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Comment by rladd | Hacker News Reader

Here's what I am guessing it is:

- Bytedance retains some ownership and control of the app and the algorithms

- Oracle runs the entire back end on their infrastructure

- Oracle guarantees to the US government that no data is going back to China (because they control the release of the app and control the back end)

- This satisfies the USA's (supposed) national security concerns and also satisfies China because TikTok is not actually being "sold" to a US company.

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If it was that simple, Google would have been the obvious choice. They have already started migrating to GCP and signed an $800 million dollar three year deal.

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/tiktok-agreed-to-buy...

Only Google doesn't really do B2B. They're B2C. Oracle does B2B.

Uhhh what?

They've been doing AdWords since 2000 and AdSense since 2003. Those are B2B and have made them many hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue.

Yes. It's made THEM billions of dollars. If you've ever been on the other side of the pipeline, as an advertiser or a web site owner, you know you're treated as a statistic. Businesses suddenly disappear when Google delists them on either end. That's most visible on Youtube, where random Youtubers find themselves demonatized with no apparent rhyme, reason, or appeal, but it happens all over the Googleyweb.

If it's one of a dozen places you advertise, that's fine. If you're trying to run a business where it's a core platform, you quickly run into the limits there.

This is a fantastic idea - the only thing missing (that I see) is that Oracle would need to see the source code and verify that the checksum of the apps built from that code matches the downloads from the Google Play Store and App Store.

Otherwise the guarantee that no data is being sent to China is not airtight. Oracle could audit the app every time it gets an update and watch network traffic, but this would miss anything sent by code activated remotely after the fact. It wouldn't work for long, but the US government will look for any reason to deny this deal. I don't think Oracle will audit the app constantly anyway. Come to think of it, that could apply to the source code too, if the malicious code was extremely well hidden.

Right, they will audit the source code but have no IP rights to it, is my guess.

Also they will probably take over responsibility for the Play and App Store accounts and be responsible for pushing the new versions (after audit).

How would they shuttle out that much traffic undetected?

It is a video app. Couldn't you embed the embargoed data into the media content using steganography. All the receiver of the data would need to do is download a modified version of the client, then collect the data. From the server side it would just look like a normal TikTok app watching videos.

Yes. I think you are right. ByteDance is not selling Tiktok outright. They will be using oracle cloud infrastructure. But not sure if that will be enough for the current administration. It feels like tiktok is playing smart.

Impressive speculation: your theory is the most compelling in seeing here

And looks like that's what happened? So both Oracle and Walmart only own the 20% of that new company?

What about the CDN that TikTok uses in Fastly? Will it be replaced by Oracle?

Almost certainly why would they use a third party for stuff they offer themselves?

The only losers are software developers at TikTok who now have to migrate to Oracle's database.

Oracle cloud is not Oracle db only. What is tiktok running on now? Do not forget Oracle owns mysql as well...

So, the user graph will be bifurcated, with US users isolated from those in the rest of the world? If so, I don't see how the US-only TikTok remains popular for much longer.

Not really, where does the implication of a bifurcated graph come into play?

Plenty of companies store their users’ data in the US, but user profiles and content made public is visible from anywhere in the world.

Reasonable guess, although I think it would be impossible to guarantee that no data is going back to China.

Oracle can audit the app code and also probably sandbox the back end in such a way that they can be fairly sure things aren't escaping, at least not on a large scale.

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