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

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

#251

Post by loudthing »

snehk wrote: post #54
cm2012 wrote: post #24

Earlier 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.

China didn't specifically "ban" US social networks because they were US social networks. The companies themselves didn't want to comply with Chinese laws so they cannot operate there. It's the same as Facebook now threatening to leave the EU if they have to comply with EU data protection laws.

Not quite. The Great Firewall of China has the ability to shut off access to specific sites, services, and even communications protocols very easily and very effectively. Trying to access Google from China doesn't result in a page from Google apologizing that they won't comply with Chinese laws. It's as if the services simply doesn't exist and you get a 404 error.

Also, Google actually has a sizeable office in Beijing. I'm not sure what they do specifically since it's not easy to access any of their public services without an obscure VPN (the most popular ones get blocked pretty quickly).

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

#252

Post by balls187 »

Etheryte wrote: post #203
balls187 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you on iphone or android? I would guess that your device has been fingerprinted through other app usage you have used, and that fingerprint has an association with the country of your birth. It's possible that such a service is provided by a state actor, or part of a marketing/advertising service.

I'm on iOS, on Android I wouldn't be surprised by leaking data since that's essentially what the whole platform is built for.

I recall when Apple made device UUID's unique to a specific app install, rather than a device.

Entirely speculation on my part--I assumed that someone would eventually figure out a way to approximate a uuid at the device level, and use that across applications and app installs.

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

#253

Post by dogleash »

netcan wrote: post #26
robbedpeter wrote: post #5

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.…

>TikTok is just a new pig at the trough.

This issue isn't a bee stuck in my presonal bonnet, but this is a fraudulent response that convinces nobody that didn't already agree with you. I'll explain why.

The people complaining about TikTok were probably complaining about the others for ages too.

Those complainers were shouted down with some version of "well, they're not THAT bad."

Now there is one actor that is seen (at least by some) as worse than the others. The difference in the actor is being raised as a reason to care about their actions (and maybe renew concern about the category of actions at large).

Your response that their actions are not novel is either ignorant or perpetuating a fraud.

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

#254

Post by ethbr0 »

robertlagrant wrote: post #228
ethbr0 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why in matters of redress, I always skew towards visibility over modification. The latter is too powerful, in the hands of too few. I've had this same argument with military friends lamenting the prevalence of ex-military citizens among right wing nationalist groups. IMHO, "make people attend classes to fight indoctrination" is too easily repurposed by a future administration to do the exact opposite.

Agreed. Well, critical thinking classes might be a good idea! Just spoken word Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit on repeat for 8 hours a day.

I hadn't ever listened to that. Queued! Potential downside: no one could unhear "billions"

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

#255

Post by laurex »

beardedetim wrote: post #202
ethbr0 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like debate is a generation behind practice here. The greatest danger isn't from data collection, but from algorithmic recommendation. The data collection horse is out of the barn, has legitimate uses, and is an incredibly thorny issue to legislate appropriately. And will be adjusted for the next 20+ years. What needs to be done now is to say that (1) at a certain user count ("too big to democratically ignor…

> Show me how this works, now. Let's say we had this. We had some ML/AI team go up to Congress/DoJ and show them some tensors, some "back propagating LSTM" horseshit. How does that help the people that don't understand how the ad model works? Hell, I bet there is _no one_ using AI or tensors or any of that shit that can tell you _why_ their model output Foo instead of Bar.

Instead of "the government" how about an independent NGO that was comprised of people who included industry or ex-industry ML/AI folks as well as academic or government people? There's a fairly robust emerging group of "ethics in tech" people who have worked on the industry algorithms and could be resources if their were policy requirements for audits.

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

#256

Post by dogleash »

bertil wrote: post #8
saturdaysaint wrote: post #3

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 aspect that worries me the most is the recommendation: Facebook and Twitter discovered a little late that they had the ability to to influence opinion with simple tweaks. That raised internal questions and that model is under close surveillance by people who have talked about those questions in public and who I know have and would raise, at least internally, their concerns. People can explore the updates from the…

>but their employees are loud Californians who can about justice

In my experience, Californians care about justice the same way they care about anything, fashion. Only the injustices that are fashionable to be against ever get any attention.

If you need proof they don't care about justice look no further than they fact the keep electing Peloci.

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

#257

Post by duxup »

twofornone wrote: post #199
duxup wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legislation, a department taking action within their legal powers. In the US it really does matter how you do things. Just the whim of the president is not enough for it to happen. Trump had no legal basis for his order. He liked to act like he was doing things with grand strokes, many of them were doomed to fail. I'm not convinced that he or those around him even cared if they did or not. I don't think you can read…

Are you sure that the head of the executive branch does not have authority to ban federal employees from using an app which potentially poses a national security threat? I don't think its so clear cut. In any case its hardly the first time that a president made a potentially unconditional to be ruled upon by courts later.

>have authority to ban federal employees from using an app

Not sure what we're talking about at this point. Trump's executive orders about tiktok that were thrown out of court were something different.

Trump or just the department who owns a given device can of course say "don't put X on government phones" and so on, but that's way different than what Trump tried and failed to do with tiktok.

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

#258

Post by duxup »

mannerheim wrote: post #170
duxup wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The short answer is Trump's order had actual legal grounds to stick as far as Huawei goes. Regarding Huawei , Trump basically told the Commerce Department to take action, Huawei was already (or was in the process of being) blacklisted by the commerce department, the commerce department does have the legal right to do that given the nature of Huawei's products and sensitivity of communications equipment. The commerce…

My understanding was that the real teeth behind both EOs is that they prohibited American companies from doing business with Huawei and TikTok. So Huawei would not be able to sell through American retailers, and TikTok wouldn't be available in the Apple store or the Play store, and they couldn't get an American CDN.

I think that's just another facet of what a ban would look like.

But as far as tiktok until someone gives the commerce department or someone else new powers, so far that seems out of reach.

Granted, I believe there are efforts to give them that option.

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

#259

Post by cvlasdkv »

friedman23 wrote: post #234
bduerst wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the whole, "TikTok spies for China" meme also politically motivated, per the last Republican president? I don't doubt that Bytedance shares Chinese TouTiao user data with the Chinese government, akin to how Apple does it with iCloud, but Bytedance has been pretty adamant that TikTok is external to China and doesn't share data. Even when there was an executive order to ban TikTok for being a national security th…

Explicit evidence of Tiktok sharing information with the Chinese government is not needed because there is already sufficient evidence that 1. The Chinese government does not deserve our trust. 2. All Chinese businesses are extensions of the Chinese government. The default assumption should be that your information is being sent to China and that China is using Tiktok as an extention of their propaganda arm.

No post body was provided.

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

#260

Post by mannerheim »

duxup wrote: post #258
mannerheim wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding was that the real teeth behind both EOs is that they prohibited American companies from doing business with Huawei and TikTok. So Huawei would not be able to sell through American retailers, and TikTok wouldn't be available in the Apple store or the Play store, and they couldn't get an American CDN.

I think that's just another facet of what a ban would look like. But as far as tiktok until someone gives the commerce department or someone else new powers, so far that seems out of reach. Granted, I believe there are efforts to give them that option.

Those are the only powers that would be necessary to effectively ban TikTok from the US. Without app store access and without CDNs, TikTok would be dead in the US. And from my understanding of the Huawei situation, doing these by prohibiting US companies from doing business with TikTok is within the power of the President.
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