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Comment by cosarara | Hacker News Reader

What kind of data? TikTok knows what content I interact to... on tiktok. That's it. Unless they have an android 0-day or something. It has no access to my mic, camera, browsing history, contacts list, or anything useful. Guess who has access to all that, if they want it, though? Google and Facebook (through whatsapp). What is the privacy concern here, exactly?

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If you've logged in it can potentially match your login information or email address to other activity on the web. TikTok's servers could also place you geographically somewhat roughly based on ip address.

Outside of that I agree. It's unclear what data TikTok is supposedly gathering that other apps aren't already and why that's a cause for alarm.

Phase 1: Collect data about what users like to watch on TikTok

Phase 2: ???

Phase 3: The world is now controlled by China and we are doing full communism

You're being downvoted, but got a chuckle out of me.

but you don't understand! This is taking away from AMERICAN profits from surveillance capitalism! Think of the jobs at stake!

It’s a bit ignorant for you think that data is limited to “mic, camera, browsing history, contact list” etc. TikTok can harvest data on the type of content posted and what users interact with. Although it feels harmless, I’m sure there are troves of insights to be derived just from that.

> It’s a bit ignorant for you

A bit rude but ok

> TikTok can harvest data on the type of content posted and what users interact with

That's exactly what I said, and I think this is expected by the users and does not worry me.

Didn’t mean to come off as rude. My apologies

When you sign up for an account, they also can find the friends in your Contact that also have a TikTok account. But you can bypass this of course. Other than that, I'm also a bit confused as to what data they have access to

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