If I had a nickel for every time I saw one of these posts, I’d have two nickels, Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice on the same day
I’m not big of a fan of Chinese surveillance but to most peoples point that have already posted here, if this was about privacy then the government should be passing laws to protect consumer privacy as a whole and not just targeting Chinese companies. Really shows that the government doesn’t give a shit about your privacy just who’s able to get it.
Edit to add: I’m talking about the US. The 13th amendment didn’t outlaw slavery, all it takes is for the government to decide you are a criminal and you’re now legally a slave. You can imagine this might be a good reason to not want the US government involved in your privacy because it can lead to you being a literal slave.
The concern about TikTok acquiring your private information for marketing purposes is a red herring. The concern of our government here is propaganda and narrative control – power.
I am tired of the unspoken Western Big Tech apologia. TikTok OBJECTIVELY collects far lesser data than Big Tech apps and services, according to reports from 2 reputed data collection analysis companies. Moreover, the below assumes you have an account, which is not even needed to use TikTok, unlike Instagram or Snapchat.
One of the key important aspects of threat modelling for your desired privacy is the acceptance of facts instead of false nationalist opinions.
Moreover, while TikTok collects basic data, it never forces you to login other than for commenting (for obvious reasons) and similarly personal things, unlike Instagram. If you open an IG link in web browser, you cannot replay the video second time, and if you scroll the account’s posted images and videos, you will not be able to flick through a second time.
Unlike Tiktok, with Western platforms and services like Facebook, you give phone number, contact book, IMEI, location data, email, some name or pseudonym et al. With TikTok, none, because you do not need an account for it.
Facebook/Instagram and major Western platforms’ data collection on a user is more than what TikTok does on a user, even if there is an account on both services. On top of this, TikTok does not have tracking pixels, ad networks, CDN and other methods of tracking on other websites, unlike Facebook ecosystem. This allows Facebook ecosystem to correlate, interlink and form data clusters on users and IP addresses. Remember how Facebook ecosystem disallows accountless access? Or how they C&D’d Barinsta developer Austin Huang, citing they dislike anonymous access to Instagram?
Western platforms also inject malware in browser using domains like netseer-ipaddr-assoc.xy.fbcdn.net, something TikTok does not do if you do not have an account.
This is precisely what makes TikTok objectively so harmless without an account, and even with an account, relatively far less harmful. It does not mean TikTok does not collect data, but the difference is too wide. These are the facts, free of American nationalist propaganda.
I read through the first link you provided, it doesn’t align with your claim “TikTok OBJECTIVELY collects far lesser data than Big Tech apps and services.”
TikTok OBJECTIVELY collects far lesser data than Big Tech apps and services
This is not true for a number of reasons, first being that once the data gets sent to a Chinese server, it’s gone. It’s like a void. Those “data collections analysis” can speculate, but they truly have no idea what happens with that data. Another reason that TikTok is as bad as Instagram, is that they farmed all the data from the in-app browser. Every click, scroll, everything.
You can argue that they have a different approach to data farming, and they do: they try and rope you in, trick you into giving them your data. But it’s demonstrable wrong to say that they collect less data. I wouldn’t say they collect more data than typical west social media platforms, but I think it’s disingenuous to say they’re somehow better.
My main reason is I’m an American, China (probably) can’t do shit to me. But here I’m subject to so much shit America can do legally and illegally, with zero repercussions.
If China fucked me in particular over, odds are it would at least spark debate here. If America spied on my messages and stopped me from protesting something, that’s just a Tuesday afternoon here.
The only reason why Congress wants to ban it, is due to pressure from news agencies and the government, because TikTok can’t be controlled by the CIA. You can’t manufacture consent of the people if the content comes from someone else you don’t control.
The USA has a very strong first amendment. Cruise social media and you can find Americans literally calling on fellow Americans to overthrow the government. And these people are largely left alone by the government. Heck, a fair number of folks who were involved in the January 6th insurrection are still walking free.
If all you did was drop a wiki link that’s a pretty worthless comment. Do you think China is the only country where dissidents get in trouble with the government? Do you think the U.S. doesn’t harass (or worse) dissidents?
I think the comment shouldn’t have been removed, but principally because it is trivial to refute. The US is well aware of the fact that people calling for revolution have no teeth, while the people who actually did substantial law-breaking on Jan 6 (which itself had no teeth, but I digress) were indeed arrested.
Meanwhile, Wikipedia’s list of Chinese"dissidents" includes blatant fraudsters like Miles Guo, who fled China to evade capture for financial crimes before being imprisoned in the US for continuing to commit financial crimes, to say nothing of the “dissidents” involved in actual insurrectionary activity that killed PLA soldiers.
Advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have called the bill “censorship plain and simple,” arguing that “jeopardizing access to the platform jeopardizes access to free expression.”
At 27 years old, Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost is the youngest member of Congress, and he opposes the bill.
“I think that it is a violation of people’s First Amendment rights,” he said. “TikTok is a place for people to express ideas. I have many small businesses in my district and content creators in my district, and I think it’s going to drastically impact them too.”
The fact that Republicans started it is enough for me to be at least suspicious of why its even being considered.
EDIT: Also lol at “strong first amendment rights” when redneck states ban any books with queer or black characters. And lmao at “Strong first amendment rights” when people get fired for talking about forming a union, let alone even trying to make one.
I'm European and I definitely feel that way. I don't like American spyware, but I trust the Chinese government much less than I do American corporations.
Between August and September 2007 Chinese hackers were suspected of using Trojan horse spyware on various government computers, including those of the Chancellory, the Ministry of Economics and Technology, and the Ministry of Education and Research.[180] Germans officials believe Trojan viruses were inserted in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint files, and approximately 160 gigabytes of data were siphoned to Canton, Lanzhou and Beijing via South Korea, on instructions from the People’s Liberation Army.[181]
China does not even spy a hundredth of what USA does. Since Anglos love to quantify everything, it might be a good idea to quantify spying too. 160 GB sounds like nothing to me compared to millions of TBs in Utah datacenters. By your logic, one person who killed one person, and one person who committed a murder of 10000s of people, are equally guilty.
How about I share something from my own country. What I reckon is that only some of my data goes to the US government through Google, Microsoft etc. while the Chinese government controls corporations like tencent much more than the US government controls US corporations. Besides all that, services from Microsoft and Google are much harder to avoid than for example tiktok and Huawei. So the US is getting my data no matter what, I might as well limit how much of it goes to china.
They are not the same thing. Facebook is bad too (and actually, a platform-neutral legal restriction based on behavior would be better), but TikTok is absolutely unique in the type of threat it poses:
The Chinese government treats communication networks as their personal hoovering-attachment for any data they might want. Companies are required by law to operate as an arm of Chinese intelligence, both in terms of giving information and in terms of manipulating what information people on their network are allowed to see. The FBI and NSA definitely spy on Americans too to some extent, but it's simply not in the same league or with the same type of goals.
It's not just your TikTok data. It's photos and files on your phone, your contacts, your messages, basically anything that the app with its too-permissive permissions can get its hands on, can potentially go up to Chinese intelligence.
TikTok is not structured like any other app. It has features like custom-downloading and running arbitrary binaries from its central server that honestly don't even make much sense except as spying apparatus (consistent with #1).
What China might do with this unprecedented level of access to everyone's phones is malevolent in a different way than, say, Facebook's access to everyone's data. Like Facebook they have the ability to e.g. influence an election, but they also have the ability to try to blackmail an individual to compromise them, or do for-real torture in the real world (say by tracking down a dissident via TikTok spying and then having one of their little Chinese-police-in-America units grab them).
What is the Chinese state going to do to you from the other side of the world, other than feed you targeted ads? Attack you with Havana Syndrome or turn you into a Manchurian Candidate via 5G? Why would the Chinese state be the least bit interested in you?
Does no one remember how ridiculous the red scares and the first cold war hysteria looked in the rear view mirror? Because the new hysteria looks just as ridiculous to me now. Same cartoonish propaganda, same credulous acceptance of it.
Honestly way less afraid of China snooping on my data than US corporations. Only one of those groups regularly colludes with the FBI/CIA/other three letter agencies.
Tankies failing to comprehend the fundamental difference between an actor who tries to make money off you and an actor trying to manufacture dissent and influence the public narrative
Point taken, though it’s still an American company they could crack down upon if they prove too dangerous too.
To be clear: I don’t want to get spied upon by anyone and I don’t use most of the American services for that reason. But obviously domestic bad actors are better than bad actors controlled by a foreign and hostile government
It would be a lot better if Congress could pass a comprehensive privacy bill, but we lack a functioning government so I guess this is the best we can do.
… it’s obvious because a domestic entity is subject to local laws, and can if push comes to shove be shut down or nationalized. A foreign one is essentially out of reach.
The existence of the article you’re literally commenting on directly refutes what you’re saying here. Like you’re in a thread because of news that demonstrates that the opposite of what you’re saying here is actually true.
If you need more examples - What happened to Facebook after the Cambridge Analytica scandal? They got banned by congress right? They got shut down? The government stopped them from continuing to manipulate the public?
Why is it contentious that a government can better curb foreign interference if it is done on a domestic platform? Regardless of how shitty the United States are that’s a simple fact and also practiced by China, only to a much greater extent.
I have no horse in the race, I’m not an American. I don’t know or really care to what extent the corrupt shithole that is America can control its own corporations due to regulatory capture. That’s your own problem to fix.
All I’m arguing is that from the perspective of the us government it makes perfect sense to be wary of foreign influence before its own corps.
Didn’t tiktok just accidentally prove the American legislator’s argument by causing mass calls into the legislators office or something? Endless amounts of people who don’t even know why they are calling, just because “tiktok said so”. Are you telling me that isn’t a disturbing implication?
It’s crazy to me that people such as you unironically believe the position you’re saying that American companies are easier to crack down on.
We are literally seeing concrete proof in action that domestic companies are much harder to crack down on or regulate. They are much better positioned to lobby and are currently using their immense political power to protect themselves while removing their foreign rivals. There isn’t even talk of taking action against them because they are so politically powerful.
Read the other comments, I don’t want to repeat myself for every idiot jumping on the dogpile. Why does every single China fan assume I love the United States and have a blind eye towards their bullshit? I’m not an American.
But I am not accusing you of anything…? Unless you think asking you to check If what you’re about to comment has been commented several times before is an accusation.
It’s okay though I’m just about done arguing over this topic. All responses can essentially be summed up with “but the USA do it too”.
You pretend you are objective, while insinuating the motive of USA companies is solely to make money and advertise, while China is the big baddie “narrative” manipulator, which is some alternate reality bullshit. China is not the country that has done foreign interventions and/or genocides in 100+ countries. Or stuff like the genocide in Myanmar which Facebook facilitated, or the intentional misreporting Reuters did during Tiananmen Square to make it look like those CIA paycheck “democracy” students who burnt PLA soldiers alive first were good people.
Why are you, again, telling me that “the United States do it too”? Does it not compute that it doesn’t have any bearing on this argument?
From the perspective of the United States government it makes perfect sense to be hostile towards Chinese influence before its own platforms. If they wanted to curb foreign interference there, they could, their failure to do so is just a symptom of regulatory capture. That’s the whole argument here.
It doesn’t matter for this argument what atrocities they committed elsewhere or how poorly the country is run in various ways.
Besides, China does the exact same thing itself. All foreign corporations in the country operate under strict regulations or as junior partners to Chinese companies, and can and will be kicked out for much less than what tiktok does. And those corporations are not directly tied to foreign governments as tiktok is.
There is no whataboutism in pointing out your argument is reversed and completely false. Also, “whataboutism” is a dog whistle word used by Westerners for deflection used to abrupt or end the argument when there are no real counterpoints. And since US government loves to demonize their “near-peer competitors” (official term) China and Russia, it is perfectly fair to argue with US in perspective.
will be kicked out for much less than what tiktok does
Tesla car cameras were being used by CIA to spy on Chinese military areas. Tesla got banned from roaming around military areas and still operates and manufactures there.
The fundamental difference is who is in control, and for what purpose.
American spyware is controlled by corporations, and is all about selling you shit you don’t need.
Chinese (and Russian) spyware is–apparently–controlled rather directly by their respective governments, and is being used to suppress democracy and increase polarization in the US and EU.
I don’t like any spyware. But the latter category–spyware that’s functionally state-sponsored–is clearly more immediately dangerous. The former is more like a slow-growing cancer.
I’m not defending China here, but since Snowden we now know that American corporate spyware does serve the government. And they are suppressing democracy - this isn’t a democracy yet, and peaceful protests for democracy are met with violent police resistance - Occupy, BLM, etc.
I sincerely hope that Lemmy can grow large enough to serve as a staging ground for democratic protests in America, just because it’s not corporate controlled.
All of the US corporate social media platforms are part of the US military-industrial-intellegence complex now. Look at their boards of directors and executives. Look at the Twitter Files. Look Hamilton 68.
Twitter files are mostly a tool for Elon Musks policy. Wiki entry shows enough of why they are problematic. The Hamilton 68 controversy isn’t a big thing like you are pretending. If anything their database was misunderstood. businessinsider.com/what-is-hamilton-68-russian-o…
Glad to see the first comment in this chain being one calling out the usage of the Twitter files as a serious supporting point for anything but a point of deflection by Mr “I don’t use pr firms”.
Immediately emptied out a salt shaker on how I viewed everything else in the original comment :| homie thinks the Twitter files are relevant… ehhh I probably don’t have much interest or respect in any of their other opinions
guess I’m being downvoted by the tinfoil hats in here anyway. Same as the twitter users, it’s often not bots that are the problem but rather dumb people :-(
Id be surprised if all admins of every instance that’s federated with Lemmy are all on the same page, let alone looking for narrative driven bots.
I see “Ukrainian combat footage” with hundreds of upvotes and no comments, there was also an article speaking positively about facebook that had lots of upvotes and no comments (it’s in my history of you look, because I commented lol) - those look like red flags to me
I don’t find the first strange, but I also find combat footage both interesting and not worth commenting on. Plus I think a lot of people just upvote Ukraine stuff and move along because there’s no more conversation to be had in general.
That second one does seem a little weird, but Lemmy’s more than capable of licking corporate boot when you phrase it correctly to them. I’ve always found that strange in general.
I mean, that’s part of the reason that I’m here, rather than The Place That Shall Not Be Named. That, and because my account was permanently banned because I suggested torching the house of a someone flying a nazi flag.
Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users’ communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company’s own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian.
The files provided by Edward Snowden illustrate the scale of co-operation between Silicon Valley and the intelligence agencies over the last three years. They also shed new light on the workings of the top-secret Prism program, which was disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post last month.
Well yeah, by default Microsoft holds your encryption keys. Why wouldn’t they be able to unencrypt it? Implement Customer Key if you want to hold your own encryption keys.
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