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About 59% of Americans say TikTok a threat to the national security of the United States, according to a new survey of U.S. adults.
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I absolutely refuse to use TikTok but let’s be honest here in that our own politicians and the decisions that they make that are anti-working class and anti-poor are more of a national security threat than TikTok.
Not to mention the data mining being done is an issue with Google and Meta too. And this isn’t to excuse tiktok. It’s to say that Google and Meta have to start being put in check too, since it’s all getting so out of hand that isn’t no longer just concerns of specific nations. It’s an international concern that we are all in together regardless of where we are from and what international or domestic company we are dealing with.
You can’t even pay for YouTube premium to stop treating you like the product for example, since your viewing and browsing habits will be data mined anyways. The phrase if you don’t pay you are the product has ceased to be relevant. We are the product no matter how much we pay and no true opt out. Even just the contact lists people keep and use with messenger apps are uploaded exposing our personal numbers and names to services of companies we don’t even use.
I get that you aren’t excusing TikTok. You rightly point out the double standard. It’s okay if an Amurican (misspelling intentional) company mines data and sells out its own citizens? I think not.
It’s not great, but no public company has the ability to start a war with the US and utilize that data for that purpose.
You don’t think corporations are at war with the American people?
No. What a bizarre thing to say
So you really have no concept of class warfare? What’s that like for you?
Living in reality is pretty dope
You live in a delusional communist fantasy world
Mining data is a good thing.
Yeah I mean, I downloaded my reddit data and uh… wow. I was surprised to see how much you could learn about someone when it’s all bundled up like that 👀
Which is why I find the whole banning TikTok concept absurd.
It’s picking one easy scapegoat company to rally around, completely ignores the thousands upon thousands of other applications that collect data on us.
It’s not security, it’s security theater. It’s lazy and designed to distract us. It’s to keep us from not asking questions about any company’s practices that might hurt someone politically or financially.
We don’t need to ban TikTok. We need to ban Tik Tok and thousands of others like it. We need to have real conversations and put forth real solutions with regards to privacy, globally. It won’t happen though. Because it’s going to cost somebody money.
I’ve come to the conclusion that it is algorithms that have become evil. There was a thread where someone was asking for help stoppinh YouTube from radicalizing their mother due to the videos it would suggest to her.
I use stuff like newpipe and freetube to try and get away from these personalized attempts at content, since there is still good content on YouTube. It’s just that so many sites try and keep you there as long as possible and then start feeding you content that can warp people. But, algorithms don’t understand the impact of it, since it’s either a 0 or 1 of user stays or user leaves.
algorithms can’t “become evil” any more than your toaster can. It’s being directed and programmed by people who know exactly what they’re intending to achieve.
But, algorithms don’t understand the impact of it, since it’s either a 0 or 1 of user stays or user leaves.
It’s to say algorithms despite no intent to be evil have led to negative impact due to no care for the context of the recommendation. So someone can go in searching up health information then go down a rabbit hole of being recommended pseudo health advice then flat earth and so on. Not because the algorithm wants to turn people a certain way, but because it’s just recommending videos that users that liked similar videos might find of interest. It’s just broad categories.
Wasn’t implying algorithms are sentient. At least not yet until AI integration happens.
If you can be radicalized by videos from YouTube, it isn’t the algorithm, it’s you
Yeah that’s entirely on her.
World doesn’t exist in an individual vacuum. The people negatively influenced by disinformation go onto to take a role in society and interact with others to either negatively or positively affect the people they encounter. Congratulations on your individual resilience, but the world is not a population consisting of only you with you alone determining the impact other people have on the world.
Yeah and, once again, those people are the problem.
Unless you want to ban any food that isn’t fruits and vegetables, cars, not sleeping enough, not getting enough exercise etc, at some point you have to accept that people do in fact make their own choices.
I’m not for banning things because some people are idiots.
It’s not a distraction. It’s a justification. The bill behind it in Congress is so broadly worded that the government can effectively shut down any Internet business with little to no warning.
It’s not a company, it is the CCP. There’s is a massive difference, both in terms of what the organizations can access and the warrant requirements at the governmental level. I’m getting really tired of having to explain the difference in privacy rights concerning governments and private institutions. It’s just like freedom of speech or religion. It has everything to do with private vs public institutions.
You don’t think Meta, Google etc are passing data to the American government?
They will comply with any court order. They won’t hand over unfettered access like TikTok has to in China.
You think the American government is as bad as the CCP in this regard?
Considering the CCP can’t arrest Americans but the US government can, it makes no sense to be more afraid of china on a personal level.
And that is exactly what the Ukrainians thought about Russia. These are all actions intended to gain an edge to enable a potential future conflict. They are acting like it. We should too. War in the South China Sea is something everyone should be afraid of.
That would be a very convincing arguement if China bordered the US.
Yes, yes I do. Also the CCP can’t ruin my life, unlike Uncle Sam. Deciding which one is more evil is irrelevant.
Well, the majority of Americans disagree with you per this article. A world war with China absolutely would ruin a lot of lives. I cannot even comprehend how you could come to the conclusion otherwise.
The majority of americans are fuckin stupid and believe whatever their TV programming tells them to believe.
Who said anything about war?? I’m staying “in this regard”, which is about privacy and data being taken and used by a government. Outside of that context yes I think the CCP is absolutely worse than the US in just about every category. There’s no question there.
It’s not about the CCP. It’s because kids watch TikTok and then don’t like conservatives
I am not inherently conservative but I am involved in the defense space and I could not disagree with this take more strongly. It 100% is about the CCP. Don’t try to make this a partisan issue. It is not.
It is absolutely a partisan issue because that’s why Republicans brought it up in the first place. The CCP gathering metadata on users has no bearing on our ability to beat them at sea, which is the only sphere of influence that matters with Chinese aggression.
Should US military bases ban TikTok? Sure. Should the government block the app on all government phones, also sure. Banning social media wholesale is a disgusting precedent to set, and is fundamentally anti-American.
There is precedent in banning spyware. So, what is your reason for why the current administration wants to ban it? You cannot provide any proof for your claim outside of conjecture. There are no records and it doesn’t even make sense in the current political climate.
Unless you can prove TikTok is spyware and not just gathering user data per already accepted guidelines then you have no leg to stand on here.
You keep trying and failing to ban all social media while China continues to gain a foothold under the current unchanged rules. We’ll all be doing on the front lines of the next world war but at least in the end you can hold your head up high and say that it was worth it to take a stand.
It’s like saying that you shouldn’t ban murder because all weapons should be banned. How they use it matters.
In that analogy Facebook has been murdering people for a decade but we refuse to do anything about it.
In that analogy, Facebook is armed but not even brandishing. People aren’t doing anything because Facebook isn’t waving their weapon around and threatening their families but instead was using their knives to cut up more food to sell you. Sorry, I’ll use a more clear analogy next time.
We are talking about the preparation of the battlefield for the next conflict. It is pretty well documented in cyber warfare circles. conflicts are won and lost before they are fought. conflicts are mitigated when the chances of success are lower.
Facebook has been giving data to the CCP for over a decade. If that’s the big bad, then that’s it. It doesn’t matter who owns the company. If you want to talk about battlefield shaping I can speak to that. I was in the military. When comes down to it I don’t care how the minefield got breached. It’s breached and there’s a hole that can be exploited. I don’t care if company A did it or company B.
There’s giving data through API, and then there’s complete access to everything your device sees. It’s the difference between taking a trench and allowing your enemy to build a complete logistical hub behind your lines. It’s an order of magnitude worse.
Have you looked at the permissions Meta requires to run an app on your phone these days?
There is no difference. They’re taking everything.
Aggregated data is always scary.
Aggregated data is the reason for modern living in its entirety so no.
You’re literally on a data aggregation site now.
How did you do this? Log in through the website? I will have to do password recovery as I haven’t used the web interface in ages.
Would be very curious what that data set looks like.
Yeah, has to be through a web browser. Here’s a link: https://www.reddit.com/settings/data-request
FWIW, I never got notified that the download was ready, so make sure you check back for reddit mail every few days if you request yours. It took about a month for mine.
Facebook’s egregious behavior (Cambridge analytica) and their most extreme of all data collection makes TikTok look look like nothing.
TikTok has been investigated 20 times the rest and little bad behavior was found – assuming you accept what’s done today as acceptable, which I don’t.
People hate TikTok because of trumped up stories in the media.
Notice that NOT ONE SPECIFIC ACCUSATION has been lodged against the company.
Now I sound like I’m defending them. Just the opposite – condemning the bullshit and racist stories.
Downvote me all you want, but I dare you to find one thing that TikTok does that’s as bad as American companies. And post it here.
I mean that’s all fair but the title says that it’s a matter of national security because it’s a Chinese owned company. Facebook is absolutely aggregious and could possibly also be considered a matter a national security (probably should be imo), but because it’s an American company it’s not immediately seen as a threat.
You’re right. I see ALL data collection like this as a threat. Fb, IG, TT, Twitter, Google, Apple the works.
Facebook has been actually selling data to the Chinese government for a decade. Congress just keeps politely asking them to stop. But nobody wants to report on that.
Pointing out Chinese company’s shady behavior isn’t bullshit or racism. I work in security and we’re currently having to take out most Chinese cameras since they’ve been found to regularly ping Chinese addresses and have backdoors built in. Chinese companies quickly become an extension of the CCP.
Saying it’s only them is absolutely racist. Most social media corporations sell data. Including to the Chinese government. Go look at the “permissions” threads, Instagram, and the FB app require these days and tell me they aren’t ripping every bit of data they can.
There’s a big difference between hardening your security hardware supply line and accusing only the Chinese social media platform of taking data.
Eighty one percent of Americans think God will save them, so why would you care about any of their other opinions?
I think 81% agree to say they aren’t non believers because many don’t want the questions of saying they might be an atheist/agnostic. ~30k different Christian sects in the U.S. and none of them can tell me why they are in their own group, so if you just say oh yeah I believe everyone shuts up. Being raised a catholic, I like to remind my mother that all 30k of them are anti catholic and they believe catholics are going to hell. They don’t know what for, but they damn sure know they aren’t catholic.
In truth I think ~30% of Americans are religious. The rest just keep covering for themselves. If we really wanted the truth we could instate taxes like they have in some EU countries. Pay an extra 5% taxes to your church. *poof, 50% gone in a year and claiming they paid it, while the others wondering why they didn’t think to check a mon religious box.
I live in a location where a Christian belief system is straight up expected at a near Texas level. It is to my absolute glee to answer people that I am unwilling to pray over your computer (💯 happened) as it is against my religion.
Have people ask what church I go to roughly biweekly.
Main reason I have satanic temple cards to distribute when asked.
If we legalize taxing churches it just means no non-christian religions are allowed in red states. They’ll just jack up taxes on churches they don’t agree with
Freedom to religion would likely protect taxes being diffferent. It shouldn’t protect against the largest land owner in Florida being a tax free money maker
That’s a very charitable view of the current SCOTUS and I admire your optimism
Fun fact about SCOTUS. They don’t have any way of enforcing their rulings. And we can add judges all day long. That’s why they keep not going full conservative except on key cases. They know if the Democrats see them as a totally lost cause then they’ll pack the court. (Which could effectively kill it when the GOP gets power and does the same exact thing) So in preserving their own power they’re forced to maintain a status quo for now.
Not sure they think God will save them. That’s quite the leap from “God exists” to “God will save me”.
Good. It pretty clearly is. It’s not the only one by any stretch, but “a threat” is a low bar. Would a single one of you stand confidently by it being “no threat”?
Hell, facebook is a threat to national security, and it’s an American company.
Facebook isn’t a threat to national security according to the federal government, which is where the “American people” get this notion from in regards to TikTok.
How could Facebook, a site that regularly colaborates with the feds voluntarily, be a threat to the nation exactly?
Yes but so are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn
I’m not here to defend tiktok but I really don’t care what the average person thinks is a national security threat.
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that same 59% completed the poll on TikTok
Seeing how many people rushed to use threads and people are just excited that X is there too wouldn’t surprise me. I don’t understand why the average person is fear mongering tiktok when the official social media apps choose to use have so many sketchy permissions. Reddit too now set to try to become the next Meta with their IPO.
I can understand privacy focused people who try to avoid them due not liking them for the same reasons they don’t like meta, but the average person singling out tiktok as they use Facebook, Instagram, and threads is not one that makes sense to me.
This is only because of republican propaganda, which they only did because young people did political coordination on ticktok.
I think there are both real and performative concerns being raised about Tik Tok as a platform.
Ideally the federal government shouldn’t be deciding this sort of thing on a per-case basis at all. Pass actual data privacy legislation and force data collection to be transparent and potentially housed in US datacenters that are subject to US regulation. Then if Tik Tok can prove it’s behaving responsibly it can continue to compete on an even playing field with other platforms.
Oh the actual bill behind banning TikTok is a comprehensive platform. It’s complete with super broad language that effectively gives the government the power to shut down any Internet business with little to no warning.
As a hard core liberal, I promptly uninstalled that shit as soon as I saw my first Chinese military propaganda.
So you went looking for it? Because it’s all clowns and musicians for me. The algorithm reflects what you go looking for and what you hit the like button on.
As a hard core liberal
Lol nice troll
No true Scotsman, as they say
Kinda proud I’ve never installed/used Tiktok ¯_(ツ)_/¯.
If you’re not involved in anything sensitive then the CCP could give two shits about you. Also if you’ve ever used any META product they already have your info. Zuckerberg has been called out for selling data to the Chinese government multiple times over the last decade.
Yeah, I’m not involved in anything like that, but coming from a country heavily manipulated by the CCP, I simply choose not to install TikTok or anything directly related to them (on my own choice). I once tried to apply for a Hong Kong visa at a Chinese embassy in the US. Ever since then, I’ve been receiving hundreds of Chinese calls and random Chinese messages out of nowhere. It’s been 3 years -__-, I still can’t figure out ways to get my number off of their lists, freaking ridiculous.
I don’t even have it and I clicked a link my friend sent and my vpn blocked 6 trackers. Can’t imagine what the app has access to
What does your vpn tell you about Facebook, Instagrams, Twitter, Threads, and Reddit?
I actually don’t have any of those anymore. If I get links from there, I’ll check. It’s been interesting to see how many get blocked
So people are complaining if the CCP censors western social media like Facebook etc. but then discuss to censor chinese social media. Isn’t there freedom of speech in America? I mean nobody is forced to use TikTok.
This is why I can’t wrap my head around any of the tiktok hate. I don’t trust tiktok with my data so guess what? I don’t use it. I don’t see how my coworker using it is going to be the downfall of America. We’ve already banned it from government networks, that’s plenty.
And to be honest there shouldn’t be any social media on government networks. Unless it’s “Civil Service R US” or something run by the government. But yeah no reason to have social media on 99% of official devices. (The 1% are the PR people putting stuff out and IT can wall them off)
If someone else wants to censor America social media it is extremely wrong, bad and against freedom of speech.
If America wants to censor someone else’s social media it is the correct and good thing to do, because it protects people.
Had tiktok been American it would have been wrong to try to censor it, but no it is not so then it is good to censor it.
Majority of Americans don’t understand national security, cyber security, or privacy.
Well of course they’re going to percieve a place where alternative ideas and organisation takes place as a threat
Nothing there is all that alternative.
I’m not american. My country had basically built out a strangle hold on traditional media, facebook and is building it on other sites like instagram and twitter. The only platform that not been affected at all is tiktok. Instagram and Twitter is tankfully heavily fighting back the government propaganda but on tiktok, there is just none. Not sure if it’s because of the algorithm it uses or simply they don’t consider it a threat but there is a ton of liberal counter-culture which I’m sure the government would not be happy about if they found them.
As an avid user of both TT and Reddit (now lemmy obv), I can say the content and perspectives between the two have some parallels (both lean left) but also some very stark differences (TT leans younger and has a more early internet style chaotic energy).
I’m not saying the security concerns aren’t warranted. But the idea that so many people on here are so onboard with sacrificing a platform because they don’t get it is kinda disheartening. Especially given how concentrated social media is getting under the Meta umbrella.
I feel like many people on here still view the platform as the app where people dance to music, which isn’t representative of what the app is at the moment.
This can vary greatly. As a Canadian, I get served a bunch of conservative content on a fresh TikTok account.
I get a lot of content about socialism, communism, guerilla gardening, permaculture. Not very mainstream imo
The algorithm is very good at sending you more of what you’ve liked or searched for. If you’re not mainstream then neither will your content be.
The US exports social media platforms all over the world.
Beyond that, many mostly older folks don’t understand TikTok, even more than most social media, and because they don’t understand the culture of it, they have decreed it a bad influence out of ignorant fear.
Yes, I’m sure China does mine the data, as do we. If my government wanted its citizens to “rah rah murica” in the global powers dick measuring contest, it shouldn’t have legislated civic buy in away for the last 50 years to make the owner class richer at everyone else’s expense.
Patriotism is for societies.
