Damned if You Do (Premium)

Over the weekend, Microsoft admitted that it would like to acquire the non-Chinese assets of TikTok. Doing so would be a mistake.

News of Microsoft’s interest in TikTok, a social media network that specializes in goofy, user-made videos, first surfaced last Friday. But the software giant confirmed the rumors over the weekend after the U.S. White House revealed that it was considering “banning” TikTok for national security reasons.

That assertion is devoid of evidence, and as with the U.S. government’s bizarre unilateral actions against networking giant Huawei, it is instead based solely on xenophobic fears that TikTok, a Chinese-based company will be forced by the Chinese government, or the Communist Party, or whatever, to … do something. Turn over private data about its users, I guess, or perhaps even spy on its users. Whatever the perceived risks, they’re all hypothetical at this point. What we used to call FUD (“fear, uncertainty, and doubt.”)

But whatever. Microsoft’s interest in TikTok means that an acquisition of at least its non-Chinese assets would result in some sort of oversight by a trustworthy, U.S.-based tech giant. So no matter where you fall on the spectrum of FUD around TikTok and other Chinese companies, we can all at least agree that with Microsoft as its steward, TikTok would be less suspicious to the U.S. government and to those citizens who believe that everything Chinese is evil. Problem solved, right?

Not so fast.

Many critics have pointed out that Microsoft hasn’t exactly exceled at consumer services in recent years and that it could thus end up being the worst thing that ever happened to TikTok. And too many are falling into the all-too-obvious trap of telling outdated jokes about how Microsoft might rename the service.

That all misses the point. Microsoft won’t buy TikTok just to integrate it into Bing or Microsoft 365 or whatever. Microsoft is buying the service for the same singular reason it acquired LinkedIn, Minecraft, and GitHub: For its massive community of users. And it will treat this acquisition as it did those, by letting it continue to run independently as its own company.

Whether that is a good strategy is debatable. But I’m not at all worried that Microsoft’s lack of success with consumers will impact TikTok: The firm’s hands-off approach will mean that TikTok can sink or swim against Facebook and Twitter on its own.

No, the problem with Microsoft acquiring TikTok is that simply doing so will promote the xenophobic policies of the current U.S. administration and will amount to the theft of a huge chunk of a Chinese company by an American tech giant. This is exactly the kind of behavior that we, as Americans, are told to expect of the Chinese: That the government will meddle with a supposedly independent corporation. Ironic.

To be clear, TikTok does not want to be sold, and it does not want to be broken up. It is only considering this outcome to stay in business in the wake of a potential U.S. ban. The government is causing this action, not regulating the normal course of business.

If Microsoft actually goes through with this acquisition, it will be viewed as an instrument of the U.S. government, a firm with such faulty morals that it will grab share and influence in a market in which it does not participate by legally dubious means, and do so at the behest of the government that is supposed to regulate its behavior. Instead, that government is demanding “a very substantial portion of [the TikTok acquisition] price is going to have to come into the Treasury of the United States, because [it is] making it possible for this deal to happen.” This is all happening, hypocritically, at a time when Microsoft and several other tech giants are under heightened scrutiny and multiple antitrust investigations both here and in Europe.

Put another way, this acquisition would sully the carefully crafted public image that Microsoft has constructed for itself under Satya Nadella.

Today’s Microsoft, we’re told, is inclusive and open, and it partners with friends and foes alike. Today’s Microsoft is a good corporate citizen that’s trying to lower housing prices in the Seattle area near its home office. Today’s Microsoft will lower its emissions so far by whatever year that it will actually be farting clean air back at us somehow.

Today’s Microsoft might just be a lie. And if it does acquire TikTok, it’s going to find that explaining away that lie is a lot harder than it used to be.

Microsoft, don’t do this. You don’t need TikTok, and you most certainly don’t need to be seen as an accomplice to this kind of corporate theft.