• P03 Locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    2 years ago

    There are plenty of other reasons to ban TikTok, namely the massive and unchecked data collection by the Chinese government.

    I’d prefer not to install Chinese spyware, thankyouverymuch.

    • Pigeon@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      2 years ago

      Maybe ban targeted advertizing, or that degree of spyware, for all companies, instead of opening that pandora’s box of giving the power to ban social media apps altogether to the government.

      Especially since the anti-tiktok bills actually include a lot of other stuff, up to and including making VPN’s illegal.

      • Steeve@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 years ago

        Targeted advertising isn’t even on the same playing field of sketchyness as “massive and unchecked data collection by the Chinese government”. Even mentioning it in the same sentence seems like an attempt at forum sliding.

        And while I agree that the bill is an overreach and absolutely shouldn’t go through in it’s current form, it’s exactly what would be required to achieve your authoritarian stance of banning all social media.

        • Prunebutt@feddit.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          2 years ago

          Really? Because you could argue that targeted advertising lead to the January 6th riots.

          The chinese government doesn’t really benefit from data collection on western citizens. At least not if they don’t work for intelligence agencies or want to proclaim that Taiwan is a country while being on mainland China.

          • MrWiggles@prime8s.xyz
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            2 years ago

            If you think they’re not capable of if not already engaged in PSYOPS, I’d suggest you look deeper into targeted advertising and who is paying for it.

            • Prunebutt@feddit.de
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              2 years ago

              What is your point? Tell me, what the chinese government is supposedly doing with non-chinese user-data that is not worse than what the US surveillance capitalism is currently doing?

              Do you seriously think that China spread misinformation about “stolen elections”?

    • Uriel238@lemmy.fmhy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      2 years ago

      If you’re concerned about Chinese spyware, You might want to also be concerned about US spyware as well. The US justice complex is not a friend to the US public, nor is the US national security complex.

      • P03 Locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        2 years ago

        Blah, blah, I hear the same tired argument over and over again about how Google, Facebook, Amazon are just as bad as China. But, it’s just not true.

        These large corps are definitely something we should paying attention to and they get away with far too much. They should be broken up just like Ma Bell. But, they are still subject to the same data restrictions that the US and the EU have put into law.

        TikTok, on the other hand, is owned by a Chinese company, and by extension, the Chinese government. Any data it collects goes straight to the Chinese government. ByteDance, of course, denies this, but the US military, CIA, and other government entities know better, as they have specifically banned the platform for any of their personnel. The data tracking permissions you have to allow on phones is far higher than any other social media platform. It’s a more aggressive data collection platform.

        TikTok serves a wildly different set of media to the non-Chinese public. It wants to dumb down the non-Chinese population by serving addictive short-form content that hones in on their interests, in a more extreme fashion than any other social media platform, and gets them into a constant loop of video watching for hours and hours.

        • Prunebutt@feddit.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          2 years ago

          The CIA has banned that stuff because their employees are high value targets for chinese intelligence agencies.

          You don’t have any data collection restrictions in the US (thanks to the patrion act).

          Law enforcement has coplete access to the ring doorbell cameras. Google and Facebook have repeatedly worked together with the CIA and FBI. It has been established that the US elections have been tampered with via targeted advertising in combination with misinformation. As a regular US citizen, you are simply not a target for China. The US government however has repeatedly proven that it spies on foreign and their own citieens.

          And all that “dumbing down” conspiracy theory: It is far more likely that a profit driven corporation simply optimizes for maximum engagement for ad revenue.

        • Steeve@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          2 years ago

          But when I google tacos I get ads of tacos and that’s just as bad as the Chinese government choosing the content I get to see on the internet

          • Prunebutt@feddit.de
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            2 years ago

            Yeah. The chinese government clearly wants you to see as many ads for some shitty car or makeup or whatnot. That’s definetly the CCP and not some Ad company who pays ByteDance. /s