This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
The concern isn’t that these companies have microtargeting data. The concern is about what these companies could use that data for.
An off-brand t-shirt site would be a fairly ineffective vehicle for political propaganda. Tik Tok would be great at that.
*tiktok IS great for that.
Now do Facebook and Amazon
TikTok literally got people to commit check fraud
TilTok likely got my car stolen (Hyundai vulnerability trended on TikTok)
That's Hyundai/Kia's fault though. For whatever reason, they cheaped out and didn't include an immobilizer in 2011-2022 models (meaning the cars don't actually verify that there's a key in it, so you can just remove the key hole and turn the ignition with a screwdriver or USB cable or whatever to start it).
Before TikTok, this would have just spread on different platforms...
I'm not defending TikTok though.
yes i know a kia owner with a similar story
That's like saying YouTube or Facebook I forget which one, got people to eat tide pods. Information spreads on all platforms whether good or bad.
Twitch promoted gambling for children.
They've infested other places too. Fuggin the sketchier pirate movie streaming sites have movies that just have gambling site watermarks all throughout the movie. It's crazy.
Not really considering Youtube will nuke your fucking account if you promote criminal activity, TikTok will not. Therefore TikTok is liable.
TikTok also lied and made it seem like it wasn't a crime
Yeah, better ban them all, don't see why not
I understand blocking TikTok, and China already blocks US social media sites. I don't really understand blocking a shopping app, though. TikTok are grasping at straws.
Wouldn't this set a dangerous precedent? If the government blocks a shopping app, what else will they block in the future? It's a slippery slope to government censorship. China may do the same thing and block US stores, which would hurt the US economy.
Shopping apps aren't really needed, I mean people could use the websites instead. So banning them wouldn't do any harm. Apps takes too much space & data anyways, which is not needed to function.
China bans stuffs all the time for no reason and makes laws that makes it difficult for a foreign business stay in China.
China’s Anti-Espionage Law Raises Foreign Business Risk
A lot of companies are preparing to leave or left China already for like India or Vietnam. It's a slow transition, but it's happening.
Apple's iPhone factory shift has left a ghost town behind in China
Why Companies Are Exiting China And What Leaders Can Do About It
Shopping apps aren't really needed, I mean people could use the websites instead
You could say the same thing for probably half the apps in the app stores, and yet people keep installing the apps. On iPhones, I think part of it is the fact that iOS had such poor support for PWAs.
more control and better monetization was probably the reason, y'know so apple can get that unfair cut.
I bet you they can actually
US tech companies too, you fucking cowards.
Facebook paid kids to install a VPN client on their smartphones so they could intercept AND DECRYPT traffic between competing services (like Snapchat, Amazon, Youtube)
facebook and any other company they acquire (or however they try to rebrand) are not only untrustworthy but active adversaries against common decency and basic privacy
America selectively caring about privacy.
The concern isn’t the input, it’s the potential output. Temu doesn’t have the potential to be used for a large micro-targeted political messaging campaign.
This is arguably more akin to how the US handles TV and radio. There are national security restrictions on foreign ownership.
It's because this isn't about privacy at all, it's about a popular social media platform being outside the control of domestic intelligence agencies. The US is unable to control the narrative on TikTok the way they do on American social media, which allowed pro-palestinian sentiment to spread there unhindered. It had a huge effect on the politics of the younger generation (IMO a positive one) by showing them news and first hand accounts they wouldn't have seen otherwise.
Edit: And yes, China is able to control the narrative on TikTok and that is a potential problem, but so far they've had a fairly hands-off approach to US TikTok aside from basic language censorship. I figure the way China sees it is that an unmoderated free-for-all will do more to sow divisions in the US than a carefully controlled (and therefore obvious) pro-China narrative ever could.
It's time to start taxing the acquisition, retention, and selling/trading of personal data.
Actually, that time was 40 years ago.
Better solution.
Data are owned by the generator. Only they can sell it etc...
This also solves the privacy problem of law enforcement agencies applying warrants to phone companies etc. for access to your data, which has been an end-run around 4th Amendment rights for decades.
Exactly. If a company wants to sell my data, they should have to make an explicit agreement with me to do that. If law enforcement wants data from my phone company, they should either produce a warrant or get my permission to release it. And so on.
If a company holds my data, they should be legally accountable for safeguarding it, and liable if it gets in the hands of someone I don't have an agreement with. Banks do that with my money, I don't see why social media companies should have any less expectation here.
And no, burying some form of consent in a TOS isn't sufficient, it needs to be explicit and there needs to be a reasonable expectation that the customer understands the terms.
I'd say it also needs to be entirely optional and be opt-in only. Any service, program, whatever needs to work fully for anyone who doesn't allow their data to be sold or released with extremely few exceptions.
Is tiktok saying that all Chinese apps that steal our data are also stealing our data because they were designed to steal our data?!
I am SHOCKED.
Oh no, now we have to ban them all?? What a shame!
/s
I'm surprised so many people think this is a good argument. TikTok is a social media platform. Temu is an online marketplace. The potential to cause disruption within US society is completely different.
