8 ms·

I was a bit critical of my wife using TikTok until I realized that she replaced the negativity of Facebook with something that, in its current form, is pretty h

I was a bit critical of my wife using TikTok until I realized that she replaced the negativity of Facebook with something that, in its current form, is pretty harmless. It's replaced rants and frustration with laughter and positivity.

mschuster91 6y ago
> It's replaced rants and frustration with laughter and positivity. ... and Chinese spyware in the pockets of children.
- msbarnett 6y ago
  Not sure I consider Chinese spyware any worse than the US spyware of Facebook, as a resident of neither country. Hand wringing about TikTok seems more rooted in sinophobia than genuine privacy concerns, from where I’m sitting.
  - redblacktree 6y ago
    Without the racist framing of "sinophobia," fear of the Chinese state is a legitimate one. They are a totalitarian regime engaged in a variety of human rights abuses and dystopian-fiction-made-reality. From Uyghur concentration camps to "social credit scores," there are a lot of reasons to fear the Chinese state that have nothing to do with racism or xenophobia.
    - xapata 6y ago
      Indeed, I know many Chinese people who are afraid of the Chinese state.
      - redblacktree 6y ago
        It looks like they may also be brigading this post. Two downvotes pretty quickly on my comment. Maybe I'm out-of-touch with Hacker News norms, but I didn't think I said anything that warrants downvotes. Edit to add: I don't make this post to complain about downvotes. The point was the potential brigading, since we're talking negatively about the Chinese state.
        scottLobster 6y ago
        Yeah, it's been a pattern on recent posts concerning China that any comment describing CCP malevolence gets instantly downvoted, and often responded to with the same extremely weak what-aboutisms and other non-arguments, accusations of Sinophobia and such. So either there's a rather unintelligent group of Hacker News users who just show up to downvote and post bad arguments on every article criticizing China and then disappear, or we're seeing some of China's finest 50 cent warriors in the comment section.
        La1n 6y ago
        Sure, people who downvote you are unintelligent or paid shills. You cant even imagine that you might be wrong, or people have different opinions?
        scottLobster 6y ago
        No, but people who post the same logical fallacies again and again (almost like they're getting them off a list somewhere) and never address the actual argument probably are. It's like pointing out that POC living at higher latitudes likely need Vitamin D supplements because the sunlight isn't intense enough for darker skin to produce enough Vitamin D naturally, because that's how melanin works. Then someone jumps in, down-votes you, calls you racist, and points out that white people need vitamin D supplements too. The rules of logic say those are bad/non-arguments, not me. Once or twice is an unintelligent person. A consistent long-term pattern makes it likely some variety of shill/troll/plant, or Chinese intelligence in the case of China-related articles.
        FooBarWidget 6y ago
        Nah, I think you're being too paranoid. I see plenty of less-China-critical (not even pro-China) comments get downvoted, and China-critical comments upvoted. Also, CCP shills are a nice myth but they don't operate overseas. The real shills serve a very different purpose: they are hired by local governments to cheat the central government into giving them promotions, by showing the central government comments from "happy citizens".
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > Not sure I consider Chinese spyware any worse than the US spyware of Facebook, as a resident of neither country. I consider it quite different, because I know I'm more opposed to the ideology of the CCP than I am of the US. The US isn't intractably opposed to liberal democracy, but the CCP is: From the OP: > To that end, this long history looms large in how China thinks about its relationship to the U.S. specifically, and the West generally. China is driven to reverse its “century of humiliation”, and to retake what it sees as its rightful place as a dominant force in the world. What few in the West seem to realize, though, is that the Chinese Communist Party very much believes that Marxism is the means by which that must be accomplished, and that Western liberal values are actively hostile to that goal. Tanner Greer wrote in Tablet: > ... > This understanding of China’s belief that it is fighting an ideological war explains why the severe curtailing of freedom that happened in Hong Kong this month was inevitable; if the Party’s ideology is ultimately opposed to liberalism anywhere, “one country-two systems” were always empty words in service of China’s rejuvenation, and Marxism’s triumph. To see that reality, though, means taking China seriously, and believing what they say.
    - msbarnett 6y ago
      > I consider it quite different, because I know I'm more opposed to the ideology of the CCP than I am of the US. I don’t know that I’m particularly enthused about either country’s ideology, hence my more skeptical view of the idea that any of the major US social media networks are “better”.
      - scottLobster 6y ago
        Don't need to be enthused to acknowledge one is better than the other. At the end of the day the NSA/facebook is far less likely to use my information to hurt me than the CCP. The only difference is I live in the US, so the CCP doesn't really care and can't really reach me without committing a potential act of war anyway. If I moved to China and maintained my same social media habits I'd be disappeared rather quickly, and possibly organ harvested. Consider that if you use TikTok anything you post will show up in your dossier should you ever visit China, even as a tourist. And you're giving that info freely, better hope the CCP doesn't decide to use it against you while you're there to make a political statement. They've done and are doing far worse over less.
  - xapata 6y ago
    Do you agree with the censorship and propaganda policies of mainland China? If not, Sinophobia is not paranoia.
    - msbarnett 6y ago
      No, but then again I’m equally opposed to much of contemporary US politics and the long history of US meddling in foreign countries affairs to obtain anti-democratic results that happen to favour US goals (broadly, Latin American 20th century history), so again, this “TikTok’s data gathering is an existential threat to freedom but please pay Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google et al no mind” framing is... unconvincing to say the least.
  - cameronbrown 6y ago
    Ah yes, because the US is well known for its Muslim concentration camps, social credit scores and surveillance panopticon. > Hand wringing about TikTok seems more rooted in sinophobia than genuine privacy concerns, from where I’m sitting. This is a strawman. People dislike the CCP not the Chinese.
    - msbarnett 6y ago
      > Ah yes, because the US is well known for its Muslim concentration camps, social credit scores and surveillance panopticon. Perhaps I simply don’t consider the Hispanic concentration camps, private credit scores that still gate hiring, access to healthcare (via hiring) and renting and apartment, and surveillance panopticon powered by Google, better?
      - cameronbrown 6y ago
        Are you serious? The US does not have Hispanic concentration camps. It DOES have a private prison problem, but not death camps.
        msbarnett 6y ago
        I guess we’ll see how well the detainees in those ICE camps fare in the face of an out of control COVID outbreak. I wouldn’t care to try to parse any moral superiority between how apologists want to characterize the ICE camps and how Chinese apologists want to characterize the Uighur camps, myself. Neither strikes me as terribly deserving of our defense.
        La1n 6y ago
        Concentration camp =/= Death camp
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        YarickR2 6y ago
  - addison-lee 6y ago
    No doubt spyware is bad from either country, but TikTok was caught trying to suppress content from "ugly, poor, or disabled" users. Do you still support the app knowing that? https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-users-discrimination/ https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-us...
    - msbarnett 6y ago
      I didn’t say I supported it at all. I merely said I don’t see how it’s worse than the major US social networks. Like say Facebook, which has been caught multiple times allowing employers and housing advertisers to illegally exclude groups like Black people, from seeing job postings and apartment listings. Again, I don’t know that what TikTok has been shown to be doing is any worse.
      - addison-lee 6y ago
        Sorry, didn't mean to put words in your mouth.
  - foepys 6y ago
    Look at Hong Kong where China just yesterday told the political parties that holding any pre-election for Hong Kong's parliament is an aggressive act against China. Or look at the Uyghur internment camps. Or the one child policy that effectively turned some communitys 80% male. There is no opposition in China that can speak up against this.
- ideals 6y ago
  Ya only Uncle Sam is allowed to spy on our kids. This line of reasoning is getting old. All social media apps are data collection driven platforms
- alextheparrot 6y ago
  Can you explain the threat model you're using here to assess Facebook vs TikTok? This sounds like just emotional language as I could call most of the modern web spyware and not be too far off the mark
  - xapata 6y ago
    It's less about threat model than willingness to use it. If the US government were using Facebook to censor and disseminate propaganda, we'd likely eventually hear about it. In contrast, the Chinese government is certainly using TikTok to censor and quite likely to disseminate propaganda. Critics of that policy will be imprisoned.
    - Altimos 6y ago
      This article calls into question how closely you feel a sitting executive's campaign is to its government, but we have heard about it. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-2020-disinformation-war/605530/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-202...
- bstar77 6y ago
  Since the copy/paste exploit was addressed (in ios) I'm not sure what useful information "chinese spyware" can gather from this app. As long as it's being used for goofy dance and lip sync videos, I don't see the harm.
  - jsterSC 6y ago
    I highly recommend anyone that has this initial reaction to what these companies are benefiting from their surveillance models check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Surveillance_Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Surveillance_Capita... Which does an excellent job helping to stimulate thought of just what the power and purpose of these types of apps as well other structures (alphabet) are able to do...
  - godtoldmetodoit 6y ago
    My personal feeling is that Tiktok is better then most other social media for the end users emotional state, at least based on my wife's usage. From a spying perspective, I tend to agree with you as well. That said - China doesn't let FB or Twitter in their country, why the hell should the US let them in ours? To me it is akin to letting them buy the NY Times or CNN. They may be benign now, but if tensions were to continue mounting, they could greatly influence the content a significant portion of people in the US are receiving. I see 0 reason to trust them with that power.
    - jfengel 6y ago
      Is there any reason to think that positivity will continue to hold? Or is TikTok just getting its grace period before griefers, trolls, and paranoiacs move in? If the Chinese government is going to aggressively moderate TikTok to keep that out... uh, cool, I guess. I'd be happy to see some popular entertainment that doesn't devolve into a screaming match. But it's a lot of work, and reduces audience (i.e. revenue).
    - throw57654 6y ago
      TikTok is also banned in China. Bytedance has an isolated version called Douyin. I believe if FB or Twitter created specific versions that comply with China’s laws, they would be allowed.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
rvz 6y ago
Not sure if you're aware of the fact of what was going on in Hong Kong and the loss of its autonomous status due to the national security law. Facebook and TikTok are no different to privacy, but TikTok can give all of that data and the CCP can access it. But of course it doesn't matter to you because 'its pretty harmless'. For Hong Kong citizens, it's much worse. They are being identified and arrested in the hundreds as the Chinese government has access to this data to find anyone insulting or ridiculing them. That's very totalitarian to me.
- stronglikedan 6y ago
  > But of course it doesn't matter to you because 'its pretty harmless'. That doesn't seem like a very charitable interpretation of OP's comment. If a very small fraction of global users may come to harm as a result of (not by) using an app, then that's pretty much the textbook definition of "pretty harmless".
ralfd 6y ago
This. Take any social media app and there is something toxic, mean, snarky about it. Twitter is optimized for snark and shit storms. Facebook has your crazy uncle sharing fake news. Instagram posts are fake and pretentiousness. Reddit has their subreddit drama. TikTok is just fun. Even wholesome fun. I tried if I could find one mean tiktok video, but there was not one bullying video. Even if the girl making a dance video was ugly/fat the comments on that were encouraging and positive.
- chillacy 6y ago
  I was wondering awhile ago to what extent the famous saying "the medium is the message" applies here. It's famously easy to misread the intent of text, to see hostility when there is none (and so smiley faces and emojis came into being), it's probably harder to be mean over photos than text (especially a photo of yourself...), and even harder over video.

mschuster91 6y ago

> It's replaced rants and frustration with laughter and positivity. ... and Chinese spyware in the pockets of children.

msbarnett 6y ago
Not sure I consider Chinese spyware any worse than the US spyware of Facebook, as a resident of neither country. Hand wringing about TikTok seems more rooted in sinophobia than genuine privacy concerns, from where I’m sitting.
- redblacktree 6y ago
  Without the racist framing of "sinophobia," fear of the Chinese state is a legitimate one. They are a totalitarian regime engaged in a variety of human rights abuses and dystopian-fiction-made-reality. From Uyghur concentration camps to "social credit scores," there are a lot of reasons to fear the Chinese state that have nothing to do with racism or xenophobia.
  - xapata 6y ago
    Indeed, I know many Chinese people who are afraid of the Chinese state.
    - redblacktree 6y ago
      It looks like they may also be brigading this post. Two downvotes pretty quickly on my comment. Maybe I'm out-of-touch with Hacker News norms, but I didn't think I said anything that warrants downvotes. Edit to add: I don't make this post to complain about downvotes. The point was the potential brigading, since we're talking negatively about the Chinese state.
      - scottLobster 6y ago
        Yeah, it's been a pattern on recent posts concerning China that any comment describing CCP malevolence gets instantly downvoted, and often responded to with the same extremely weak what-aboutisms and other non-arguments, accusations of Sinophobia and such. So either there's a rather unintelligent group of Hacker News users who just show up to downvote and post bad arguments on every article criticizing China and then disappear, or we're seeing some of China's finest 50 cent warriors in the comment section.
        La1n 6y ago
        Sure, people who downvote you are unintelligent or paid shills. You cant even imagine that you might be wrong, or people have different opinions?
        scottLobster 6y ago
        No, but people who post the same logical fallacies again and again (almost like they're getting them off a list somewhere) and never address the actual argument probably are. It's like pointing out that POC living at higher latitudes likely need Vitamin D supplements because the sunlight isn't intense enough for darker skin to produce enough Vitamin D naturally, because that's how melanin works. Then someone jumps in, down-votes you, calls you racist, and points out that white people need vitamin D supplements too. The rules of logic say those are bad/non-arguments, not me. Once or twice is an unintelligent person. A consistent long-term pattern makes it likely some variety of shill/troll/plant, or Chinese intelligence in the case of China-related articles.
        FooBarWidget 6y ago
        Nah, I think you're being too paranoid. I see plenty of less-China-critical (not even pro-China) comments get downvoted, and China-critical comments upvoted. Also, CCP shills are a nice myth but they don't operate overseas. The real shills serve a very different purpose: they are hired by local governments to cheat the central government into giving them promotions, by showing the central government comments from "happy citizens".
- ardy42 6y ago
  > Not sure I consider Chinese spyware any worse than the US spyware of Facebook, as a resident of neither country. I consider it quite different, because I know I'm more opposed to the ideology of the CCP than I am of the US. The US isn't intractably opposed to liberal democracy, but the CCP is: From the OP: > To that end, this long history looms large in how China thinks about its relationship to the U.S. specifically, and the West generally. China is driven to reverse its “century of humiliation”, and to retake what it sees as its rightful place as a dominant force in the world. What few in the West seem to realize, though, is that the Chinese Communist Party very much believes that Marxism is the means by which that must be accomplished, and that Western liberal values are actively hostile to that goal. Tanner Greer wrote in Tablet: > ... > This understanding of China’s belief that it is fighting an ideological war explains why the severe curtailing of freedom that happened in Hong Kong this month was inevitable; if the Party’s ideology is ultimately opposed to liberalism anywhere, “one country-two systems” were always empty words in service of China’s rejuvenation, and Marxism’s triumph. To see that reality, though, means taking China seriously, and believing what they say.
  - msbarnett 6y ago
    > I consider it quite different, because I know I'm more opposed to the ideology of the CCP than I am of the US. I don’t know that I’m particularly enthused about either country’s ideology, hence my more skeptical view of the idea that any of the major US social media networks are “better”.
    - scottLobster 6y ago
      Don't need to be enthused to acknowledge one is better than the other. At the end of the day the NSA/facebook is far less likely to use my information to hurt me than the CCP. The only difference is I live in the US, so the CCP doesn't really care and can't really reach me without committing a potential act of war anyway. If I moved to China and maintained my same social media habits I'd be disappeared rather quickly, and possibly organ harvested. Consider that if you use TikTok anything you post will show up in your dossier should you ever visit China, even as a tourist. And you're giving that info freely, better hope the CCP doesn't decide to use it against you while you're there to make a political statement. They've done and are doing far worse over less.
- xapata 6y ago
  Do you agree with the censorship and propaganda policies of mainland China? If not, Sinophobia is not paranoia.
  - msbarnett 6y ago
    No, but then again I’m equally opposed to much of contemporary US politics and the long history of US meddling in foreign countries affairs to obtain anti-democratic results that happen to favour US goals (broadly, Latin American 20th century history), so again, this “TikTok’s data gathering is an existential threat to freedom but please pay Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google et al no mind” framing is... unconvincing to say the least.
- cameronbrown 6y ago
  Ah yes, because the US is well known for its Muslim concentration camps, social credit scores and surveillance panopticon. > Hand wringing about TikTok seems more rooted in sinophobia than genuine privacy concerns, from where I’m sitting. This is a strawman. People dislike the CCP not the Chinese.
  - msbarnett 6y ago
    > Ah yes, because the US is well known for its Muslim concentration camps, social credit scores and surveillance panopticon. Perhaps I simply don’t consider the Hispanic concentration camps, private credit scores that still gate hiring, access to healthcare (via hiring) and renting and apartment, and surveillance panopticon powered by Google, better?
    - cameronbrown 6y ago
      Are you serious? The US does not have Hispanic concentration camps. It DOES have a private prison problem, but not death camps.
      - msbarnett 6y ago
        I guess we’ll see how well the detainees in those ICE camps fare in the face of an out of control COVID outbreak. I wouldn’t care to try to parse any moral superiority between how apologists want to characterize the ICE camps and how Chinese apologists want to characterize the Uighur camps, myself. Neither strikes me as terribly deserving of our defense.
      - La1n 6y ago
        Concentration camp =/= Death camp
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - YarickR2 6y ago
- addison-lee 6y ago
  No doubt spyware is bad from either country, but TikTok was caught trying to suppress content from "ugly, poor, or disabled" users. Do you still support the app knowing that? https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-users-discrimination/ https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-us...
  - msbarnett 6y ago
    I didn’t say I supported it at all. I merely said I don’t see how it’s worse than the major US social networks. Like say Facebook, which has been caught multiple times allowing employers and housing advertisers to illegally exclude groups like Black people, from seeing job postings and apartment listings. Again, I don’t know that what TikTok has been shown to be doing is any worse.
    - addison-lee 6y ago
      Sorry, didn't mean to put words in your mouth.
- foepys 6y ago
  Look at Hong Kong where China just yesterday told the political parties that holding any pre-election for Hong Kong's parliament is an aggressive act against China. Or look at the Uyghur internment camps. Or the one child policy that effectively turned some communitys 80% male. There is no opposition in China that can speak up against this.
ideals 6y ago
Ya only Uncle Sam is allowed to spy on our kids. This line of reasoning is getting old. All social media apps are data collection driven platforms
alextheparrot 6y ago
Can you explain the threat model you're using here to assess Facebook vs TikTok? This sounds like just emotional language as I could call most of the modern web spyware and not be too far off the mark
- xapata 6y ago
  It's less about threat model than willingness to use it. If the US government were using Facebook to censor and disseminate propaganda, we'd likely eventually hear about it. In contrast, the Chinese government is certainly using TikTok to censor and quite likely to disseminate propaganda. Critics of that policy will be imprisoned.
  - Altimos 6y ago
    This article calls into question how closely you feel a sitting executive's campaign is to its government, but we have heard about it. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-2020-disinformation-war/605530/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-202...
bstar77 6y ago
Since the copy/paste exploit was addressed (in ios) I'm not sure what useful information "chinese spyware" can gather from this app. As long as it's being used for goofy dance and lip sync videos, I don't see the harm.
- jsterSC 6y ago
  I highly recommend anyone that has this initial reaction to what these companies are benefiting from their surveillance models check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Surveillance_Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Surveillance_Capita... Which does an excellent job helping to stimulate thought of just what the power and purpose of these types of apps as well other structures (alphabet) are able to do...
- godtoldmetodoit 6y ago
  My personal feeling is that Tiktok is better then most other social media for the end users emotional state, at least based on my wife's usage. From a spying perspective, I tend to agree with you as well. That said - China doesn't let FB or Twitter in their country, why the hell should the US let them in ours? To me it is akin to letting them buy the NY Times or CNN. They may be benign now, but if tensions were to continue mounting, they could greatly influence the content a significant portion of people in the US are receiving. I see 0 reason to trust them with that power.
  - jfengel 6y ago
    Is there any reason to think that positivity will continue to hold? Or is TikTok just getting its grace period before griefers, trolls, and paranoiacs move in? If the Chinese government is going to aggressively moderate TikTok to keep that out... uh, cool, I guess. I'd be happy to see some popular entertainment that doesn't devolve into a screaming match. But it's a lot of work, and reduces audience (i.e. revenue).
  - throw57654 6y ago
    TikTok is also banned in China. Bytedance has an isolated version called Douyin. I believe if FB or Twitter created specific versions that comply with China’s laws, they would be allowed.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

rvz 6y ago

Not sure if you're aware of the fact of what was going on in Hong Kong and the loss of its autonomous status due to the national security law. Facebook and TikTok are no different to privacy, but TikTok can give all of that data and the CCP can access it. But of course it doesn't matter to you because 'its pretty harmless'. For Hong Kong citizens, it's much worse. They are being identified and arrested in the hundreds as the Chinese government has access to this data to find anyone insulting or ridiculing them. That's very totalitarian to me.

stronglikedan 6y ago
> But of course it doesn't matter to you because 'its pretty harmless'. That doesn't seem like a very charitable interpretation of OP's comment. If a very small fraction of global users may come to harm as a result of (not by) using an app, then that's pretty much the textbook definition of "pretty harmless".

ralfd 6y ago

This. Take any social media app and there is something toxic, mean, snarky about it. Twitter is optimized for snark and shit storms. Facebook has your crazy uncle sharing fake news. Instagram posts are fake and pretentiousness. Reddit has their subreddit drama. TikTok is just fun. Even wholesome fun. I tried if I could find one mean tiktok video, but there was not one bullying video. Even if the girl making a dance video was ugly/fat the comments on that were encouraging and positive.

chillacy 6y ago
I was wondering awhile ago to what extent the famous saying "the medium is the message" applies here. It's famously easy to misread the intent of text, to see hostility when there is none (and so smiley faces and emojis came into being), it's probably harder to be mean over photos than text (especially a photo of yourself...), and even harder over video.