And what is the evidence for it being a Chinese spying platform? Is it owned by a Chinese company? Is there any hard evidence? Why is it so controversial?
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Your link provided me with more proper information than your biased quick take, so thanks for that, I guess.
By the way, there’s also a Wikipedia article about TikTok with a whole paragraph about privacy and security concerns. Along with references. None of it is refuted. TikTok / ByteDance themselves tell who owns the platform. And they seem to be very clear themselves in that they log your interactions, location, mobile carrier, information about your phone, your biometric face features and so on and so on.
Thanks. I’m getting the sense that, while ByteDance doesn’t collect any more information than Meta or Instagram, it’s info is suspected to be accessible by the CCP, which may be used for anti-US programs/policies, etc.
This is the most accurate conclusion so far. The US government considers it a national security threat. There are lots of things it’s “okay” for your own government to do but not a foreign government :)
Which makes perfect sense. I don’t think this would be a thing if ByteDance was a British or Canadian company either. The issue is it’s Chinese, and China is an enemy of the U.S. right now.
It would be incorrect to call china an “enemy” of the US,…they are more:
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an adversary on several topics (such as regional territories, relations with Russia on the Ukraine conflict)
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a partner on others (such as trade)
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Though, the US, British or Canadian government doesn’t collect that much info on their citizens and citizens of other countries in large databases. They have laws that limit the amount of government surveillance. We can argue if they’re strict enough etc, but at least they exist. Which isn’t really the case for China. So it’s fair to treat them differently. And by the way other countries also sometimes cut down on what’s allowed to transfer to the USA in a similar way, since for example the NSA is free to collect lots of data on foreigners. And legislation is just different. But that’s been usually for other services. Cutting down on social media altogether (instead of just have them pay a hefty fine) is a relatively new thing.
It’s also fair to treat them differently on account of them not being unfriendly to the U.S. Regardless, I agree data privacy laws need to be improved across the board.