Everyone collects our data… Apple, Google, third party apps… everyone. So what is the really concern with China doing it specifically? Everything I have tried to read about this just talks about how China will use it for ads, but that’s what tons of other tech companies are already doing… so why is China owning our data different?
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A company like Google keeping your data is entirely different. US companies are subject to gdpr regulations and actually take them seriously. Also they don’t as a matter of course give away your data when requested, they actually do review warrants when presented and defend the ones they feel they can win.
TikTok, on the other hand, is basically dumping all your data to the Chinese govt. People hear about the social credit system and think it only applies to Chinese citizens. That’s not true, the social credit system is accumulating data on everyone.
China has a social ranking system that they use. They monitor basically everything their citizens do, and the score that they get can determine things like job or school opportunities, internet speed, and whether or not you are allowed to own a pet. They could feasibly (and likely are) building social profiles for foreigners as well.
The real threat is that TikTok is outcompeting American companies like Meta, Alphabet, Snap, Twitter, Reddit, etc. Those companies have lobbied the US government to block their competition. TikTok is the first Chinese app that’s not just a knockoff of American companies, but a superior product in every way.
The Chinese government has significant control over mega corps and organised crime. They’re currently setting hackers and trolls on human rights activists who criticise them, enslaving and torturing 100s of 1000s of people, kidnapping, threatening and assualting people across international borders, going after people’s families to control them, killing people to harvest their organs.
They are also petty and thin-skinned.
Realistically all most people have to worry about is targeted ads, same as apple and google, and maybe some propaganda, but you’re dealing with an organisation with all the false moral superiority and unaccountability of a government and all the dispassionate cruelty of a mafia, that takes offense at jokes about a bear from a children’s book and turning your back on pictures of one of, if not the most, prolific mass murderers in history.
Basically nothing they collect your data same as apple same as Microsoft etc – there’s no risk
The honest answer is that China is just the latest foreign adversary which politicians are using as a prop to show how tough they are to the public. I’m sure you saw clips of the TikTok CEO speaking to American congressmen. It was embarrassing how little our politicians actually knew about the technology. The whole affair was essentially set up so that each politician could show how anti-China they were on a public stage. Even in this thread nobody is really getting at the crux of your question. Any scenario where TikTok is actually weaponized against Americans is, to be frank, incredibly far fetched. There’s also no evidence of them acting in nefarious ways as people are hypothesizing they will – in contrast to companies like Facebook which have already been caught manipulating our political process.
>What is the real threat/worry with China collecting all our data from TikTok?
The biggest threat from TikTok is not the data collection but rather the wholesale manipulation of the social zeitgeist via the video feed algorithm. For example, encouraging kids to vandalise bathrooms via letting/causing it to become a trend – there is no way the Chinese government would let TikTok cause anything that in China (and they don’t).
The concerns on data collection and drip feeding un-American content are valid. The real issue is the state mandated back door for all software compiled in China. That means they can turn the mic or camera on, read your keystrokes, download your contacts and photos.
There’s 2 affiliates to Temu that were already discovered doing exactly that, rooting American phones.
TikTok just doesn’t have to go through US data brokers.
American companies like meta, google, Amazon, etc. already sell US data to China. And even if the US didn’t allow it, China can still buy it from third parties or scrape it from sites—all three of which they do.
This is not a green light for the US to do nothing, just an observation.
The real issue is not China, but rather data collection. Cut the head off that snake and the US doesn’t have to worry about China, Russia, Iran, etc.
You are right. Too Tok doesn’t do anything American tech companies don’t already do. But they are not ‘murican!
That’s all.
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