To me, it is obvious that TikTok is a tool for all kinds of evil, from exfiltrating personal information to surveillance to refining models for mass manipulation.
It is the one app that I would never allow near one of my devices. Yet, whenever I mention the threat anywhere or to anybody, I get "you are too paranoid" or "but Facebook does it too". Most of the time I just get ignored / downvoted.
Am I missing something? Does the app really have enough redeeming features to warrant the risk of using it?
I also get "But all the big US tech companies do it too.."
Frankly I would much rather that all my private data/whatever go to the hands of the NSA and/or CSE, GCHQ than the Ministry of State Security in Beijing.
At least I have a moderate level of confidence in my actual free speech rights, civil rights and legal rights in the US and Canadian legal systems.
Every domestic Chinese company with "cloud" based whatever is legally obligated to set up a database replication export to the MSS. With active engineering cooperation to make it work correctly.
If the thought of stalking my social graph, whereabouts and interests didn't outright creep me out (regardless of who is stalking), I would be more comfortable with something Chinese than American.
I am not a person of interest to China - even if I do have anti-CCP sentiments, I have zero influence on them so it's not worth their time nor resources to enact extrajudicial punishment on me. Xi doesn't give a shit what some random schmuck in a Western country thinks about him. I'd have to be very influential for them to give a shit about me, at which point I'd have many reasons not to use social media (whether American or Chinese) anyway.
I would be more of a person of interest to my local government (which - as most Western governments - are a puppet to America) because if anything, I have at least some influence/leverage on them in the form of voting and generally being involved in the local community/industry, and they would need much less resources to punish/intimidate me if they so desire.
Yeah because the US govt isn't compromised by Russians, and politcians on their payroll. Lets just ignore the capabilities of Cambridge analytica and how they are able to persuade the mass population with psy ops. I feel like I'm in crazy world right now
NSA can refer it to federal police who can use it for parallel construction at home to imprison you if they wish to retaliate against you for something they don’t like.
CCP can’t do that.
Surveillance by police that have jurisdiction over you is more dangerous than those who do not.
They can they just don’t need to. They can just disappear you. There’s documented evidence of the Chinese gov torturing, defiling, political dissidents but you’re worried about parallel construction from the NSA.
As a reminder, for parallel construction to work you need to have actually done something illegal, which the NSA then backtracks to build a case against you. For the Chinese gov to throw you into an unmarked van and press you into slave labor all they need is to tell someone to do it.
Aside from the fact that the accuracy of that book has been seriously questioned, your bringing it up doesn't refute what you were replying to. You need to have committed a crime for parallel construction to apply. Yes, there are a lot of laws and a lot of crimes defined in the U.S. Code, and people do get ensnared by laws that they didn't know existed. But that doesn't change the U.S. constitutional guarantee of due process.
Why can’t they? Sure, they can’t just call up the FBI or other US law enforcement agencies and refer the matter.
However, they can absolutely use the threat of disclosure of sensitive information to blackmail or otherwise coerce someone. The threat (real or perceived) many times is worse than the reality.
I’d say they each have the capability to cause harm, but the incentives/motivations/safeguards that might drive (or inhibit) them to do so are drastically different.
It is not "just as much a problem in the US". China's treatment of dissidents is far, far worse than the US's. It's not even close. Every reputable political ranking organization, from Freedom House to The Economist, confirms this.
Are you planning to be equivalent in notoriety/influence as Martin Luther King Jr? If not, the motivation/incentives for domestic law enforcement to target you aren’t really there. It would be a waste of their time and finite resources.
The PRC has a bit different motivations/incentives and theirs are not aligned with a perceived U.S. national security interest.
Whether you and I agree with the US national security apparatus's mission, in my opinion, it is at least more oriented towards safeguarding/promoting the US’ self-interest.
That’s not to say I agree with all of its actions, just trying to explain what I mean when I say there is difference in motivations and incentives.
That’s not the experience of Roger Ver, who was imprisoned in inhumane conditions for speaking negatively about BATFE agents at a conference in the US.
Same for Assange.
Retaliation for protected expression happens all the time in the USA.
>Frankly I would much rather that all my private data/whatever go to the hands of the NSA and/or CSE, GCHQ than the Ministry of State Security in Beijing.
First, please do not read anything that follows as me accepting TikTok in any way, shape, or fashion.
As a non-Chinese citizen, what exactly can the MSS do to you with all of that data? I would be much more concerned with the gov't that had authority over me having that data. I'm guessing a Chinese citizen doesn't care one wit about what the NSA/GCHQ/etc knows about them either.
We've already asked you once to stop using HN for flamewars. If you keep doing it, we're going to have to ban you. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
China might do it to us, which is what we don't like. It's much easier to ignore when somebody does the same thing (in your name, with your money, even) but to other people you'll never meet.
We had enormous protests in 2020, aside from those who actually committed real crimes very few people were arrested. Additionally none of them were turned into political prisoners who had to do slave labor.
This is untrue and irrelevant to US citizens not wanting China to have access to our data.
If your Cambodian/Colombian/Panamanian sure, do everything you can to ensure the US gov doesn’t get access to your data if you fear we’ll help your gov kill and imprison you at will, (if that’s even really a thing) but here in the US, it’s not a concern and you’re acting like it’s the same.
After using TikTok, twitter feels like using a windows 95 computer after using modern operating systems. American social media feels way too parasocial, untargeted and clunky to me now.
Tiktok has better content, the fyp learns what you like and so it surprises and delights. I think american social media has been overly focused on the top 1% of content producers and advertisers, so the consumer experience has languished at their expense.
TT is really a consumer-first design, and users get visibility even without followers - it actually connects people so it feels a lot less like shouting into the void. It's cool to find a good post from a stranger that nobody has liked or commented on yet - liking that feels impactful to that person. American social media pretty much only shows you stuff from who you follow or advertisers, so any interaction you have is easy to get lost in the noise.
(Also, for whatever reason, I see a lot less angry shouting on TT, whereas twitter feels increasingly like the 2 minutes of hate from 1984)
The ease of posting leads to the content being much less polished: instagram feels like my friends are doing PR to convince the people they know that they are cool/beautiful/successful sometimes - just feels fake and distant to me.
Through TT I've found a bunch of people with the same interests and sense of humor as me, and I enjoy getting little glimpses into their lives and vice versa.
I think some amount of the 'tiktok is evil' meme is propaganda rooted in sinophobia, tech company PR counterprogramming, and american quasi-journalist influencers fearing their platforms are dissolving. About 2/3 of the criticism I've read seems hypocritical (based on industry standards) and alarmist, so it makes me more skeptical of the remaining 1/3.
Facebook and google being cozy with the feds that have power over me scares me a lot more than the CCP - who can do little to impact me directly.
> (Also, for whatever reason, I see a lot less angry shouting on TT, whereas twitter feels increasingly like the 2 minutes of hate from 1984)
There is an oddly specific reason for this: just about everything that might be controversial is likely filtered away into bubbles.
People will spell gay as gae, use accent marks and spaces, all sorts of things because not doing so will kill your upload pretty much. Tiktok will remove users from being featured if they look abnormal or ugly or low quality, afaik.
Every social network memoryholes certain kinds of controversy. TikTok's choices make for a more pleasant user experience for many users than Twitter's.
I got a brief suspension on twitter recently for 'harassment' for calling a journalist stupid for analyzing something in a nonsensical way to defend the status quo. Mocking powerful people with bad takes was one of the highlights of the platform and they are taking that away because they are too afraid of losing the bluechecks to another platform (which, to be fair, is probably an existential risk for them in their current state).
>Am I missing something? Does the app really have enough redeeming features to warrant the risk of using it?
In my experience (sometimes depending on how it's stated but not always) people see these kinds of comments as a commentary on _them_ specifically. It often doesn't matter what your intention is, they just feel somewhat defensive/challenged, like you're accusing them of poor judgement. So they blow the comment off or even push back to make themselves feel better about their decision.
I understand this comment could be seen as pretentious but I sincerely understand why someone would feel defensive. It's very easy to see it as commentary on their judgment and values, especially in a country like the US that is so focused on being individualistic/protecting individual rights. Most people don't want to be accused of not caring about their privacy. It makes them feel shallow and talked down to, once again, regardless of intent.
Also DJI app that requires GPS lock in and internet connection to operate drones owned by hundreds of thousands of US citizens. Hell, even something off brand from the back streets of Guangdong, something like a Yawei dashcam app wants 1) Location access 2) Contacts and 3) Photos app access. So it can “geo tag your friends in a car’s dashcam stream and bluetooth it to your photos library”.
The cat is out of the box. It must be resolved through a cat exterminator at the highest levels of Gov, forcing Apple and Google to delist this stuff.
Even the best and highly educated citizenry is not immune to this; let alone the rest of USA and the west. Micro actions from individuals wouldn’t be sufficient. No harm meant to cats or any of our furry friends.
Anything that needs to scan wifi (such as to talk to a drone) shows up as location access, because the list of visible APs and their relative signal strengths is the same thing as your location.
I think there's another option which is the devices that run the apps are user agents. Bunk geo data, bunk contacts, the app shouldn't be the wiser. This will take legislation to enact which moves at a snails pace. Hopefully SV will enable granular controls to pollute this data.
Feature-wise, the experience of using it is very streamlined. More importantly, it's where a substantial proportion of youth culture is found nowadays, so to keep up with and contribute to it is to be on the app.
Facebook is more legally scrutinised by almost every concern out there. These replies are not reflective of the legal policies and measures taken in the west against Facebook.
What is the risk? I.e. what bad outcome could happen to me that impacts my day to day life? Perhaps a detailed description could help people realize what you have in mind
It is more a bad large-scale societal outcome that many are worried about. It is a massive CCP-linked propaganda organ; even if content is generated by users, the way in which it is surfaced and promoted is entirely controlled by ByteDance (-> CCP). Furthermore, all sorts of social engineering, spear phishing, and blackmail by a potentially-hostile foreign government are made possible.
But if you want something to worry about as an individual, consider China's increasing global reach and whether the CCP could at any point use their massive reach to systematically make life less pleasant for you if you express views contrary to the party's.
I'm pretty sure the FTC ruling against Facebook only affects Facebook. Do you think anyone in our government is in a position to stand up against China right now?
Some people just don't care about this bigger picture. They aren't a direct target and they are already apart of so many mass analytics models that it just doesn't seem to matter anymore. It's a jaded side effect of a sleazy business model that's become pretty common.
I won't use it and have no interest in it. It just seems like another noisy app filled with misinformation but also poses a real risk at a geopolitical scale. But on the other hand, I get why people just want to connect with other humans and see a skateboarding dog.
Probably not. But that does sound a lot like FB and Google. But they are wildly popular and provide entertainment so it could be everybody is perfectly happy being manipulated. I think everybody will move on from tiktok in a few years time anyway.
I don't personally use TikTok, but I'm not sure that I'd care much if they know that I like to watch videos about pottery or gaming or whatever. Google / YouTube certainly knows already.
1. They collect information on what interests you, makes you upset, and engages you on an extremely granular level. Unlike YT/Google, they push content to you (which you watch/reject)—they can refine a model of your preferences and personality quickly.
2. They push you to engage with that content, leaving comments and sending messages.
3. They have the capability to make you watch content that they know you'll like with the express goal of getting you to react to it.
4. TikTok videos are often recorded in personal spaces, giving insight into individuals' lives and leaking personal information (partners, children, pets, etc.).
5. The app itself can collect information about you and your device, including any information it may have access to you through overly-broad permission collection.
1. Do you use TT? I find the content is very rarely rage-driven, whereas somehow that seems to be the primary flavor of twitter.
2+3. Why should I worry that a company is serving me stuff I actually like in hopes I'll interact with it? Isn't that the social contract of digital advertising, except TT is actually delivering value to the consumer?
Getting you to engage is getting you to provide information you wouldn't have provided unprompted. By delivering value, they're getting you to reveal more about yourself.
"Table stakes" and "a tool for surveillance" are not at all mutually exclusive. Which is all the more reason to be concerned about Mudge's suggestions that foreign bad actors were employed at Twitter. Make no mistake: social media is a tool that can be used for malicious purposes.
It's the latest and greatest in terms of attention grabbing/stealing, so people get defensive about it because they spend lots of time using it.
I get annoyed with the "but facebook does it too" argument as well. I don't really like throwing around the "foreign country disinformation campaign" accusations, but whenever tiktok comes up on this site it's hard to imagine regular people saying some of the things that are said about why it's "no less trustworthy" than american social media companies.
Even with this article, people will respond with "well, they probably weren't surveilling me because I don't have anything to hide." And then I show them the story about the cops that used social media to track a woman who went across state lines to get an abortion, and they get really mad.
All of the best movies and television shows you've ever seen are horizontal. There will never be a great movie released in vertical video. Mark my words. Note the time.
So noted, but I suppose you'll define which movies are great and which ones don't count? TikTok's popularity demonstrates a demand for vertical video, despite how much you don't want there to be, simply because that's how people are viewing video - on their smartphone. Even Netflix is doing vertical video clips for previews. My prediction is we'll see a mainstream movies be recut/reframed to be vertical on Netflix/other online streaming service simply to complete with TikTok's content farms.
The fundamental issue for me is that I never plan to step foot on Chinese/Russia soil or get into any relationship with their government. That way their spying feels less relevant to me than US spying which just could put me for arbitrary reasons on a list and most western governments would comply.
If you are, the CCP kidnaps them to take them home for putting a toe out of line.
And by you and I participating in the CCP’s surveillance apparatus, we make it easier for them to pounce on those who are trying to steer clear of the CCP, sadly, the ones who the CCP likes to kidnap and bring home to torture.
I noticed that you are getting downvoted for pointing out the bots. My post had an interesting vote pattern. It initially received lots of upvotes, but then got downvoted to about 1/2 its peak vote count over the next few hours, presumably by bots / shills.
It is the one app that I would never allow near one of my devices. Yet, whenever I mention the threat anywhere or to anybody, I get "you are too paranoid" or "but Facebook does it too". Most of the time I just get ignored / downvoted.
Am I missing something? Does the app really have enough redeeming features to warrant the risk of using it?