覇権争いとTikTok

若者に大人気のTikTok、安全保障に脅威があるとしてトランプ大統領が禁止令。

しかしユーザの数は米国内で既に1億人。本当に止める事はできるのでしょうか。Arvinとダベりました。

Toshi
I often hear the word “TIKTOK”. Do you know what it is, Arvin?

Arvin
As far as I know, it’s a video-sharing social networking service. It was initiated by a Chinese tech-savvy company named ByteDance.

Toshi
How is it different from Youtube, I wonder?

Arvin
They are almost the same. Young people all over the world seem to use TikTok mainly, though.

Toshi
I heard that the US president Donald Trump is asking the big smartphone companies in the USA to stop using Tiktok.

Arvin
What for?

Toshi
Trump is fearing that there might be a possibility of members’ personal information being leaked to Chinese government agencies.

Arvin
I’m not sure if Trump will still be able to stop everyone in the US given that there are already 100 million TikTok users as we speak and telling each and every one of them to cease the usage would be challenging.

Toshi
You’re joking! Are there already 100 million users in the US alone?

Arvin
It’s not surprising at all, Toshi-san.

Toshi
According to the NHK news, Trump is thinking of acquiring TikTok through a US-owned company instead of asking people to quit it since it’s already unavoidable to control the mass usage at this point.

Arvin
Let me see some news online here.
It says Microsoft is aiming to do this stunt but I haven’t gotten about the details of this negotiation yet. But of course, the Chinese-side of the company will not easily give in to the US knowing how tricky the Chinese people are, right?

Toshi
Oh No. I’m fed up with these US-China hegemony talks. After all, they get us nowhere!
Why don’t we stop and watch TikTok instead?

Arvin
Good idea.