"I'm not really worried about the Chinese government having my stuff. What are they going to do with it? They have no jurisdiction over me. I'm much more worried about the US government tracking me."
"Ugh, you think the government is trying to track everything on you? Conspiracy theorist much?"
I've seen people have these two opinions at the same time
- China is tracking you through apps and that is bad
- Edward Snowden is a traitor
I hear this shit all the time about TikTok from people in the military. These fuckers will start frothing at the mouth about OPSEC and how the Chinese are stealing our information and how anyone in the military using TikTok is some national security risk.
Nevermind the fact that Google literally sells your information to the government, so yes, the government is tracking everything on you, it's just that they don't need to try, they've already got major tech companies doing the same shit that they accuse the Chinese government of doing.
also google would sell your info to china in a heartbeat if they offered to buy it
Google sells my data to China and I finally get all my xi-bucks from posting:rat-salute:
If you look at even one recruiter video your feed somehow is just filled with recruiter shit instantly
Imagine if Google Play put a notice on all the apps that the Five Eyes guys can peek at anytime they want.
People would pretty quickly normalize it and ignore it like they do everything else, sadly. Having to change one's beliefs and/or lifestyle to avoid being spied on is too much for like 95% of the population.
Each fry is waterboarded individually in oil and costs the taxpayers $5k.
:cia:
Is this about TikTok? I've only heard that from people who aren't even in their age demographic.
Not just Tik Tok. I've also heard that about Genshin Impact, and a few other things. But it's more in general, western people worried about China tracking them, even though they have much more to worry about the western governments tracking them.
I respond with "Yeah but what about the french tracking me?"
Just throw random countries out there as non sequiturs until it all sounds completely ridiculous, especially the ones that make it sillier.
"What about the Italians tracking you?"
"Why would the Italians be tracking me and what can they do to me?"
"Exactly"
:anti-italian-action:
Lean into the idea. The Chinese are tracking us? Awesome, since you're listening - Chinese spies please come and build high speed rail over here 谢谢
(Non-racist) Guy who walks up to random Chinese people and asks them to build highspeed rail for him.
My boss did that in a meeting a few months ago. Just leaned into the microphone on his computer and said "China, can you send me the transscript for this meeting?"
I’m imaging a person rapidly animorphing back and forth between a gammon boomer doing that trademark alcoholic smirk and based zoomer communist doing a Fortnite dance.
Horse shoe theory for political humor.
Honestly I wanted to ask him why i was even in the meeting if China is going to give us the transscript anyway. My one job is to be the guy who takes notes from all the Wisdom(tm) that the old ass professors blabbers out.
Does your boss think your name is china? If a boomer they could be senile enough at this point.
For real though, the lack of awareness that leads a person to make a cheap and unoriginal joke that directly assaults the role and value of a person in the room with them.
If you don’t mind me asking: what’s the actual like job that allows a person to be the note taker at a university? It sounds cool, like imagine being the person paid to follow Chomsky around and write down what he says lol. Obviously your asshole boss is the equal and opposite downside to the potential upside of a based professor and I don’t mean to belittle that or the having to deal with it by imagining a cool version.
“Why would the Italians be tracking me and what can they do to me?”
This is when you tell them about the Parmesan Mafia
I mean, there is a pretty well known Mafia from Italy that is still active all over the world
Yeah, the Parmesan Mafia!
Noone talks about how wholefoods sells the data of their cheese customers on the foreign intelligence market
r/privacy is filled to the brim with nerds in the US whose first privacy concern is the evil see-see-pee getting a hold of their messages to their friends or whatever.
It would be funny if China starts offering US defense attorneys definitive proof their clients didn't do it to destabilize the prison industrial complex.
It's also perfectly legal for the defense attorney to do, if I remember right from my legal issues classes. Lawyers can use illegally-obtained evidence only if it was not illegally obtained by the government. If the cops break into a house illegally and find evidence of a crime? That can't be used. Some weird guy does that? It can be used.
(Of course, this is all in theory. In practice, it's way different.)
Wouldn't they have to somehow establish the evidence was legitimate then? Like, if some guy broke into a house to get a murder weapon that has finger prints that aren't the defendant you'd need to somehow show it wasn't tampered with? Although obviously China can sidestep this because they were acquiring all the data uninterrupted anyway, it's like sharing a constantly running camera.
There is also the worry they are going to use platforms like TikTok to destabilize their geopolitical competitors. And maybe that is a reasonable worry if you are a liberal, but as leftists, we kinda don't want political stability, and compared to local companies who would be able to do something like that, China seems less likely to promote the extreme right, the people who most want to bomb them out of existence.
I do have my concerns in that TikTok, like most social media companies, employ a lot of ex CIA and whatnot. Now if those people are being subtly reeducated, that's one thing. :josus-stalin: But it's important to remember that China is not running TikTok, the capitalists they have on a very loose leash are.
I've got friends who work in the Federal Government, and they are prohibited from using Wayz because it is owned by an Israeli firm that definitely uses the information to map out the US and the behaviors of noted individuals.
Fuck with any American official or bureaucrat who departs from the proxy state's domestic interest. Look at how aggressively they trashed Ilhan Omar, for instance.
I've had some mild success pushing back on these people by asking if they really think that Apple or Google is going to say no, if the chinese government comes with a sack of cash. That bought me some reprive from the most annoying parts of my immediate family.
Not to mention that the Western parts of 抖音 are ran by offices in Western countries and servers in Western countries and goes by "tiktok" in Western countries.
Once again I’m glad about the bubble I’m in, everyone I’ve ever talked about this with basically agrees “I don’t really want The Chinese government having my data but better than the US government, at least China can’t arrest me”
I see this pop up so often in "countercultural" tech circles who ought to know better.
