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Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

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Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#421
post #172

I feel like this TikTok backlash is so overblown. I don't think TikTok is spying on US consumers/business, and I don't think TikTok is sharing any US private data with CCP... I believe this because there's no evidence to the contrary, and out of principle you shouldn't assume malintent. In fact, TikTok explicitly left Hong Kong because if they didn't they would have to share private data with CCP to comply with new l…

It's been admitted that tiktok actively suppresses content on peoples front pages that include visibly disabled users, "ugly" users, fat users, etc. etc. - anything that makes their image look "bad" in their eyes. Kind of goes against current shoe-horned American societal values of "everyone should be respected, regardless of who, what, how, when, where they are"

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..."

You're not wrong about TikTok, but 244 years and 6 days seems like a long time to consider a particular set of values "shoe-horned".

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was just that for the past months every time someone forwarded me a stupid video I was supposed to like, it had a TikTok logo on it. So in my view this became the source of "stupid videos people bother me with". Not exactly a charming quality. This quote comes to mind: > I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary. It’ll…

I never liked TikTok or this kind of random videos or pics people share. No matter where they came from (it used to be a site called "Dumpert" in the Netherlands before which is also on my "highly annoying" list). I'm just too polite to tell them to piss off with their videos :P That's really the core problem here. But TikTok associates itself by putting their logo on the videos which is something I haven't seen befo…

> putting their logo on the videos which is something I haven't seen before.

Woooooooorrrrld staaaaaaaar

Also if you ever see a 7 second vertical video, sleep well knowing you just watched a Vine (not really a logo, but association all the same)

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was just that for the past months every time someone forwarded me a stupid video I was supposed to like, it had a TikTok logo on it. So in my view this became the source of "stupid videos people bother me with". Not exactly a charming quality. This quote comes to mind: > I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary. It’ll…

I never liked TikTok or this kind of random videos or pics people share. No matter where they came from (it used to be a site called "Dumpert" in the Netherlands before which is also on my "highly annoying" list). I'm just too polite to tell them to piss off with their videos :P That's really the core problem here. But TikTok associates itself by putting their logo on the videos which is something I haven't seen befo…

> But TikTok associates itself by putting their logo on the videos which is something I haven't seen before.

It's just content watermarking.

Watermarking is essential to preserve your brand online. I assume you remember eBaumsWorld - and how they put their watermark and footer on all image-content that they rehosted: because those images would appear verbatim in FW:FW:FW... chain emails and shared over AIM,YIM,MSN,IRC, etc.

Back in the day, eBaumsWorld and others were criticized for putting their watermark on content that they rehosted, especially when they didn't own, produce, or commission that content. At least the vast majority of the content on TikTok was directly uploaded to it, and TikTok's watermark includes the username of the relevant account.

Their animated logo is obnoxious and distracting - but when I compare it to the DOGs on American TV news channels it isn't so bad, it's actually unobtrusive in comparison.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep seeing that Reddit thread linked (even the NYT is citing it now?) but still cannot for the life of me figure out what substantially TikTok does that is a concern compared to other popular apps? The guy has like 10 paragraphs of stories but no actual evidence? What is TikTok doing that somehow is flying under the app store guidelines of both Google and Apple but still a "national security concern"? Why is the o…

Well for one, the fact that they do all these things. Some apps do some of these but rarely all of them. The other is the way they hide what they're doing so elaborately. I wouldn't call it a national security concern, no. Someone who works with critical or military infrastructure should have a locked-down phone anyway for work stuff. But really I wonder how this kind of stuff is OK in the eyes of Apple with their se…

> I'm pretty sure if I were to submit an app that does all this, it'll be rejected right away.

I suspect you’re right and would be very interested in the results of this experiment if you (or anyone else) happen to undertake it.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep seeing that Reddit thread linked (even the NYT is citing it now?) but still cannot for the life of me figure out what substantially TikTok does that is a concern compared to other popular apps? The guy has like 10 paragraphs of stories but no actual evidence? What is TikTok doing that somehow is flying under the app store guidelines of both Google and Apple but still a "national security concern"? Why is the o…

For one, the clipboard snooping problem. If you’re using a password-manager (like we’re supposed to!) and use it to copy passwords (say, your Amazon employee internal credentials...) while you have TikTok open, the TikTok app would see it and could upload it somewhere. ...and we only know about this issue now because iOS 14 adds clipboard snooping notifications - and that was only a month ago! Think about the stuff t…

For one, the clipboard snooping problem. If you’re using a password-manager (like we’re supposed to!) and use it to copy passwords (say, your Amazon employee internal credentials...) while you have TikTok open, the TikTok app would see it and could upload it somewhere.

Your password should never be in your clipboard at least with iOS. If you’re using either the native password manager or a third party password manager, the password manager is directly integrated with the keyboard and would auto fill into your app.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/05/password-autofill-in-ios-1...

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#426
post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, like LinkedIn and Reddit? (the site that the "researcher" behind these NYT-cited claims is using) [1] You could run through the toplist of apps and find hundreds that exhibit the same behavior. Not trying to derail this via whataboutism, I just feel like the core HN ethos is lost when we mindlessly repeat the obvious geopolitically-driven narrative here without any critical thinking. What I definitely do understa…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRSWdtoUAjo Here's a rundown of just general apps that would be on everyone's home screens doing the same thing.

Any word on why those apps do what they're doing? Why copy from messages?

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like vine? Twitter bought it and killed it. The founder moved on to launch Byte https://www.byte.co/

Vine was different. I just posted this on another thread couple of days ago. > Vine was 6 second long video clips. Comparing Vine to TikTok is somewhat like comparing TikTok to YouTube videos. They are different. Lot of TikTok popularity has come from offering songs/lip syncing functionality (done better by their acquisition of musica.ly). That wouldn't have worked on 6 second Vines.

My sister, who uses TikTok quite a lot, referred to TikTok earlier today as "The New Vine", leading me to suspect some portion of the user base is there for similar reasons/content and that there's enough overlap for it to not be a wholly useless comparison.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#428

The email sent to Amazon employees was a mistake. https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/amazon-bans-tiktok-emp...

What a mistake. I imagine the email client just typed that email, and the wide distribution list, all by itself.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#429
post #428

The email sent to Amazon employees was a mistake. https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/amazon-bans-tiktok-emp...

What a mistake. I imagine the email client just typed that email, and the wide distribution list, all by itself.

Someone said "Hey Alexa, totally don't send an email to all employees about banning TikTok on mobile devices and order me some food"

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one, the clipboard snooping problem. If you’re using a password-manager (like we’re supposed to!) and use it to copy passwords (say, your Amazon employee internal credentials...) while you have TikTok open, the TikTok app would see it and could upload it somewhere. ...and we only know about this issue now because iOS 14 adds clipboard snooping notifications - and that was only a month ago! Think about the stuff t…

For one, the clipboard snooping problem. If you’re using a password-manager (like we’re supposed to!) and use it to copy passwords (say, your Amazon employee internal credentials...) while you have TikTok open, the TikTok app would see it and could upload it somewhere. Your password should never be in your clipboard at least with iOS. If you’re using either the native password manager or a third party password manage…

Android does this too. On neither platform does it work 100% of the time, especially in browsers. That's why almost all clipboard managers also have a "copy to clipboard" feature from the autofill view.
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