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TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes

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11–20 of 374 posts

Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes

#11
post #9

It's not unclear at all. It's Chinese data harvesting software. They'll do token public appeasement to avoid negative pressure, but every feature in the app is designed to collect biometrics and behavioral data. China is not a good faith operator. Given the data needed to influence public opinion and voting, they will engage in manipulation favorable to their interests. That alone is sufficient to run tiktok at a los…

> Google's been caught red handed deliberately manipulating political content Sorry, do you have a better link handy? This primarily looks like a fundraising page.

A really strange fundraising page too that claims to be non-partisan but quotes three different far-right hacks.

Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes

#12
post #9

It's not unclear at all. It's Chinese data harvesting software. They'll do token public appeasement to avoid negative pressure, but every feature in the app is designed to collect biometrics and behavioral data. China is not a good faith operator. Given the data needed to influence public opinion and voting, they will engage in manipulation favorable to their interests. That alone is sufficient to run tiktok at a los…

> Google's been caught red handed deliberately manipulating political content Sorry, do you have a better link handy? This primarily looks like a fundraising page.

No post body was provided.

Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes

#13
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google's been caught red handed deliberately manipulating political content Sorry, do you have a better link handy? This primarily looks like a fundraising page.

A really strange fundraising page too that claims to be non-partisan but quotes three different far-right hacks.

I'm really curious, can you name someone who you think is just "right"? Like who isn't "far-right" in your opinion?

Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes

#14

I feel like TikTok is significantly underdiscussed, almost like the tech and business press are assuming it's a flash-in-the-pan more similar to Snapchat than Facebook. It is almost certainly having a major impact on the business of some of the most prominent publicly traded companies in the US, yet there are just a handful of articles discussing their impact on Facebook's disastrous quarterly results.

The users of TikTok are mostly teenagers and young adults, that's why. Nearly everybody in journalism is late 20s or 30+. They just don't get it, though to be fair vine had a similar type of content and that failed.

Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes

#15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A really strange fundraising page too that claims to be non-partisan but quotes three different far-right hacks.

I'm really curious, can you name someone who you think is just "right"? Like who isn't "far-right" in your opinion?

I'm from the UK, so it's a relative concept. The US, except for some fairly small pockets of actual socialist left-wing thinking, is much further to the right. A lot of western europe loved Obama, but in reality he was closer to the UK Conservative party than the UK Labour party.

But I'm even more curious, would you not describe Tucker Carlson as far right in his views?

Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes

#16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A really strange fundraising page too that claims to be non-partisan but quotes three different far-right hacks.

I'm really curious, can you name someone who you think is just "right"? Like who isn't "far-right" in your opinion?

I would generally call most of the "never Trump" conservatives "right but not far-right". I.e. people like Rick Wilson and Mitt Romney.

Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes

#17

It's not unclear at all. It's Chinese data harvesting software. They'll do token public appeasement to avoid negative pressure, but every feature in the app is designed to collect biometrics and behavioral data. China is not a good faith operator. Given the data needed to influence public opinion and voting, they will engage in manipulation favorable to their interests. That alone is sufficient to run tiktok at a los…

I don't think we'll ever be able to avoid mass manipulation with the technology we have available - which makes large scale democracy useless and easily controllable by foreign state actors and local political parties.

The growing inequality and the increasing government overreach which strangely always seems to benefit a few rich uber-companies is a symptom that our institutions are fairly unreliable.

An alternative to more regulation and more surveillance to prevent mass manipulation would be NOT to have the power of millions of people in the hands of a handful of barely-elected representatives and to keep that power in local communities.

No more taxes that go to Washington and gets "redistributed" - aka used to enrich the usual lobbyists. No more public services - aka monopolies. Just private local companies providing services to local citizens.

Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes

#18
post #6

I feel like TikTok is significantly underdiscussed, almost like the tech and business press are assuming it's a flash-in-the-pan more similar to Snapchat than Facebook. It is almost certainly having a major impact on the business of some of the most prominent publicly traded companies in the US, yet there are just a handful of articles discussing their impact on Facebook's disastrous quarterly results.

Facebook has generated so much well-earned hate that even the most nationalistic Americans aren't going to come to its defense.

An odd contrast considering non-nationalistic Americans are usually the first to defend Big Business and Big Government.

Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes

#19
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google's been caught red handed deliberately manipulating political content Sorry, do you have a better link handy? This primarily looks like a fundraising page.

Quoted post unavailable.

On that Wikipedia page, the two Robert Epstein sources (one a PNAS paper[1], the other a Politico article[2]) are theoretical ("whether they could be manipulated") and pre-2016. The other main source[3] is similarly theoretical and provides policy recommendations to combat SEME.

It also has a Washington Post article[4] discussing a (since-deleted) video that purportedly showed potentially-manipulated differences between how Bing and Google autocompleted "Hillary Clinton" searches. But none of the 3 main sources cover what the impact of autocomplete could be.

Do you have any links about Google being caught red-handed politicizing ranking order?

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4547273/

[2] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/how-google-c...

[3] https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.9.2019.0370#m...

[4] https://archive.is/fHzW8. Is Politifact trustworthy? They investigated this and found "Google’s suggested searches, for the most part, avoid offensive suggestions for everyone, not just Clinton." That isn't a total debunk, of course. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/jun/23/andrew-nap...

Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes

#20

I feel like TikTok is significantly underdiscussed, almost like the tech and business press are assuming it's a flash-in-the-pan more similar to Snapchat than Facebook. It is almost certainly having a major impact on the business of some of the most prominent publicly traded companies in the US, yet there are just a handful of articles discussing their impact on Facebook's disastrous quarterly results.

Nobody cares because (it is perceived that) there is no political discourse on TikTok yet.

It was the same for Twitter and Facebook. Then Trump happened and People With Important Jobs started paying attention to them. There has not been such a catalyst event for TikTok yet. Like with Zoom, there is a vague feeling among the security-paranoid that the Chinese are leveraging it for data-gathering, but as long as they get bazillion videos of teenagers pulling faces, who cares?

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