Activists and health care workers say the platform routinely suppresses posts about the abortion pill, leaving US users without vital information.

Archive Link from archive.today

Original link from Wired

P03 Locke
link
fedilink
English
141Y

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.

@Steeve@lemmy.ca
link
fedilink
English
31Y

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
4
edit-2
1Y

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

@dabe@programming.dev
link
fedilink
English
7
edit-2
1Y

TikTok really doesn’t perform that much more data collection on their apps than Google does, if at all more. Sure, data going into the Chinese government might be a bit more concerning, but I’d say most if your argument is dangerously close to Chinese fear-mongering.

@Prunebutt@feddit.de
link
fedilink
English
61Y

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.

Create a post

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:


This community’s icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

  • 1 user online
  • 60 users / day
  • 170 users / week
  • 619 users / month
  • 2.31K users / 6 months
  • 1 subscriber
  • 3.28K Posts
  • 67K Comments
  • Modlog