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Comment by jeanofthedead | Hacker News Reader

Same. Just don't give apps all of the permissions. TikTok doesn't have access to my camera, photo library, microphone, local network, location, etc. It's not that hard.

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How sure are you that it doesn't?

Because the operating system controls that and you can tell the operating system to deny these features.

But how do you know the OS is being honest? Or the hardware?

You can build an app and test it yourself. It also isn't terribly difficult to extract the java side of the platform code.

How can you trust that there isn't a backdoor that's not available to you?

Let me get this straight. You are saying that Google and Apple, in coordination with Bytedance, have introduced code into their operating systems to specifically permit apps signed with Bytedance's signing key to access these APIs without requesting permission. And that they must have done this in an especially sneaky way, given that, at least in the case of Android, the java layer of the code running on your device is trivial to inspect and the entire platform is available as open source. And absolutely nobody has noticed this, despite it being not an especially difficult thing for a security researcher to find (TikTok would need to be accessing an especially strange API since the ordinary APIs do checks in the java side on Android).

And Google and Apple are doing this because... why? Is Bytedance paying them a shitload of money? Are their CEOs secret CCP plants?

If you are concerned about this, how would even refusing to install TikTok protect you? After all, Google and Apple could simply collect the data directly in the OS and send it to Bytedance themselves.

It's for plausible deniability. They want to rally us against them, and they can stand on the sidelines smirking and raking in the cash that TikTok provides them.

I would recommend looking into some independent thinkers and doing your own research on the collusion between these big companies. There's definitely some out there, however they suspiciously get removed from HN as soon as they're posted.

Do you also forbid giving TikTok access to your brain? That’s the main issue here.

Dang, do you know how bad you sound? TikTok may be crack cocaine but it’s just media, protected expression, and beyond consideration for censorship. You let these bastards turn off this app and they will come back and do it again and again.

Mind cancer!

For the good of national security!

Save the children!

What a bunch of rubbish. Go back to school! Wait, you’re screwed there too!

Is your claim that all media is perfectly fungible so you don’t need to care about its content or origin and that media has no impact on your beliefs and psyche? That doesn’t sound reasonable to me.

No, I’m saying folks can choose what media they want. Are you suggesting that some media is so evil its availability shouldn’t be tolerated?

Yeah, no.

No, I'm not claiming that media is so evil it can't be tolerated. I'm claiming that there is a national security risk to letting an adversary control the information flow to the population. This has nothing to do with the contents of the media itself.

So run back to Facebook. Or Instagram. Or YouTube. Or Telegram. Or Discord. Or Reddit. Or …

Obviously that isn't the main issue here, since disabling TikTok on UT wifi does very little to stop people from actually using it.

So then what does disabling it accomplish?

Practically, nothing. It achieves geopolitical dick wagging, I guess. TikTok isn't a threat to networks. If it is any threat, it is a threat to users (and to a much lesser extent, to device managers). Disabling it on various networks is meaningless.

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