Still with this? Is there anything that they’re doing differently from other social media corps based in the US? The user data gets sold regardless.
Yea, they’re struggling to get their suicide numbers up as high as Instagram. America demands nothing short of the best so we take deep pride in Zuckerberg’s accomplishment
Quick outline of why TikTok is so uniquely dangerous:
- The Chinese government treats communication networks as their personal hoovering-attachment for any data they might want. Companies are required by law to operate as an arm of Chinese intelligence, both in terms of giving information and in terms of manipulating what information people on their network are allowed to see.
- It’s not just your TikTok data. It’s photos and files on your phone, your contacts, your messages, basically anything that the app with its too-permissive permissions can get its hands on, can potentially go up to Chinese intelligence.
- TikTok is not structured like any other app. It has features like custom-downloading and running arbitrary binaries from its central server that honestly don’t even make much sense except as spying apparatus (consistent with #1).
- What China might do with this unprecedented level of access to everyone’s phones is malevolent in a different way than, say, Facebook’s access to everyone’s data. Like Facebook they have the ability to e.g. influence an election, but they also have the ability to try to blackmail an individual to compromise them, or do for-real torture in the real world (say by tracking down a dissident via TikTok spying and then having one of their little Chinese-police-in-America units grab them).
Basically I don’t think any government should have that kind of access to access people’s private communications or design the algorithms that dictate people’s social media experience, but definitely not China’s in particular.
The only valid criticism to this move I’ve seen and actually agree with is that instead of banning individual companies, the US should enact legislation that makes these practices illegal.
Sources on any of this? Perhaps it works differently on Android.
The main thing which you miss though is that it has “the algorithm” down pat. While it knows I’ll watch cooking videos and videos of people yelling at cops, it doesn’t bother trying to show me things about Trump, etc. it is keeping me in my own custom echo chamber. I have no idea how it works so well.
Now imagine someone hell bent on believing things like the pizza molester stories or Jan 6th alt histories. This is a very effective tool for radicalizing people and reinforcing the “truth” they already suspect. It’s easier to divide people based on preconceived notions than trying to convince people of something new.
Sources:
- https://thehill.com/opinion/cybersecurity/532583-for-chinese-firms-theft-of-your-data-is-now-a-legal-requirement/
- https://www.proofpoint.com/us/blog/threat-protection/understanding-information-tiktok-gathers-and-stores
- https://www.currentware.com/blog/block-tiktok/
- https://www.businessinsider.com/china-hong-kong-spy-agency-official-presence-national-security-laws-report-2020-6 https://www.npr.org/2023/04/17/1170571626/fbi-arrests-2-on-charges-tied-to-chinese-outpost-in-new-york-city
While I agree that the fingerprinting data is interesting, on iOS, TikTok doesn’t require any of those permissions as indicated. Some of the articles state that they are required, but they aren’t. As far as I know it isn’t possible, without a zero day of some sort, to access camera, sound, contacts, etc without explicitly granting those permissions.
That said, that is a lot of data, and for those that can be linked back to an individual. And I’m sure most people are less careful with permissions. The fingerprinting data is clearly powerful, and I find it extremely fascinating, since there is VERY limited input and such effective output.
Fuck the US government telling me what I can and can’t do fucking online. Great firewall of America bullshit.
Yeah so that logic only works if people make informed decisions and they don’t, that’s why society the size it is at the moment only works with a government in place setting some ground rules and preventing people from being morons… Our trying to anyway.
Also, the internet is not hosted in international water as far as I know so there’s no reasons it can’t be regulated… Hell, I’m sure you’re very happy (or hope that you are) that CSAM isn’t just everywhere in the name of net neutrality and letting people do what they want on it.
And who decides what gets censored? Today it’s tick tok tomorrow it’s Lemmy?
Lemmy is not a United States adversary with a history of spying on foreign intelligence. If it was, I sure as fuck wouldn’t be on it!
What if the government decided Lemmy was a dangerous (communist ?) platform that needs to be shutdown? This is a matter of censorship, however the outright open market for our data from all platforms is the elephant in the room here.
Well, I would expect there to be some shred of evidence that it is dangerous to the security of the United States. We have LOADS of evidence of that for TikTok.
And if no one cares about your expectations because now it’s been done before so if it’s being done again it must be for good reason?
Whoever is in charge and feels like testing the limits with no repercussions.
It’s painful to watch progressives learn that this shit will be used against them and worse time after time again.
I know what’s best for you so let me censor that content. Literal fascism.
That’s how society works in general and I don’t understand how people think letting the internet be free of laws wouldn’t lead to shit.
Ohh books next! GOP is getting ahead there.
You get the laws you vote for.
“Fascism is only bad bad when it’s the other side” - You
So you believe that pictures of consenting naked underage people should be freely shared and even made available in magazines because making them illegal is fascism?
