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Comment by causi | Hacker News Reader

TikTok keeps a list of everything its users watch and do. It keeps a list of users who watch videos about tattoos. It keeps a list of users who watch videos about wearing dresses. How would it know to recommend you more gay stuff if it doesn't know you like gay stuff?

TikTok is a spyware company. Always has been. "They include gay people in their spying!" is not news.

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How is it any different from google, facebook, amazon, etc?

Who said it is? There is no need for drive-by whataboutism.

There really is no reasoning with some people. You compare two somewhat dissimilar things and people say you’re comparing apples and oranges. You compare two very similar things and they say you are doing a whataboutism.

Your comment fails to recognize the point they made. They're saying that we shouldn't tolerate this behavior from any company, not just TikTok

The original comment seemed to be worrying that TikTok is constantly branded as Spyware while Facebook etc are branded as advertising companies, seemingly powered by distrust of China.

It doesn’t sounds like it was run of the mill data logging. I don’t think they had explicit lists of people who watch videos of tattoos?

There is no explicit "list;" the title is being deliberately dishonest to foment outrage.

> A TikTok representative told the Wall Street Journal that the data set was accessible on the dashboard to authorised employees only and that the dashboard was deleted in the US almost a year ago.

That said, the fact that even a database view exists is a problem. The threat is real-- it's the same reason the Chinese were interested in buying Grindr.

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