[duaoebg]

The one thing I liked about MS was that it didn’t have a successful social media asset. This allowed it to stay generally apolitical and out of the fray.

This will be the beginning of the end of MS. (As opposed to the middle of the end of a very drawn out decline.)

I’m sure they see it as another Skype. The US govt subsidizing an acquisition to get access to data.

TikTok optimizes hard for popularity which involves many unpleasant choices in their algorithm. MS will feel compelled to ‘fix’ this both for a perceived social good but also for the benefit of the US government who is no doubt subsidizing this.

MS will become a target for lobbying by interest groups and the US government to a degree it has never dealt with and I don’t think MS can handle it. This is not the same as criticism for being a monopoly or making crappy software.

The best case scenario will be they screw with the algorithm early enough and bad enough that people leave en mass.

These are the same people who couldn’t leave Skype alone.