15 ms·
Can anyone point to something that TikTok is doing that FB/Google/Twitter aren't already doing, that we should be concerned about? All the anti-tiktok takes se
by cwkoss 4y ago
Can anyone point to something that TikTok is doing that FB/Google/Twitter aren't already doing, that we should be concerned about?
All the anti-tiktok takes seem to be rooted in sinophobia and nationalist sour grapes. I don't like megacorps slurping my info up, but these conversations seem to have huge blinders around what has become standard practice for American web companies - especially when handling the data of foreign users.
- cwkoss 4y agoTo answer my own question - the in-browser keylogger story was concerning to me. If it was actually transmitting the within-browser keystroke data back to tiktok servers, that would be quite concerning... except that I already avoid their browser like the plague because it sucks, so I just retype URLs into my default browser in the rare cases I want to follow a link in someone's profile.
- angryasian 4y agoThis is any in app browser that has access to it. Its not specific to tiktok. Nothing against you but this disinformation towards tiktok is laugable
- CharlesW 4y ago> Can anyone point to something that TikTok is doing that FB/Google/Twitter aren't already doing, that we should be concerned about? If you're okay with FB/Google/Twitter sharing all of the data they have on you with the CCP, there's not a big difference.
- sniperjzp 4y agoNot trying to defend TikTok, FB/Google/Twitter are not sharing data with CCP, but they are sharing data with CIA owned by Uncle Sam.
- dvngnt_ 4y agothat's worse imo
- fnordpiglet 4y agoWorse doesn’t make bad better
- metadat 4y agoAs a general rule, the sharing occurs only as compelled by lawful court order. Goog/FB don't really have a choice in complying if they want to continue to exist and do business in the USA.
- ok123456 4y agoThat's not true at all. All of these social media platforms have LEO portals where they circumvent any privacy settings.
- lmm 4y ago> As a general rule, the sharing occurs only as compelled by lawful court order. "Lawful", sure, in the sense that the secret FISA court approved it, and while that's blatantly unconstitutional the supreme court decided that no-one has standing to bring that case unless they can prove that they were themselves being secretly surveilled. I bet everything that TikTok does is lawfully compelled as well. > Goog/FB don't really have a choice in complying if they want to continue to exist and do business in the USA. Sure, but again, how's that any different from TikTok's situation?
- MiguelX413 4y agoI'm more concerned about my government having my data instead of a far away government tbh.
- mtgx 4y ago
- digianarchist 4y agoExactly. The CCP doesn't have jurisdiction over me last time I checked. Although that might be a growing concern as China strengthens relationships with other countries.
- movedx 4y agoI'd argue that's not true, though. They don't have legal jurisdiction over you, but they could potentially have digital or social jurisdiction over you and your environment, and that's possibly just as bad. Think manipulation of your local government, throwing elections in favour of pro-CCP candidates, and spreading pro-CCP material out to social media and the people around you becoming sympathetic to their cause.
- dmz73 4y agoThat's the wrong argument because if they infiltrate the local government then they will have access to locally collected data and won't need tiktok. Access to tiktok data gives China surveillance over US that could help in case of future conflicts, just look what Ukraine has done to Russian soldiers using insecure communications.
- parineum 4y agoWhen your future Senators have hours of compromising TikTok video in TikTok servers, you will be under their jurisdiction. China is magnificent at long term thinking.
- bpodgursky 4y agoThere's a point here at which you have to just rely on your priors, but there's just a world of difference between Google and FB sharing data the US government requests on individuals via court orders, vs the CCP hoovering up data on every single user and using them to build a single giant social credit database. And yes, maybe everyone is lying to you, and the NSA is doing it already. Maybe they already have radios in your microwave building a database of your breakfasts. We just don't know. But at the end of the day I know a lot of people at Google and 100% of them would push back on governments requests as hard as humanly possible, and there would absolutely be whistleblowers if this was happening. I'm just not going to equate the two.
- d0mine 4y agoWhich country is known for kidnapping people from anywhere in the world where 95+% of humanity lives? People can be killed based on metadata. Make your own conclusions who is the scariest here.
- anon291 4y agoNothing honestly, but FB/Google/Twitter are under the authority of the United States government. Thus it is less of a threat to the US government, which is what it means to be a national security threat in this context.
- cwkoss 4y agoI'm a US citizen and am more concerned about the US government than the CCP, particularly because of the amount of power each entity can hold over me.
- seandoe 4y agoThis type of comment is popping up everywhere. I think it's a bit naive and simple. I would add selfish, but it might be more than that. If the CCP uses the data against your government and its people in order to pursue its interests, isn't it possible that your well-being could suffer? Even if that is not the direct intention? Further, isn't it possible that, while your government indeed has more power over you, a side effect of your government successfully satisfying their interests could be an improvement in your well being? How can you be so sure the biggest threat is your government? I'm not so sure one way or the other, I'm just curious how you are. There is evidence of foreign governments meddling with US civilian affairs. It seems like this is exactly the attitude they would try to cultivate.
- cwkoss 4y agoI think US hegemony is the biggest threat to global stability, but this is starting to veer off topic.
- lmm 4y ago> If the CCP uses the data against your government and its people in order to pursue its interests, isn't it possible that your well-being could suffer? Even if that is not the direct intention? Further, isn't it possible that, while your government indeed has more power over you, a side effect of your government successfully satisfying their interests could be an improvement in your well being? How can you be so sure the biggest threat is your government? I'm not so sure one way or the other, I'm just curious how you are. The same way we figure out anything else - learning and experience. Ultimately, there have been a bunch of cases of people like us having their lives ruined by the USG, and not so many cases of the CCP doing the same (and none for people who didn't go to China or have family ties there, AFAIK). > There is evidence of foreign governments meddling with US civilian affairs. It seems like this is exactly the attitude they would try to cultivate. There is also evidence of the US government meddling with US civilian affairs, and I suspect they deploy a lot more and a lot more effective propaganda to cultivate the attitudes that they want to see.
- As_You_Wish 4y ago[flagged]
- mjcl 4y ago> I mean, what you say is all interesting and stuff, but you created this account today Their profile says it was created in August 2011.
- spiderice 4y agoGP, out of curiosity, how did you make this mistake? What made you think the account was created today? Edit: Looks like GP ninja-edited their comment to remove the bit about the account being created today.
- As_You_Wish 4y agoCorrect, I wrote that accidentally, I erased that real fast, like 1 minute later, but for some reason, people can still see it, I guess. It was not a Ninja edit, just a mistake that I corrected a minute later but I don't know, maybe there's some kind of automatic feed that sends the post out to everyone?
- pokepim 4y ago@As_you_wish is a white supremacist. Dont expect much from people like him.
- dang 4y agoWe've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of which ideology you're battling for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- As_You_Wish 4y agoYeah, wrote that accidentally, I erased that real fast, like 1 minute later, but for some reason, people can still see it, I guess.
- xhkkffbf 4y agoThis is a good question that I hope someone will answer. Maybe TikTok's biggest crime is imitation.
- goatcode 4y agoWould you be cool if the ruling party in Russia had the same data?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- s3r3nity 4y ago[flagged]
- ajsnigrutin 4y agoYou can always not-go to china, and their social score doesn't affect you at all. If you're american, facebooks(twitters,googles,...) social score can affect you pretty much immediately.
- ravenstine 4y agoI'd be amazed if at this point the CCP hasn't figured out it can have a lot of influence over the western intellectual class just by running tons of clandestine HN accounts. If people are that concerned about Russian hacking, why not Chinese when it's even more in their best interest?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tomjen3 4y agoEasy. TikTok is sending all your data to a genocidal regime in China. The rest are sending all your data to the US.
- pasquinelli 4y agohey, which of those two have *actually* committed genocide?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- justapassenger 4y agoMy standard response - I see a really big difference between private corporations operating under rules of democratic government (with both of them being bad in many ways) and state sanctioned company, operating under the rules of an authoritarian regime. And merely pointing a fact that China is an authoritarian state is NOT sinophobia, and please don't use arguments like that to try to shutdown discussion. I've also seen myself few big-tech companies throwing literally hundreds of millions of dollars at ways to protect their infrastructure from USA government eavesdropping on their infrastructure. That's just not a possibility in an authoritarian state. And if you don't see reasons why giving very powerful, authoritarian regime full access to huge amount data about people is a problem - well, history books can show you some.
- ProAm 4y agoAT&T Room 641A has entered the chat. [1] Our government already spies on all of our telecom, the private companies are also complicit (be it by force or by choice (ex Oracle). I do not think the US is much different that China with the exception of the government not owning the companies at hand. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
- kube-system 4y agoWhen this happens in a room in the west, it gets a Wikipedia page and people regularly post about it online and argue about whether the scope of the collection under law is appropriate. When this happens in an authoritarian state, it is business as usual, the scope of collection is not considered, and dissenting opinions quickly disappear. That’s the difference.
- ProAm 4y agoIm not sure I follow. I think this happens to every company in an authoritarian state currently, not having a room like this would be the oddity? They collect everything by default, like we do, we just try to keep it secret?
- subroutine 4y agoYes - operating in China.
- trident5000 4y agoLol FB and all the rest you mentioned do not have access to anything in China. Thats the difference.
- glaucon 4y agoI realise that the Chinese Communist Party would like to label any questioning of their activities as 'sinophobia' but it's not so. The CCP is one thing and the Chinese people are another.
- pphysch 4y agoWhere do the members of the CCP come from?
- Mountain_Skies 4y agoFrom basic set theory.
- jahewson 4y agoHong Kong? Taiwan?
- pphysch 4y agoThere are definitely CCP members born in both those places. Tibet and Xinjiang too.
- tarakat 4y ago"A foreign country is amassing spies and rumour-spreaders on our streets!" "So? Our country also has such agents on our streets. Worrying about these others is xenophobic. Besides, our country is just as corrupt, we are in no position to judge." But what should we non-Americans make of this? Depends on your relationship with China vs. US. Personally, I view FB/Google/Twitter with less, but still plenty, of mistrust. US govt influence is a big factor, but not the only one.
- greenthrow 4y agoFor US citizens like me it is 100% being even more uncomfortable with the CCP having data and influence over so many US citizens than I am about Google/Facebook/Amazon and the US government. I would rather we had data privacy on every front. But if I have to pick one that bothers me more, since I am a US citizen, I am most uncomfortable with the CCP. If Tetris was one app that reported data directly to Putin, I'd be uncomfortable with that too.
- tablespoon 4y ago> Can anyone point to something that TikTok is doing that FB/Google/Twitter aren't already doing, that we should be concerned about? > ...I don't like megacorps slurping my info up, but these conversations seem to have huge blinders around what has become standard practice for American web companies - especially when handling the data of foreign users. That's the wrong question for the context. This is a question about "nation-X national security," not personal tech privacy that's generically concerned with data collection and ads.
- andreilys 4y agoAll private corps are beholden to the CCP, anyone that steps out of line is disappeared or taken out of the lime light. Just look at Jack Ma. If you imagine that the CEO of Binance has any ability to prevent the CCP from weaponizing TikTok, then I have a bridge to sell to you
- hayst4ck 4y agoIs the great firewall of china anglophobia?