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

cnbc.com

41–50 of 374 posts

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

#41
post #26

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…

>> China is not a good faith operator. Who is? I don't mean to be trite or contrary, but TikTok is coming into an environment where norms are pretty damned shady. Google as you and the article say, also consume user data quite unethically. FB likewise surveil us for their advertising businesses. They both also happen to host and control a good chunk of political and politically adjacent content within that framework.…

Every tech company executive in the USA is not required to operate as an agent for one political party by threat of being disappeared. Our entire internet is not locked down to prevent political dissidents from sharing their views. Our government doesn't pay to flood our social media networks with astroturfing to create the illusion of popular support for its policies. These things add a more serious tone to the conversation, don'tcha think?

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

#42
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tried that already, didn't work..

They banned tik tok ?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump%E2%80%93TikTok_...

Trump admin tried to restrict its use, at least among government/military, and perhaps predictably he was accused of racism/sinophobia...but the threat was just as real then as now.

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

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 betw…

>>The 2020 presidential election monitoring project successfully recruited a diverse group of 732 registered voters in three battleground states: Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina. It preserved more than 500,000 ephemeral experiences on Google, Bing, Yahoo, YouTube, and Facebook. These are the fleeting experiences that Big Tech companies use to influence votes and opinions worldwide and that are normally lost forever.

>>A preliminary analysis of the data shows that Google search results (but NOT search results on Bing or Yahoo) had a significant liberal bias – enough to have shifted at least 6 million votes in the months leading up to the election.

You need to know the methodology being used to understand the results, as they tracked ephemeral experiences using surveillance software with volunteers.

This guy needs a website team in the biggest way. It's hard to find the information and it's scattershot. It's very frustrating because the work he's doing is solid. Don't let the shitty web presence deter you.

The Rogan podcast was awkward af but he does provide a lot of substantive content if you're open to listening.

https://www.aibrt.org/index.php/internet-studies is probably the most coherent site, but there's no salient tldr breakdown, to learn more you'll need to watch the videos.

https://youtu.be/-7qT_38iRSc is the most comprehensive video, but I'll need to spend more time later to gather better links.

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

#44

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.

I wonder if the accessibility as far as the media goes to Facebook staff and willingness to engage with the press exposes Facebook a bit more than TikTok.

That's kinda a scary situation...

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

#45
post #24

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…

TikTok should be banned in the US. China banned all of our homegrown social networks, its pretty standard international precedent to ban theirs, given the security risks.

As a European, I would be happy to ban TikTok, but also Facebook and all its subsidiaries (Instagram, WhatsApp) and Google and all its subsidiaries.

It's not like others are better, but those three are the worst when it comes to spying shaping public opinion only because they are the biggest and most powerful.

If I had to choose who will influence the public in my country, let it better be some company (or government) that has my country interest first, and not China or the USA interests.

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

#46
post #24

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…

TikTok should be banned in the US. China banned all of our homegrown social networks, its pretty standard international precedent to ban theirs, given the security risks.

No thanks, don't need any more authoritarian moves from presidential over reach. Privacy laws for companies making X$ in yearly revenue is much saner approach.

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

#47

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?

[deleted]

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

#48
post #35

The conversation here on HN is quite funny. I can imagine the same conversation taking place in China: the data on US apps goes straight to the US government.

Yeah at one point (probably still) didn't all data just go to the NSA.

>didn't all data just go to the NSA.

"all" is so general that I think it's kinda hard to really address that.

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

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

On social issues average European and its country is way more conservative than average American. You're comparing economical standpoint here and I agree with that.

Certainly not Western Europe.

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

#50
post #37

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…

The "Chinese data harvesting software" has less trackers than the site reporting about it (CNBC.com).

Yet the site does not have access to biometrics. What point are you making?
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