It’s not supposed to make money, it’s a spy tool subsidized by a foreign adversary…
I thought Facebook was worse, but looking at TikTok, it takes the most invasive spyware crown.
At this point if the solution is to outlaw all invasive tracking for all companies, the first thing to do is like how Facebook got a multi-billion dollar fine by the FTC, TikTok (and repeat offenders) must be fined in the tens of billions, if they want to continue operating in the US and to stop them from violating user privacy by their invasive data collection.
[0] https://www.nrk.no/osloogviken/xl/tiktok-doesn_t-show-the-wa...
[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-...
[2] https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/26/tiktok-dodges-questions-ab...
[3] https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/03/tiktok-just-gave-itself-pe...
[4] https://twitter.com/crobertsbmw/status/1427102606753550337
[5] https://krausefx.com/blog/announcing-inappbrowsercom-see-wha...
I think that Facebook is worse, not because of the trackers but because of the very nature of the network. TikTok is mostly one-way. There are content creators and consumers, the latter vastly outnumber the former, also, creators often post content that is staged in some way, they don't really show their "real self". Facebook is a "true" social network, it is more symmetrical and intimate and people produce as much as they consume. TikTok is about showing off to the world, Facebook has that too, but it also a platform where friends can do stuff in "private".
Facebook doesn't even need spyware. People willingly put their entire life online, and for the few who are not on Facebook, their friends who are post enough about them for Facebook to create an accurate shadow profile. TikTok spies on you, but Facebook makes every user a spy working for them.
If ByteDance ever releases an Onavo style VPN app, people are going to lose their minds.
vs
"You don't speak for me"
One of those comments is speaking for a lot more people
It's "I can tell you that to us you're all the same" vs "You don't speak for the ~7.7B people not in the US."
One person is trying to speak for 7.7B and the other is advising against that.
It was an example of how to state unambiguously who was/was not being spoken for to contrast with the other statement. Maybe because I put it in quotes led you to think I was quoting someone, but it looked odd without to me.
Our free speech and privacy protections are not only stronger than China's, they're arguably stronger than Europe's too. There are some trade offs of course since Europe has GDPR and the right to be forgotten.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/technology/germany-intern...
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-arresting-nine-peo...
The reason China's situation is worse is because Europeans and Americans can and do protest this. It is not normalized and accepted. If you feel that America goes too far in how it exports its perceived brand of authoritarian, you should know that China is just getting started: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/oct/3/report-detai...
Exactly. What's illegal here is perfectly fine in China. Let's not equate the two.
US government may get data from US companies but at least it takes a warrant. Chinese government straight up owns the servers.
Then why would they stop after it was declared illegal?
On December 16, 2005, The New York Times reported that the Bush administration had been conducting surveillance against U.S. citizens without specific approval from the FISA court for each case since 2002.
In 2011, the Obama administration secretly won permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency's use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans' communications in its massive databases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...
Obviously whatever signals intelligence gathering method or data copying the NSA might be doing in Western Europe could very well exist, but it's not a defined requirement for that theoretical Belgian ISP.
And some info about it from them directly:
"As we recently shared with members of Congress, we are working toward a new system in which access to U.S. user data by anyone outside of USDS will be limited by, and subject to, robust data access protocols with monitoring and oversight mechanisms by Oracle."[2]
1. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/09/tiktok-can-keep-...
2. https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/our-approach-to-keeping-us...
EDIT: downvotes for sharing latest additional data from official sources about the topic without any private opinions? This trend is dangerous for healthy discussion.
So, any Chinese tech company is de facto going to have all of its data accessible by the Chinese government, by default.
The legal system in China is whatever the party wants it to be.
Hello, I'm an appsec engineer working on product privacy for a large multinational company. I have a pretty accurate, battle tested, mental model about data privacy w/r/t international verticals. I have worked with our China vertical and also worked on key escrow separation models. You might even be able to figure out which company, based on the above.
It's interesting to see you make these claims about me when you know nothing about me.
On December 16, 2005, The New York Times reported that the Bush administration had been conducting surveillance against U.S. citizens without specific approval from the FISA court for each case since 2002.
In 2011, the Obama administration secretly won permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency's use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans' communications in its massive databases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...
So should no one speak out against concentration camps, cultural genocide, and mass sterilization in China today because the same things have happened historically in the United States? China being an adversary should have nothing to do with it? If we can't point out such a problem with an app, then the road we're going down is we can't say anything else about China either.
Why is the solution not to make broad data collection illegal?
Edit:
> So should no one speak out against concentration camps, cultural genocide, and mass sterilization in China today because the same things have happened historically in the United States?
Not at all - those things are genuinely awful, but one key difference is that Facebook, Google, and others are still siphoning up people's data today. This isn't something that happened in the past. I think the comparison is quite valid.
Just one example: There are no reports of Meta (etc) logging my keystrokes and data OUTSIDE of what I enter into the app/website.
It comes down to what you believe is the lesser of two evil systems of governance. I will not hesitate to criticize the United States, NATO, the central banks, or the IMF, and I have many problems with them; I would still prefer to live under their system as opposed to the kind of world that China proposes. I live in the United States, and to an extent I want the United States to remain stable. Why should I not be concerned that an adversary in both policy and philosophy gets to have as much influence as TikTok over the minds of millions of Americans?
The only way I could see viewing US tech and China tech as equal is if one has no connection to the soil on which they stand, or perhaps if they live outside those two systems. I don't live outside of those systems. I live in the United States. I don't think the future proposed by the United States or any of its tech companies is as bad as what China proposes to bring to the world.
> one key difference is that Facebook, Google, and others are still siphoning up people's data today.
Again, that is a point that no one is disputing. And why emphasize today? As far as I am aware, TikTok doesn't plan to mine data. It already does. Regardless, I can't see how it's defensible to allow an adversary that much influence over our psychology. It's one thing for us to essentially cause our own problems, but it's another to invite problems from nations that would be thrilled for the United States to either be under its complete control or not exist at all.
Edit: Typo
It won't do a damn thing to reduce TikTok's growth either. Nothing will until TT becomes replaced by the next thing.
The reason there's always someone starting a subthread about it is because Silicon Valley and the United States has, had, and will continue to have all the same incentives and problems for international users. [1]
It's not a very interesting conversation, because it adds nothing that hasn't been said a million times, but neither does another lap around the 'China bad' rhetorical track.
[1] And also domestic users, but they have some means of recourse for it.
I would really like to see people in North America demand better from their leaders instead of patting ourselves on the back about how at least we're better than China.
[1] https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2022/09/tool-gives-polic...
This is true, and bad, but consider another difference in this situation:
In the US, companies were able to respond to this revelation by shoring up their security practices, and people exercised their right to openly criticize the government. This is not possible in China.
The US government still has and has always had access to all data about US citizens.
Bizarre that you think that stopped.