this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2024
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Before I would get any itch to join the TikTok trend back when it started, I heard that the Chinese Communist Party was collecting some worrying amount of information on their user base, has been suppressing and/or blocking content that raised voice about the uyghur situation and did various nasty things. So I thought I would stay away from that until the situation improves. I have never heard a fraction of information about that happening. Did everyone just suddenly stop caring about how disgustingly TikTok treats privacy and user data (and how they suppress voices they don't like), or did I just simply miss the bit where they stopped doing all those things?
Because that's one of the many reasons I haven't touched it with a stick.
The vast majority of people don't actually care about any of the issues you raised. They care more about fitting in with their friends and engineered dopamine hits.
The vast majority of humans are useless fucks that act as though they're incapable of thinking beyond their own self interests, or even less. 🤷🏼♂️
Well, considering I’m on iOS and gave it no access to anything, and I would never use it to upload anything to begin with, these issues do not pertain to me. I don’t link accounts on it, and the email is a burner email that iOS made for me to specifically use for that app.
I think a lot of these privacy concerns are more for people who actually want to use it for posting or making videos. Then I would be worried about all the data. I give them nothing, no real names or anything. So, I would say I’m okay. 👍
Couldn't have said it better
Well, considering I’m on iOS and gave it no access to anything, and I would never use it to upload anything to begin with, these issues do not pertain to me. I don’t link accounts on it, and the email is a burner email that iOS made for me to specifically use for that app.
I think a lot of these privacy concerns are more for people who actually want to use it for posting or making videos. Then I would be worried about all the data. I give them nothing, no real names or anything. So, I would say I’m okay. 👍
Every social media site does the exact same thing. There was just an article on here the other day about the US government buying people's information from data brokers. How is that any different? Meta has been censoring anything pro-Palestine, Twitter is a breeding ground for Nazis, YouTube picks and chooses what counts as "mature content" aka what gets monetized. The way TikTok treats privacy is how every social media platform treats it, it has nothing to do with them being Chinese.
I sure hope Blåhaj Lemmy isn't doing any of that crap.
Um, isn't that obvious? The US government accesses information collected by private companies. The Chinese government controls a source of news that is used by billions of people. Those are totally different things.
Sure, TikTok insists they have no ties to the government. But there's plenty of evidence exposing that as a blatant lie.
Not sure what Meta/Twitter/YouTube have to do with this. Bringing them up is at best a distraction. If you don't trust them (I don't, for the record) don't use those platforms. Simple.
There was literally a Senate hearing today about KOSA, the bill allowing the US government the legal grounds to control sources of information on the internet. So no, they aren't totally different things.
And I was specifically referring to this part that OP said:
The only difference between the Chinese government and the US government collecting information is that the US goes through a middleman who aggregates it from multiple sources.
Meta/Twitter/YouTube have everything to do with this because they're doing the exact same thing. Do I need to mention the numerous times Facebook has been sued for illegal data collection? Cambridge Analytica ring a bell?
If you are warry of all of them I don't think the argument is aimed at you.
Many people think tik too is the devil while willingly feeding the other ones. Not to mention that the hate aimed at tik too is mostly manufactured by the government.
I think the point is that all of them should be held to a higher standard, not just the one owned by foreigners.
I don't use TikTok, but a lot of the concern is just overblown China bad stuff (CCP does suck, but that doesn't mean you have to be reactionary about everything Chinese).
There is no direct evidence that the CCP has some back door to grab user data, or that it's directing suppression of content. It's just not a real thing. The fear mongering has been about what the CCP could force ByteDance to do, given their power over Chinese firms. ByteDance itself has been trying to reassure everyone that that wouldn't happen, including by storing US user data on US servers out of reach of the CCP (theoretically anyway).
You stopped hearing about this because that's politics, new shinier things popped up to get people angry about. North Dakota or whatever tried banning TikTok and got slapped down on first amendment grounds. Politicians lost interest, and so did the media.
Now that's not to say TikTok is great about privacy or anything. It's just that they are the same amount of evil as every other social media company and tech company making money from ads.
It's literally just racism. People act like other social media platforms aren't just as bad about privacy because they sell your information instead of giving it directly to the government.
Well, considering I’m on iOS and gave it no access to anything, and I would never use it to upload anything to begin with, these issues do not pertain to me. I don’t link accounts on it, and the email is a burner email that iOS made for me to specifically use for that app.
I think a lot of these privacy concerns are more for people who actually want to use it for posting or making videos. Then I would be worried about all the data. I give them nothing, no real names or anything. So, I would say I’m okay. 👍