Quick outline of why TikTok is so uniquely dangerous:
- The Chinese government treats communication networks as their personal hoovering-attachment for any data they might want. Companies are required by law to operate as an arm of Chinese intelligence, both in terms of giving information and in terms of manipulating what information people on their network are allowed to see.
- It’s not just your TikTok data. It’s photos and files on your phone, your contacts, your messages, basically anything that the app with its too-permissive permissions can get its hands on, can potentially go up to Chinese intelligence.
- TikTok is not structured like any other app. It has features like custom-downloading and running arbitrary binaries from its central server that honestly don’t even make much sense except as spying apparatus (consistent with #1).
- What China might do with this unprecedented level of access to everyone’s phones is malevolent in a different way than, say, Facebook’s access to everyone’s data. Like Facebook they have the ability to e.g. influence an election, but they also have the ability to try to blackmail an individual to compromise them, or do for-real torture in the real world (say by tracking down a dissident via TikTok spying and then having one of their little Chinese-police-in-America units grab them).
Basically I don’t think any government should have that kind of access to access people’s private communications or design the algorithms that dictate people’s social media experience, but definitely not China’s in particular.
The only valid criticism to this move I’ve seen and actually agree with is that instead of banning individual companies, the US should enact legislation that makes these practices illegal.
NSA raises its hand
“No we would prefer that you didn’t”
(I mean, honestly, it’s a good point. Making a company-neutral law would be a better approach for 3 or 4 different big reasons.)
Which would, of course, make Facebook illegal as well, and LinkedIn… and pretty much all of Alphabet.
… and that sounds fine to me.
yeah but then they would have to ban facebook and instagram too.
they do all of these if you replace ‘china’ with ‘united states’
The most baffling thing to me about that whole “data buying scandal” is that the government was PAYING for it and not just seizing it saying “yeah you’re giving us that, here’s a gag order so you cant talk about it”
Sources on any of this? Perhaps it works differently on Android.
The main thing which you miss though is that it has “the algorithm” down pat. While it knows I’ll watch cooking videos and videos of people yelling at cops, it doesn’t bother trying to show me things about Trump, etc. it is keeping me in my own custom echo chamber. I have no idea how it works so well.
Now imagine someone hell bent on believing things like the pizza molester stories or Jan 6th alt histories. This is a very effective tool for radicalizing people and reinforcing the “truth” they already suspect. It’s easier to divide people based on preconceived notions than trying to convince people of something new.
Sources:
- https://thehill.com/opinion/cybersecurity/532583-for-chinese-firms-theft-of-your-data-is-now-a-legal-requirement/
- https://www.proofpoint.com/us/blog/threat-protection/understanding-information-tiktok-gathers-and-stores
- https://www.currentware.com/blog/block-tiktok/
- https://www.businessinsider.com/china-hong-kong-spy-agency-official-presence-national-security-laws-report-2020-6 https://www.npr.org/2023/04/17/1170571626/fbi-arrests-2-on-charges-tied-to-chinese-outpost-in-new-york-city
While I agree that the fingerprinting data is interesting, on iOS, TikTok doesn’t require any of those permissions as indicated. Some of the articles state that they are required, but they aren’t. As far as I know it isn’t possible, without a zero day of some sort, to access camera, sound, contacts, etc without explicitly granting those permissions.
That said, that is a lot of data, and for those that can be linked back to an individual. And I’m sure most people are less careful with permissions. The fingerprinting data is clearly powerful, and I find it extremely fascinating, since there is VERY limited input and such effective output.
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I don’t believe 3 is possible on iOS? Arbitrary code execution is something Apple explicitly disallows on the App Store. While some apps sneak through, something as large as TikTok likely wouldn’t survive long with blatant rule breaking.
The time I saw it, the researcher said specifically that they’d observed it on Android. Whether that means that that feature of TikTok is only an Android thing because of the feature you’re talking about, I don’t know, but that would make some kind of sense yes.
Something about Tik-Tok has them shook.
They can’t control it. Simple as. Everyone talking about spying is silly if they think that would change under a different ownership. Spying is going to happen either way, I’ll take the spy that can do less to me.
Yeah, I support banning it but the whole “either sell it or get banned” does have me wondering if they are doing the right thing for the wrong reason here. Or even the wrong thing for the wrong reason, if they intend to just keep it going under new management that isn’t the CCP.
Yes. It’s called spying.
And the fact they Chinese government refuses to Censor pro Palestinian voices. And other topics western media pertinently censors.
This is what was on TikTok while Twitter was full with #istandwithisrael: https://www.tiktok.com/@rathbonemakesmusic/video/7289906736847129902
Still with this? Is there anything that they’re doing differently from other social media corps based in the US? The user data gets sold regardless.
The thing they’re doing differently is being owned by a Chinese company. If TikTok was simply a US based social media corp, no one would care.
Not like everyone is happy about the US doing this, but at least the US is theoretically our ally…
The difference is china = bad. They don’t give a rats ass if a company in America sells your data cause that’s cool.
Yea, they’re struggling to get their suicide numbers up as high as Instagram. America demands nothing short of the best so we take deep pride in Zuckerberg’s accomplishment
I really hope that ban will take effect before the elections, then you will see both parties scrambling to retract the legislation after enormous backlash.
I feel like the Democratic party is the only one who will feel backlash from this, the typical TikTok-er doesn’t lean Republican I don’t think (well, other than creepy old dudes who get way too into videos of teenage girls dancing)
Fuck the US government telling me what I can and can’t do fucking online. Great firewall of America bullshit.
Yeah so that logic only works if people make informed decisions and they don’t, that’s why society the size it is at the moment only works with a government in place setting some ground rules and preventing people from being morons… Our trying to anyway.
Also, the internet is not hosted in international water as far as I know so there’s no reasons it can’t be regulated… Hell, I’m sure you’re very happy (or hope that you are) that CSAM isn’t just everywhere in the name of net neutrality and letting people do what they want on it.
And who decides what gets censored? Today it’s tick tok tomorrow it’s Lemmy?
Lemmy is not a United States adversary with a history of spying on foreign intelligence. If it was, I sure as fuck wouldn’t be on it!
What if the government decided Lemmy was a dangerous (communist ?) platform that needs to be shutdown? This is a matter of censorship, however the outright open market for our data from all platforms is the elephant in the room here.
Well, I would expect there to be some shred of evidence that it is dangerous to the security of the United States. We have LOADS of evidence of that for TikTok.
And if no one cares about your expectations because now it’s been done before so if it’s being done again it must be for good reason?
So Facebook is getting banned?
Facebook is an American company. Are you ok? Can you read?
An american company that sells data to foreign intelligence so they can manipulate the public. Facebook is a way bigger threat to peoples freedom than TikTok but the CCP boogeyman has y’all in a chokehold so you’re distracted from the real threat
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I know what’s best for you so let me censor that content. Literal fascism.
That’s how society works in general and I don’t understand how people think letting the internet be free of laws wouldn’t lead to shit.
I experimented with tor and signal at some point and it was enlightening to see how much of “the internet” as we think we know it is already heavily filtered and served to us through a very narrow pipeline of modern browsers.
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You get the laws you vote for.
“Fascism is only bad bad when it’s the other side” - You
So you believe that pictures of consenting naked underage people should be freely shared and even made available in magazines because making them illegal is fascism?
