61–70 of 83 posts
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Can you explain how this is a spy tool and how Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, etc. are not? I haven't really used TikTok. How does it collect data beyond the videos I've watched?
One is controlled by an authoritarian government, the others are private (publicly traded) corporations in a democratic country.
TikTok’s emergence “was just something that was unimaginable,” Snap Inc. SNAP 1.65%▲ Chief Executive Evan Spiegel said last month, as part of an announcement that his company would be slashing jobs. “No startup could afford to invest billions and billions and billions of dollars in user acquisition like that around the world.” The report shows a company rapidly increasing its revenues, accumulating a massive war ches…
$84.9 billion net loss?
I’m so confused.
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Can you explain how this is a spy tool and how Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, etc. are not? I haven't really used TikTok. How does it collect data beyond the videos I've watched?
Chinese domestic companies are legally obligated to provide a direct data pipeline from their databases to the Ministry of State Security. It's a real law that exists. Basically imagine what the NSA implemented with the PRISM program revealed by Snowden but formally codified into law and with active participation/engineering efforts required by the corporations.
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Chinese domestic companies are legally obligated to provide a direct data pipeline from their databases to the Ministry of State Security. It's a real law that exists. Basically imagine what the NSA implemented with the PRISM program revealed by Snowden but formally codified into law and with active participation/engineering efforts required by the corporations.
For what it's worth, non-american citizens on non-american soil have no legal protection against the same. And big ad monopolies are not in the business of pissing off the security state.
Obviously whatever signals intelligence gathering method or data copying the NSA might be doing in Western Europe could very well exist, but it's not a defined requirement for that theoretical Belgian ISP.
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For what it's worth, non-american citizens on non-american soil have no legal protection against the same. And big ad monopolies are not in the business of pissing off the security state.
I don't see how, for instance, with a Austrian customer of a Belgian data center operator, the Belgian data center operator does not have a legal obligation to form a secure database pipeline connection and replicate everything directly into the NSA. Obviously whatever signals intelligence gathering method or data copying the NSA might be doing in Western Europe could very well exist, but it's not a defined requireme…
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Is this also true for highly-funded, money-losing SV startups focusing on growth. Why or why not?
No one said they aren't . Yet there's always someone in any given thread about a Chinese app jumping to its defense saying "but Silicon Valley." So should no one speak out against concentration camps, cultural genocide, and mass sterilization in China today because the same things have happened historically in the United States? China being an adversary should have nothing to do with it? If we can't point out such a…
The reason there's always someone starting a subthread about it is because Silicon Valley and the United States has, had, and will continue to have all the same incentives and problems for international users. [1]
It's not a very interesting conversation, because it adds nothing that hasn't been said a million times, but neither does another lap around the 'China bad' rhetorical track.
[1] And also domestic users, but they have some means of recourse for it.
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One is controlled by an authoritarian government, the others are private (publicly traded) corporations in a democratic country.
as someone living outside the US I can tell you that to us you're all the same.
Our free speech and privacy protections are not only stronger than China's, they're arguably stronger than Europe's too. There are some trade offs of course since Europe has GDPR and the right to be forgotten.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/technology/germany-intern...
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-arresting-nine-peo...
The reason China's situation is worse is because Europeans and Americans can and do protest this. It is not normalized and accepted. If you feel that America goes too far in how it exports its perceived brand of authoritarian, you should know that China is just getting started: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/oct/3/report-detai...
It’s not supposed to make money, it’s a spy tool subsidized by a foreign adversary…
Yes. It is exactly that. [0] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] I thought Facebook was worse, but looking at TikTok, it takes the most invasive spyware crown. At this point if the solution is to outlaw all invasive tracking for all companies, the first thing to do is like how Facebook got a multi-billion dollar fine by the FTC, TikTok (and repeat offenders) must be fined in the tens of billions , if they want to continue operating…
I think that Facebook is worse, not because of the trackers but because of the very nature of the network. TikTok is mostly one-way. There are content creators and consumers, the latter vastly outnumber the former, also, creators often post content that is staged in some way, they don't really show their "real self". Facebook is a "true" social network, it is more symmetrical and intimate and people produce as much as they consume. TikTok is about showing off to the world, Facebook has that too, but it also a platform where friends can do stuff in "private".
Facebook doesn't even need spyware. People willingly put their entire life online, and for the few who are not on Facebook, their friends who are post enough about them for Facebook to create an accurate shadow profile. TikTok spies on you, but Facebook makes every user a spy working for them.
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Can you explain how this is a spy tool and how Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, etc. are not? I haven't really used TikTok. How does it collect data beyond the videos I've watched?
Chinese domestic companies are legally obligated to provide a direct data pipeline from their databases to the Ministry of State Security. It's a real law that exists. Basically imagine what the NSA implemented with the PRISM program revealed by Snowden but formally codified into law and with active participation/engineering efforts required by the corporations.
And some info about it from them directly:
"As we recently shared with members of Congress, we are working toward a new system in which access to U.S. user data by anyone outside of USDS will be limited by, and subject to, robust data access protocols with monitoring and oversight mechanisms by Oracle."[2]
1. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/09/tiktok-can-keep-...
2. https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/our-approach-to-keeping-us...
EDIT: downvotes for sharing latest additional data from official sources about the topic without any private opinions? This trend is dangerous for healthy discussion.
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The answer is simple: In the US it's a scandal if the government has open access without a warrant to private citizen data held by companies. In China that's just considered business as usual.
I think this is a common response. But even though the Snowden revelations were a "scandal", nothing bad really happened to the perpetrators. And the FISA court that rubber-stamped the data collection is still operating and still rubber-stamping government surveillance. So, how is it not business as usual in the US? Consider also how law enforcement now has warrantless access to individuals' location data thanks to d…
This is true, and bad, but consider another difference in this situation:
In the US, companies were able to respond to this revelation by shoring up their security practices, and people exercised their right to openly criticize the government. This is not possible in China.