This is why I only install a few absolutely necessary apps, and mostly from fdroid. It makes me anxious to see friends install 3 different electric scooter apps in the space of 10 minutes just to try and unlock a scooter. I doubt those apps ever get removed once no longer needed.
TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes
101–110 of 374 posts
Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Countries deciding that foreigners can't use their citizen's data willy-nilly is neither authoritarian nor over-reach, and neither is restricting those foreigners from access when they don't comply. For a generally accepted instance, see the EU GDPR.
I just have a hard time accepting that the people who made every website implement a cookie warning that is equivalent to the “don’t use in bathtub” stickers all over appliances know enough about to write airtight laws that would actually solve any of this.
The cookie warning as irritatingly implemented is a bit of false-flagging by people who make their money from adtech surveillance. They intentionally make the experience suck as much as possible, then point at the law and say "talk to the government, they're making us do this" when challenged.
Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quoted post unavailable.
I can't believe I'm seeing junk like this on HN. I thought this forum was populated by people who actually work in tech?
HN on politics is not HN on tech sadly. The discourse around the George Floyd murder was really horrid at times
Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
They banned tik tok ?
Trump tried doing something like that in a predictably half-assed, illegal and obviously inappropriate manner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TikTok_v._Trump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump%E2%80%93TikTok_co...
This ban was presumably done under the same guises as the one done for Huawei. I don't see anyone shedding tears for Huawei.
Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd probably be more worried about a flaw in your own setup vs TikTok uniquely being able to circumvent it
I'm all ears if you have any suggestions, so far I haven't seen a plausible explanation though.
Could be as simple as one time you forgot to use the VPN.
Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 fore…
OK, his SEME bias analysis is based on recruiting people through a "passive monitoring system," which recorded SERP rankings over time (what Epstein deems "ephemeral experiences"). Participants' SERP rankings, and raw HTML of each of the top X links, were stored on Epstein's servers. He then had "online workers" (likely mturk?) rate each archived page as pro-Trump or Clinton.[0]
He submitted a paper on this in June 2021 to the AABSS but they have yet to publish it. He also has 5 other, earlier SEME papers submitted for publication.[1]
I appreciate you going the distance on providing these links but I'm loath to trust this data until it's been peer-reviewed.
His AIBRT presentation[2] has some seemingly spurious logic. Here's one slide: https://i.imgur.com/t4rGv3e.png
The graph depicts 300k undecided voters resolving to a party over time. Here's Epstein talking about it:
> ...by the time we hit election day, we have an enormous gap - more than 100,000 people - between the conservatives and liberals. And we've created that gap with our biased search results.
Assigning that movement to a single cause seems unlikely to me.
His presentation does include a relevant WSJ article titled "Google Workers Discussed Tweaking Search Function to Counter Travel Ban."[3] That's not "red-handed," since they didn't do it, but it's very relevant. HN at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18036353
[0] https://hackernoon.com/taming-big-tech-5fef0df0f00d
[1] https://drrobertepstein.com/pdf/vita.pdf
[2] Video: https://www.aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_et_al_2021-Large-Sca...
Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I understand the point, but I don't see how companies can be "nationalist", or think in "their country's interests". They only care about money and who knows who really control any corporation with the size that a competing social network service would require?
Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes
#108It'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.
I think it's too late for that. If we tried to ban TikTok in the US, there'd be a public outcry.
Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That doesn't really seem like "tried that" to me.
There was literally an executive order which banned TikTok if the Chinese parent company did not sell the platform[1]. That's a pretty real "tried to ban tiktok".
Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes
#110One thing that I found very interesting when I looked into what TikTok does: it's scary good at aggregating data about you. I live in a foreign country, my phone's network is behind a VPN to a different foreign country and I gave the app no extra permissions, yet somehow I still got recommended content from the country where I was born. Since it's a small country there's no way that's a coincidence. I'm both intrigue…
I think they use the SIM card country ID and also the ad audience categories to suggest content.
For example swapping the SIM card with a fresh installation of TikTok shows different "local" videos. Even if the public IP address is unchanged like when using WiFi instead of Data.
I've also think they use ad categories to suggest videos. Using a fresh TikTok installation and then spending some time navigating a subreddit of a topic, would likely show videos of that topic the next time you open TikTok.