This forced sale of TikTok for national security is a farce because they were already forced to move their service to the US on an American-owned hosting provider, and they have already put people with a history of aligning with “American interests” into executive positions, like CEO Shou Zi Chew and vice president Michael Beckerman. I think the US “intelligence community” already has everything it needs to monitor and control TikTok.
It doesn't matter where the servers are located physically but who can access the data that's on them
They were physically relocated to the US so that the US can access the data, as people like Edward Snowden and Mark Klein have shown us. I’m sure the US knows precisely what data is and isn’t being sent to China.
23andMe is much, much worse than the others due to the nature of the data it sells.
Also, you don't actually need to share your own data to be vulnerable. Some stupid relative sharing their genetic information is enough to have some ideas about you. I'm fortunate that it's hasn't caught on in my home country.
How come every thread I see about this topic, there is nobody who is concerned about letting the federal government dictate which apps you can and cannot use to communicate with other people? This is some 1984 shit.
Because it isn't new nor special.
Apps are a Service and services have been and are regulated for decades now and the system have been always arbitrary as fuck.
In the case of TikTok, the west, as a military alliance, should be concerned due to the nature of current valid Chinese laws and the implications of it.
And e.g. facebook has proven that they don't like to stick to rules about how to handle data. In case of TikTok, this could easily have bigger implications for e.g. the American military.
If it's really about the military as you suggest then the extremely easy solution is to order service members not to use Tik Tok.
Passing a specific law to compell the sale of one specific company is arguably some sort of Bill of Attainder, which I'm sure ByteDance's lawyers will be argueing as soon as Biden's pen touches paper.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_TikTok_in_the_United_States#:~:text=In%20January%202020%2C%20the%20United,platform%20to%20attract%20young%20people.
Well look at that. And no, that isn't enough from a military perspective. Look at the Russian propaganda war in e.g. Germany, that shit can have a negative effect on the defensive abilities of a nation.
Most of those bans are organizations saying that employees can't install TikTok on organization issued phones and computers, which is not at all comparable to an overall ban? My work doesn't allow me to play video games on work computers or drink on work property, but that's not at all the same as a law banning all video games and alcohol.
Look at the Russian propaganda war in e.g. Germany, that shit can have a negative effect on the defensive abilities of a nation.
Yeah one problem with human and civil rights is that they tend to have negative effects on the defensive abilities of a nation. War would be so much easier if you could just arrest all the peace protestors, or hold suspected enemy agents without trial, or force people to work without pay in defence industries, or force women to give birth to more people so you can conscript more soldiers.
So let's just do away with free speech and habeus corpus, reinstitute slave labor and force women to pop out lots of kids. Then Germany can defend itself again, just like the last two times.
Aren't you misunderstanding my point a little bit? My point isn't that the e.g. us should ban TikTok or that national security is the most important thing ever. My first Point was that there is a national security incentive to ban TikTok in ways that e.g. Facebook doesn't have, but like you expressed obviously there are other consideration to be made. My first Point was just that TikTok is not like Facebook from an us national security pov. Then you spoke from a ban for service members, to which I simply pointed out that there is one to some degree, especially important as there is a ban on private devices in some environments. Deployment can be reason for the ban. In other words, your suggestion is already in place to some degree. My 2nd point about Russian propaganda is also strictly about the fact that "national security" doesn't end at the government employee line and suggesting that is ridiculous.
As you might have realized, I haven't expressed any desire to ban TikTok. That is because I am not in favor of a ban. I am just able to argue a perspective unlike mine own and think it is necessary when people treat Facebook and TikTok the same. Do you think china doesn't care about where their software is coming from? Do you think no one is avoiding e.g. check point firewall due to e.g. gil shwed and his story with unit 8200?
Well, you can expect China doing the same. This kind of behaviour triggers retalliation.
The current situation over in China still allows internet users to easily access services like Facebook or YouTube through VPNs, it was more of a measure of digital protectionism to allow local development of IT companies, online business, etc. If China wants to do similar censorship in response to these measure, they very well could still crack down on VPNs.
I don't discriminate. I say the data protection of all of these services is terrible and you shouldn't use them.
I think users should embrace data harvesting and passively run chatGPT powered bots to generate more mindless data
Is there some way to trick the chatgpt training bots by intentionally mislabeling data? Like can I upload some
furry pornographytasteful erotica and label it "AP US history assignment - Civil War"?
"we will harvest your DNA and put a literal implant into your brain"
Source: Trust me bro [1]
[1] I don't like people who look different from me.
Ahhh, typical Hexbear, jumping to the conclusion that I am racist because I said TikTok is bad without any citations. See the other reply in the thread for the citations.
TikTok is not the only company that uses its pixels throughout the internet. The report found Google, Meta and Microsoft, among others, use these trackers.
Your first link has a sentence expressly disproving your own thesis, so in addition to concluding you are a racist, I can also now conclude that you didn't read your own sources.
Justifying their attacks with claims of superiority, defending the obvious contradictions with equivalence. Classic motte and bailley.
I never said the other companies don't also track you outside of the app.
TikTok, regardless of the country of origin, is known to be spyware on a much greater level than everything else on this list.
I'm not trying to openly lie. If you have any evidence that any of the other platforms are expressly worse than TikTok for privacy, please show me.
Goalpost shifting, your original post said that TikTok is known to be spyware on a much greater level than anything else on this list.
Your statement isn't true even if you prove that Tiktok is the worst offender on the list. You need to prove that Tiktok is worse to a much higher degree than anything else on that list. Your own source straight out says that at least 3 of the other companies on the list engage in similar practices.
Sure, here are some sources:
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/tiktok-data-app-report/story?id=97913249
https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-data-privacy/
https://www.wsj.com/video/series/inside-tiktoks-highly-secretive-algorithm/investigation-how-tiktok-algorithm-figures-out-your-deepest-desires/6C0C2040-FF25-4827-8528-2BD6612E3796
From the very first link:
TikTok is not the only company that uses its pixels throughout the internet. The report found Google, Meta and Microsoft, among others, use these trackers.
Rigorous scholarship there, champ.
Nothing beats Instagram, Facebook, Google, Microsoft or Twitter in spyware. Have you heard of the Snowden revelations? These companies provide all their data to US spies.
Spying on user data is a constitutional right of US companies, what are the poor going to live on when they can't traffic with your data, or when a disgusting red communist company steals their bread? A little more proper patriotism, guys. Bad enough that the EU is cutting the wings of this companies, therefore also don't use EU apps to make America great again.
Makes me remember when UK and France invaded China and forced then to commercialize opium and destroy their country:
"The First Opium War was fought from 1839 to 1842 between China and Britain. It was triggered by the Chinese government's campaign to enforce its prohibition of opium, which included destroying opium stocks owned by British merchants and the British East India Company. The British government responded by sending a naval expedition to force the Chinese government to pay reparations and allow the opium trade.[1] The Second Opium War was waged by Britain and France against China from 1856 to 1860, and consequently resulted in China being forced to legalise opium."
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
Social media addiction is not quite the same thing as opium addiction
Of course not, but can also make people unproductive and by guiding the content you can make the whole population acquire stupid behaviours
I think you're really misevaluating the (non)equivalence between how you're crippled as an organism by opium addiction vs just having your attention fucked up by tiktok
Yes, of course.
In this case, what UK+France did to China at that time is much worse than what China is doing to the US now.
So it would be much more hypocritical if UK followed suit
Excuse me, but I have a hard time seeing how is these two events are related?
Hi, UK forced China to get their country destroyed, and no an UK-derived country is complaining that China is destroy them.
So in your analogy then Britain is the now China, and now U.S. is the then China? And TikTok is the opium released by China? Hence TikTok should be banned, if U.S. have the power to do so?
Apart from "should be banned", you got my analogy right.
I mean if they ban it they are being hypocrites
Well actually IS mostly owned by europe entitities and individual shareholders. Only the founders and some europe capital mamooths had +50% of it
Just install an alternative app Store like Aurora or install it directly from TikTok sites.
For open source projects, you can also use Obtainium or F-Droid
Oh really? This ban won't effect people who use (for example) F-Droid to get the app?? That's great to hear tbh. Hopefully this stupid ass decision will have the effect of turning more people on to FOSS stuff more than it will actually prevent people from using TikTok.
I don't think they will put it on fdroid, because it has to really be open source to be there, but there's certainly other app stores which will have it.
How can a ban be enforced? It's always thru Google app Store or IP, and you can always bypass both.
In Aurora Store there's TikTok. You can install aurora store here:
https://aurorastore.org/
In Worst case you can try finding the official tiktok .APK install somewhere
It's really hard to bypass ip bans. Tik tok in India has been non existent since the ban.
You can use VPN (paid or free) for instance and if the ban is really badly done even by changing the DNS server (which is free) access can be restored.
Nope. You can't access tiktok through vpn in India. You need a patched/modded app. I live in India and I've tried doing that. It's a non-existent platform here. Bans will affect user engagement.
As a curiosity: how do the system know if you are in India? You said VPN doesn't work so it's not thru IP address. What's it then?
ok, thanks for the info. I don't know a lot about how this kind of thing works (clearly), I just try to use and support FOSS and "piracy" whenever possible.
Aurora displays currently no app, be it anonymous or with login. Anyone knows why? I need it to reinstall my banking access app, dammit.
Yes but TikTok only let the evil Chinese spy on you, while the others only allow good old Uncle Sam to spy on you.
Ah who am I kidding, they'll all hand your data over to any old removed.
I don't think 23andme and TikTok are even comparable to the rest of the list.
I now have done so and, uh, looks like they're just posting 2 me.
