I'm not a fan of Sinophobia, but the CCP has made it very clear that home grown tech companies will be in full cooperation with the state.
With that in mind, consider how much user data TikTok has and what might be done with it.
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
#32What kind of data? TikTok knows what content I interact to... on tiktok. That's it. Unless they have an android 0-day or something. It has no access to my mic, camera, browsing history, contacts list, or anything useful. Guess who has access to all that, if they want it, though? Google and Facebook (through whatsapp). What is the privacy concern here, exactly?
Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes
#33Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes
#34Earlier 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.
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?
Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes
#35The 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.
Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes
#36One 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 intrigued and spooked as to how they figured that connection out.
Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes
#37It'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).
Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes
#38Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes
#39It'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…
At this point I do my best to avoid exposure to software / hardware / services from 'non-free' countries.
It's not easy at all to do, there's a lot of grey area, and sometimes I just don't know. But I try.
It's not about the individuals in those countries, I suspect just making their way through life they may have the best of intentions but still could be forced to participate.
(Having said al that, that google research page seems pretty suspect to me.)
Re: TikTok shares your data more than any other app and it’s unclear where it goes
#40I 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 g…
It exists, but unlike, say, Twitter, it's extremely easy to remove from your attention.
TikTok's recommendation algorithm is really second to none.