8 ms·
It’s not supposed to make money, it’s a spy tool subsidized by a foreign adversary…
by sudden_dystopia 4y ago
It’s not supposed to make money, it’s a spy tool subsidized by a foreign adversary…
- nextstep 4y agoCan you explain how this is a spy tool and how Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, etc. are not? I haven't really used TikTok. How does it collect data beyond the videos I've watched?
- user_named 4y agoThey're exactly the same.
- AlexandrB 4y agoIt seems to use the same bag of tricks Facebook/LinkedIn/etc. use to track things you do "off-app": tracking code in share widgets, injecting JS into the in-app browser, tracking cookies[1]. If ByteDance ever releases an Onavo style VPN app, people are going to lose their minds. [1] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/tiktok-data-privacy https://www.wired.co.uk/article/tiktok-data-privacy
- pb7 4y agoOne is controlled by an authoritarian government, the others are private (publicly traded) corporations in a democratic country.
- satao 4y agoas someone living outside the US I can tell you that to us you're all the same.
- pb7 4y agoThat's your personal opinion. You don't speak for the ~7.7B people not in the US.
- anm89 4y agoAs is your opinion that it isn't
- pb7 4y agoI didn't claim to speak for billions of people.
- dylan604 4y ago"You don't speak for the ~7.7B people not in the US." vs "You don't speak for me" One of those comments is speaking for a lot more people
- djanlermats2020 4y agoNo it isn't, both are correct statements of fact.
- ryantgtg 4y agoWhere did you get "you don't speak for me"? It's "I can tell you that to us you're all the same" vs "You don't speak for the ~7.7B people not in the US." One person is trying to speak for 7.7B and the other is advising against that.
- dylan604 4y ago>Where did you get "you don't speak for me"? It was an example of how to state unambiguously who was/was not being spoken for to contrast with the other statement. Maybe because I put it in quotes led you to think I was quoting someone, but it looked odd without to me.
- anm89 4y agoyou are making the same implicit claim and arguing insignificant semantics.
- cheriot 4y agoIronically, there's laws restricting US Gov access to data in the US, but no such restrictions on hacking foreign networks.
- exolymph 4y agoyou're entitled to your opinion, but for those of us living inside the US, they are not at all the same
- neither_color 4y agoWhen the police start knocking on my door inviting me to have tea because of something I posted on twitter I'll take your comment seriously(https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/10/translation-spilling-the-tea-about-being-invited-to-tea-and-hearing-the-police-read-aloud-your-tweets/ https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/10/translation-spilling-t...). Our free speech and privacy protections are not only stronger than China's, they're arguably stronger than Europe's too. There are some trade offs of course since Europe has GDPR and the right to be forgotten. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/technology/germany-internet-speech-arrest.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/technology/germany-intern... https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-arresting-nine-people-a-day-in-fight-against-web-trolls-b8nkpgp2d https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/police-arresting-nine-peo... The reason China's situation is worse is because Europeans and Americans can and do protest this. It is not normalized and accepted. If you feel that America goes too far in how it exports its perceived brand of authoritarian, you should know that China is just getting started: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/oct/3/report-details-chinas-covert-overseas-police-opera/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/oct/3/report-detai...
- angio 4y agoBut they took part in illegal surveillance programmes in the past.
- pb7 4y ago>illegal Exactly. What's illegal here is perfectly fine in China. Let's not equate the two. US government may get data from US companies but at least it takes a warrant. Chinese government straight up owns the servers.
- MaxPock 4y ago
- pb7 4y ago8 years old, referencing the same unlawful behavior mentioned earlier.
- monocasa 4y agoDid anyone have any consequences for the illegal behavior, including perjuring themselves before Congress regarding the matter? Then why would they stop after it was declared illegal?
- ok123456 4y agoYeah the Church Committee in the 70s really reformed the "intelligence community." They learned their lesson and never violated peoples civil rights ever again. And there's so much oversight now!
- sumedh 4y ago> US government may get data from US companies but at least it takes a warrant. On December 16, 2005, The New York Times reported that the Bush administration had been conducting surveillance against U.S. citizens without specific approval from the FISA court for each case since 2002. In 2011, the Obama administration secretly won permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency's use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans' communications in its massive databases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...
- MomoXenosaga 4y ago
- walrus01 4y agoChinese domestic companies are legally obligated to provide a direct data pipeline from their databases to the Ministry of State Security. It's a real law that exists. Basically imagine what the NSA implemented with the PRISM program revealed by Snowden but formally codified into law and with active participation/engineering efforts required by the corporations.
- afiori 4y agoIs it particularly different from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act ?
- alphabetting 4y agoYes https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-tapes-us-user-data-china-bytedance-access https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-...
- walrus01 4y agoIt's more like being perpetually subject to a National Security Letter (NSL) warrant issued by a US FISA court, a fairly rare occurrence and specifically targeted, but for blanket database replication and as the widespread legal default for every company in China.
- waffleiron 4y agoThe main difference is that HN is mainly visited by American users, not affected by CLOUD act.
- afiori 4y agoThe CLOUD Act affects all US companies.
- woooooo 4y agoFor what it's worth, non-american citizens on non-american soil have no legal protection against the same. And big ad monopolies are not in the business of pissing off the security state.
- AlexandrB 4y agoIs this also true for highly-funded, money-losing SV startups focusing on growth. Why or why not?
- parker_mountain 4y agoWell, I don't agree with OP, but the Chinese government is way more involved with its companies than the US is. Here, ostensibly, there's a court and legal process - versus China, where the government has all data by default. So, any Chinese tech company is de facto going to have all of its data accessible by the Chinese government, by default.
- user_named 4y agoIt's interesting to see you make these claims when you know nothing about the workings of the legal system in China.
- kryptiskt 4y agoBy Chinese law all data must be made accessible to the government. Of course, it's also an authoritarian state where the government isn't hamstrung by the legal system in any way.
- indemnity 4y agoWhat legal system? The legal system in China is whatever the party wants it to be.
- tehjoker 4y agoit's funny you raise that point right after the abortion decision here
- parker_mountain 4y ago> know nothing about the workings of the legal system in China Hello, I'm an appsec engineer working on product privacy for a large multinational company. I have a pretty accurate, battle tested, mental model about data privacy w/r/t international verticals. I have worked with our China vertical and also worked on key escrow separation models. You might even be able to figure out which company, based on the above. It's interesting to see you make these claims about me when you know nothing about me.
- rvz 4y agoYes. It is exactly that. [0] [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] I thought Facebook was worse, but looking at TikTok, it takes the most invasive spyware crown. At this point if the solution is to outlaw all invasive tracking for all companies, the first thing to do is like how Facebook got a multi-billion dollar fine by the FTC, TikTok (and repeat offenders) must be fined in the tens of billions, if they want to continue operating in the US and to stop them from violating user privacy by their invasive data collection. [0] https://www.nrk.no/osloogviken/xl/tiktok-doesn_t-show-the-war-in-ukraine-to-russian-users-1.15921522 https://www.nrk.no/osloogviken/xl/tiktok-doesn_t-show-the-wa... [1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-tapes-us-user-data-china-bytedance-access https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-... [2] https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/26/tiktok-dodges-questions-about-biometric-data-collection-in-senate-hearing/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/26/tiktok-dodges-questions-ab... [3] https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/03/tiktok-just-gave-itself-permission-to-collect-biometric-data-on-u-s-users-including-faceprints-and-voiceprints https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/03/tiktok-just-gave-itself-pe... [4] https://twitter.com/crobertsbmw/status/1427102606753550337 https://twitter.com/crobertsbmw/status/1427102606753550337 [5] https://krausefx.com/blog/announcing-inappbrowsercom-see-what-javascript-commands-get-executed-in-an-in-app-browser https://krausefx.com/blog/announcing-inappbrowsercom-see-wha...
- GuB-42 4y ago> I thought Facebook was worse, but looking at TikTok, it takes the most invasive spyware crown. I think that Facebook is worse, not because of the trackers but because of the very nature of the network. TikTok is mostly one-way. There are content creators and consumers, the latter vastly outnumber the former, also, creators often post content that is staged in some way, they don't really show their "real self". Facebook is a "true" social network, it is more symmetrical and intimate and people produce as much as they consume. TikTok is about showing off to the world, Facebook has that too, but it also a platform where friends can do stuff in "private". Facebook doesn't even need spyware. People willingly put their entire life online, and for the few who are not on Facebook, their friends who are post enough about them for Facebook to create an accurate shadow profile. TikTok spies on you, but Facebook makes every user a spy working for them.
- faangiq 4y agoYea. Just like Google, Facebook, your phone, …
- powerapple 4y agoThe fact is that DouYin, the Chinese TikTok, run by the same parent company is making billions of dollars every year, and expects to make more and more every year. It is eating up Alibaba's market share in e-commerce. And before DouYin and TikTok, TouTiao, the other product by ByteDance was making billions every year. 2021 revenue is $58b, I don't think ByteDance is losing money. It is merely accounting.