Aside from being a time sink, the thing I'm most surprised to see on this site is that more users aren't incredibly wary of where the app is coming from. We all understand dubious data siphoning, yet so many people here are happy to put TikTok on their phone, connect to their wifi, and let it do its hoovering.
Everyone's consumer goods are made in China, so why would they care that their social media site is made there? We get our phones, computers, peripherals, cameras, the entire stack of hardware from there, why would end users draw the line at software? End users know, but unfortunately don't care about telemetry.
If TikTok actually declines or dies, it's not going to be because of where the software is made.
That's really not the point I'm making at all. You're talking about hardware, which is a whole other conversation about quality. I'm talking about software, data collection, "listening," etc.
We all live with some uncomfortable amount of dissonance on who's collecting our data. I personally take great issue with just opening the door to my life to China by installing TikTok. I don't have other social media (not interested in a semantics debate about what constitutes social media, my purpose in saying this is that I try to avoid data-hoovers in general), but I'm not perfect at avoiding unwanted data collection. I just don't see a need to make it so easy.
The physical objects manufactured in China aren't at risk of subliminally or overtly manipulating your media consumption for propaganda purposes though.
A social media algorithm is a much scarier thing than an inert object, and one controlled by a totalitarian enemy government even moreso.
I'm fully aware and I make an informed, conscious decision. If the PLA wants to know how many videos on astrophysics and urban planning I watch then I'm fine with that.
This is such a tired retort to the point I'm trying to make. It's not about the quality of the data they're collecting, or how interesting it is. It's the vast quantities they collect, in total, I take issue with. I don't care if you agree, leave the app installed, double down and grant it all the permissions it asks for, whatever. The high-level version of this is that I'm just not ok with the amount of data being collected, and the party that's collecting it, regardless of what that data actually is.
Your argument is the same as "I have nothing to hide, who cares if the government tracks my face everywhere I go and listens to everything I do?" Bad argument, focused too narrowly on personal experience.
> This is such a tired retort to the point I'm trying to make.
Is "tired" here a less polite way to say "you're not the first person to say this and I disagree"? I'm trying to understand whether I need to feel insulted here or not.
> I don't care if you agree
Well you kinda do or else you wouldn't have come back four days later to post this.
> I'm just not ok with the amount of data being collected, and the party that's collecting it, regardless of what that data actually is.
Which strikes me as a fiercely absolutist policy - possibly to the point of being irrational. I actual presume you do care about the amount and type of data collection or else you'd be raging at - I dunno - the national park service tracking aggregate visitor counts. So I'm going to presume that this is a rhetorical flourish, rather than a statement I'm meant to take literally.
The trouble with rhetorical flourishes it that it leaves me in the dark about what you actually do mean and it's therefore hard to respond.
> Your argument is the same as "I have nothing to hide, who cares if the government tracks my face everywhere I go and listens to everything I do?"
No, it's a polite way of saying "this is a low effort, poorly thought out way of hand waving valid concerns," which I would now extend to this comment. Your point isn't remarkably different, or even different in any substantive way.
