears of a deadly new virus keep audiences away from cinemas.

The Hong Kong-listed Huanxi Media Group announced on Friday an agreement with Beijing Bytedance Network to show its new movie "Lost in Russia" on Bytedance's online platforms.

Bytedance, which owns the popular TikTok video-sharing app and the news app Jinri Toutiao, said given the efforts to reduce the risks of big gatherings, it had secured the deal to let fans watch "Lost in Russia" for free on its apps.

"The film will keep the appointment to meet everyone on Jan. 25, but the meeting point has changed to your cellphone and television, instead of the cinema," the company said in a statement posted on Jinri Toutiao.

Huanxi Media's share price rose as much as 30 percent after the agreement was announced.

Neither ByteDance nor Huanxi responded to requests for comment on their agreement.

China has stepped efforts to contain the coronavirus, which has killed 25 people and infected more than 800, with public transport suspended in 10 cities and public gatherings discouraged across the country.

The week-long Lunar New Year holiday usually sees audiences flock to cinemas with distributors taking advantage of the crowds to launch films but the premieres of at least 7 movies, including "Lost in Russia," postponed. 

($1 = 6.9040 Chinese yuan renminbi)

source: news.abs-cbn.com

TikTok inks music deal as it sets up shop in California

TikTok on Thursday licensed a catalogue of independent music as it worked to build on the momentum of the social networking app specializing in video snippets.

The deal between TikTok and Merlin, a digital rights agency for independent music labels, is designed to help facilitate the use of the short-form video service for promotions.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Merlin chief executive Jeremy Sirota said: "Merlin members are increasingly using TikTok for their marketing campaigns, and today's partnership ensures that they and their artists can also build new and incremental revenue streams."

London-based Merlin said its roster of members spans more than 60 countries and includes tens of thousands of independent record labels, distributors and artist management companies.

The news came as TikTok opened an office in Los Angeles to advance its ambitions in the US.

"Located between the innovative tech companies in Silicon Beach and the streaming content companies at Hayden tract (in Los Angeles), TikTok truly sits at the intersection of technology and entertainment, physically and figuratively," TikTok US general manager Vanessa Pappas said.

"While we are a global company, having a permanent office in LA speaks to our commitment to the US market and deepens our bonds with the city, and the talent and companies, that call it home."

TikTok, launched by Chinese company ByteDance in September 2017, has quickly become one of the most popular social networks in the world, with young people its main market.

In November, the app hit 1.5 billion downloads worldwide, outperforming Instagram.

Users typically post short clips of themselves performing skits, lip-syncing and dancing.

But TikTok has come under scrutiny recently over whether it censors content deemed sensitive by China's authoritarian rulers.

TikTok said in a statement in October its operations were not influenced by the Chinese government.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Silicon Valley takes on TikTok with knockoffs, censorship scare

SAN FRANCISCO — Teenagers are gaga for TikTok. That’s why Silicon Valley is so worried about it.

TikTok, which is run by a seven-year-old company in Beijing called ByteDance, allows people to create short, snappy videos and share them around the world. That simple concept has fueled its rise to quickly become one of the world’s largest social networks and mount the most direct incursion yet by a Chinese company into Silicon Valley’s turf.

Now US internet companies are pushing back. Through knockoffs, potential acquisitions and not-so-subtle references to Chinese censorship, TikTok’s competitors have been trying to protect their home turf from the service’s advancement. They haven’t had much luck so far.

Over the past 12 months, TikTok’s app has been downloaded more than 750 million times, compared with 715 million for Facebook, 450 million for Instagram, 300 million for YouTube and 275 million for Snapchat, according to the research firm Sensor Tower.

But TikTok’s US competitors could still get some help from their government. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a federal panel that reviews foreign acquisitions of US firms, is now reviewing ByteDance’s two-year-old acquisition of Musical.ly, the US company that became TikTok, The New York Times and Reuters reported Friday. Members of Congress had asked for a review last month.

A government intervention would probably be welcome news to TikTok’s competitors, who have been working from their usual crush-the-upstart playbook.

Late last year, Facebook launched a TikTok clone called Lasso. That app has been downloaded fewer than 500,000 times, mostly in Mexico, according to Sensor Tower. While many videos in TikTok’s endless feed of 15- to 60-second clips have hundreds of thousands of “likes,” the videos in Lasso’s nearly identical feed typically have a few dozen.

At YouTube, executives are also considering ways to imitate TikTok, including adding similar video-editing software within the YouTube app, according to a person familiar with the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plans are private.

Google, which owns YouTube, also held acquisition talks with Firework, a TikTok imitator that is aiming for older users, according to three people close to the talks who requested anonymity because the negotiations were confidential. One of those people said Google decided against acquiring Firework.

Firework, which has less than 3 million downloads, has also received interest from Baidu, China’s biggest search engine company, and Weibo, which runs the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, according to two people close to the talks. The Wall Street Journal first reported Google’s and Weibo’s interest in Firework.

“They see that TikTok right now is having a moment, and they have natural concern when any other app gains share in attention,” Eugene Wei, a longtime tech and media executive who now tracks the industries, said of the big tech companies. “And we haven’t seen another consumer app make that much headway in attention market share in recent history.”

At Snap, which some analysts believe is most threatened by TikTok’s rise because both target young people, the chief executive, Evan Spiegel, has argued that the companies don’t compete.

TikTok largely gives people entertainment from strangers while Snapchat connects friends, he said. When asked by an analyst during an earnings call last month whether TikTok is a “friend or foe,” he responded that TikTok advertises on Snapchat and has also built services for the app. “I think at a high level, looking at TikTok, we definitely consider them a friend,” he said.

In April, Snap began listing TikTok as a competitor in its regulatory filings.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, told employees in July that TikTok “is really the first consumer internet product built by one of the Chinese tech giants that is doing quite well around the world,” according to a transcript of the meeting published by The Verge.

He noted that it was popular with young Americans and had surpassed Instagram in India. “It’s a very interesting phenomenon,” he said. “So we have a number of approaches that we’re going to take towards this.”

Lasso isn’t Facebook’s only hedge against TikTok. In September, an app researcher in Hong Kong named Jane Manchun Wong noticed some computer code in Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, that revealed the app was testing a feature called Clips. The feature allows users to edit videos much like TikTok, splicing clips together and adding music.

Copying fast-growing upstarts has been a successful playbook for Facebook. Instagram’s popular “Stories” feature, which lets users post short, ephemeral videos, closely resembles Snapchat’s main function.

Zuckerberg suggested those short “Stories” videos are a way Facebook can compete. In response to a question about Facebook’s “plan of attack” against TikTok, Zuckerberg told employees in the July meeting that Facebook was making Stories an even more central part of Instagram.

And last month, Zuckerberg seized on TikTok’s Chinese roots to criticize it publicly. In a speech at Georgetown University in which he promoted Facebook as a US company eager to protect free speech, he said, “China is building its own internet focused on very different values and is now exporting their vision of the internet to other countries.”

As evidence, he cited reports that there were few signs of the Hong Kong protests on TikTok.

“While our services, like WhatsApp, are used by protesters and activists everywhere due to strong encryption and privacy protections, on TikTok, the Chinese app growing quickly around the world, mentions of these protests are censored, even in the U.S.,” he said. “Is that the internet we want?”

Josh Gartner, a ByteDance spokesman, said that the Chinese government does not request that TikTok censor content and that the app’s content policies are led by a team in the United States and are not influenced by any government.

“We have said clearly that these accusations are false,” he said in a statement. “This is an unfortunate attempt by Mark Zuckerberg to redirect scrutiny onto a competitor that he’s failed to copy.”

Tiktok’s has faced earlier scrutiny. In February, ByteDance agreed to pay a $5.7 million fine to the Federal Trade Commission to settle allegations that Musical.ly illegally collected information on users under the age of 13.

While they plot to take on TikTok, tech executives have also tried to play down the threat. Zuckerberg told employees in July that Facebook research shows TikTok is spending a lot to acquire users, who then don’t stick around for long.

Independent estimates suggest TikTok does retain fewer users than rivals. In June, about 26 percent of new TikTok users were still using the app a week later, according to estimates from App Annie, an app data firm. Facebook’s retention rate was 45 percent, Instagram’s was 44 percent and Snapchat’s 32 percent. By September, TikTok’s rate had risen to 39 percent.

“It is growing, but they’re spending a huge amount of money promoting it. What we’ve found is that their retention is actually not that strong after they stop advertising,” Zuckerberg said. “So the space is still fairly nascent, and there’s time for us to kind of figure out what we want to do.”


2019 The New York Times Company

source: news.abs-cbn.com

TikTok app fined in US for illegally gathering children's data

WASHINGTON -- The fast-growing, Chinese-owned video sharing network TikTok agreed to pay a $5.7 million fine to US authorities to settle charges that it illegally collected personal information from children, officials said Wednesday.

The Federal Trade Commission said the penalty by the social network, which had been known as Musical.ly, was the largest ever in a children's privacy investigation.

The social network, which has been surging in popularity with young smartphone users and taking over from rivals like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, failed to obtain parental consent from its underage users as required by the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, FTC officials said.

"The operators of Musical.ly -- now known as TikTok -- knew many children were using the app, but they still failed to seek parental consent before collecting names, email addresses, and other personal information from users under the age of 13," said FTC chairman Joe Simons. 

"This record penalty should be a reminder to all online services and websites that target children: We take enforcement of COPPA very seriously, and we will not tolerate companies that flagrantly ignore the law."

TikTok claimed some 500 million users worldwide last year, making it one of the most popular worldwide apps.

Owned by China's ByteDance, it expanded its reach in the US with the merger with Musical.ly.

Teens have been flocking to the service, which allows them to create and share videos of 15 seconds.

According to the FTC, the company required users to provide an email address, phone number, username, first and last name, a short biography, and a profile picture.

The consumer protection regulator said 65 million accounts have been registered in the United States.

Officials said the company knew that many of its users were under 13 and should have taken greater precautions.

"In our view, these practices reflected the company's willingness to pursue growth even at the expense of endangering children," said a statement from FTC commissioners Rohit Chopra and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter.

"The agency secured a record-setting civil penalty and deletion of ill-gotten data, as well as other remedies to stop this egregious conduct."

TikTok has faced criticism around the world for featuring sexually suggestive content inappropriate for children.

TikTok said in a statement it would create a "separate app experience" for younger users with additional privacy protections as part of its agreement with regulators.

"It's our priority to create a safe and welcoming experience for all of our users, and as we developed the global TikTok platform, we've been committed to creating measures to further protect our user community -- including tools for parents to protect their teens and for users to enable additional privacy settings," the statement said.

source: news.abs-cbn.com