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As someone also outside US and China I have found this saga really entertaining. As stated in the article, TikTok doesn't capture more info than Facebook, what

As someone also outside US and China I have found this saga really entertaining. As stated in the article, TikTok doesn't capture more info than Facebook, whatsapp or many other American companies. And as shown by Snowden, those companies happily share that data with the US government. The only reason why there is so much ruckus is because it is another government doing it. But this type of censoring is equivalent to what the China is doing with the great-firewall. All in the name of national security and preserving g the country values. As an outsider user of technology, one has to accept that most applications are going to share whatever you put out there. And when you really want to share things privately, you should use encryption methods or meet I real life. I ve learned to avoid any expectation of privacy online.

simion314 6y ago
IMO is not national security or economics that precipitated this, it was some prank some users on TikTok don on Trump. The guy already was preparing his campaign on how deflect his incompetence(no wall, COVID) so he was working hard on blaming China, I am expecting US will be hit harder economically then China where they handled the virus better so there is a plan to blame it all on China and promising people that China will pay (very similar with the imigrants and the wall and who will pay for the wall and for other stuff). My prediction Trump electoral propaganda will have the word "China" at each 2 sentences.
Yetanfou 6y ago
As yet another person outside of the USA I see the apps as being basically the same, all based on psychological research related to attention and how to get and keep it. I don't use any of them and block a number of them on my network at home so as to keep my daughters from becoming hooked. I do see a difference between the way these companies interface with their respective governments, as far as I know there is no USA equivalent of the Chinese version of the Soviet Nomenklatura. Especially since Xi Jinping came to power the CCP has been taking strides to reinforce its control over business [1], backed by a number of laws which mandate companies to assist the state when it so demands. So what do I do? I blocked TikTok a while ago, I blocked Facebook more or less forever. Instagram and Twitter are unblocked for now, the first because my 15yo daughter uses it, the second because nobody here uses it personally nor has any inclination of doing so while it is often used by others as a news distribution channel. We don't use Google directly but get search results through a local Searx instance which includes - among others - Google Search. We don't use Google Maps [2] , that task is relegated to ~OsmAnd (for navigation and mapping) and some local mapping sites. No Gmail, I run my own mail server. No Zoom, again using our own video conferencing (Jitsi Meet) and chat (Nextcloud talk) servers. No Google Docs, Libreoffice Online in Nextcloud works fine. In short we use no external services when we can avoid them, keeping nearly everything in-house and under our own control. A private VPN makes sure our data stays ours even when using public Wifi. While this may sound elaborate and in some ways probably is elaborate it makes it possible to reap the benefits of the 'net without ending up being milked dry by all those data herders out there, whether they're driven by profit maximisation or intended as tool in geopolitical power plays. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/china-business-xi-jinping-communist-party-state-private-enterprise-huawei https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/china-business... [2] ...which has the added benefit of not having to suffer through bouts of stupidity like Google's latest regressive piece of systemic racism where they start marking the skin colour of business owners when they're sufficiently pigmented: https://twitter.com/googlemaps/status/1288850928632832000 https://twitter.com/googlemaps/status/1288850928632832000

simion314 6y ago

IMO is not national security or economics that precipitated this, it was some prank some users on TikTok don on Trump. The guy already was preparing his campaign on how deflect his incompetence(no wall, COVID) so he was working hard on blaming China, I am expecting US will be hit harder economically then China where they handled the virus better so there is a plan to blame it all on China and promising people that China will pay (very similar with the imigrants and the wall and who will pay for the wall and for other stuff). My prediction Trump electoral propaganda will have the word "China" at each 2 sentences.

Yetanfou 6y ago

As yet another person outside of the USA I see the apps as being basically the same, all based on psychological research related to attention and how to get and keep it. I don't use any of them and block a number of them on my network at home so as to keep my daughters from becoming hooked. I do see a difference between the way these companies interface with their respective governments, as far as I know there is no USA equivalent of the Chinese version of the Soviet Nomenklatura. Especially since Xi Jinping came to power the CCP has been taking strides to reinforce its control over business [1], backed by a number of laws which mandate companies to assist the state when it so demands. So what do I do? I blocked TikTok a while ago, I blocked Facebook more or less forever. Instagram and Twitter are unblocked for now, the first because my 15yo daughter uses it, the second because nobody here uses it personally nor has any inclination of doing so while it is often used by others as a news distribution channel. We don't use Google directly but get search results through a local Searx instance which includes - among others - Google Search. We don't use Google Maps [2] , that task is relegated to ~OsmAnd (for navigation and mapping) and some local mapping sites. No Gmail, I run my own mail server. No Zoom, again using our own video conferencing (Jitsi Meet) and chat (Nextcloud talk) servers. No Google Docs, Libreoffice Online in Nextcloud works fine. In short we use no external services when we can avoid them, keeping nearly everything in-house and under our own control. A private VPN makes sure our data stays ours even when using public Wifi. While this may sound elaborate and in some ways probably is elaborate it makes it possible to reap the benefits of the 'net without ending up being milked dry by all those data herders out there, whether they're driven by profit maximisation or intended as tool in geopolitical power plays. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/china-business-xi-jinping-communist-party-state-private-enterprise-huawei https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/china-business... [2] ...which has the added benefit of not having to suffer through bouts of stupidity like Google's latest regressive piece of systemic racism where they start marking the skin colour of business owners when they're sufficiently pigmented: https://twitter.com/googlemaps/status/1288850928632832000 https://twitter.com/googlemaps/status/1288850928632832000