I don't use TikTok, so I'm not particularly worried about the Chinese government using it to spy on me. What I am worried about is the Chinese government using TikTok to launch influence and misinformation campaigns against US citizens.
TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, and China is a totalitarian state, so it's basically owned by the Chinese government. Is it too paranoid to worry about all the videos and their metadata being controlled by the Chinese government?
I usually don't give much concern to privacy issues - so much of my life is online and public (see my username as an example), I'm just not worried about it. If someone finds out about my goat fetish or side hustle selling illegal kinder toys, so be it.
But TikTok? I removed it after the first security concerns were raised years ago and have never even considered reinstalling it. It's such a obvious way for the CCP to get their hooks into the US population. Even if they don't gaf about you in particular, it can be used to monitor those around you, or assist in other spying activities like government or corporate espionage by giving detailed info on the digital devices around you. The risk to me personally is minimal, but I have no desire to help the Chinese government steal corporate secrets, locate dissidents or monitor Chinese expats living abroad - all things I'm sure are being done.
Umm...there is nothing remarkable about this. CCP wants their citizens to use a vetted service, that’s in full control and has surveillance capabilities.
They already ban YouTube, Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc. amongst many other sites.
Tiktok has a local version for Chinese users I believe and Tiktok wants to make sure Chinese users do not sign up for international version of Tiktok app.
Tiktok is owned by ByteDance which is not a US firm. It’s based in China.
Correct answer, downvoted of course since this is HN. I personally don’t care about privacy too much, but the way TikTok operates and its ties with the Chinese government is more than a little concerning. The videos are fun, too bad about the content.
Are we supposed to believe that TikTok cares about the privacy of its users and protects them from any inquiry from the chinese officials, or that is even starting a privacy fight with the CCP?! Laughable, c'mon.
Snowden is sort of an unusual standard to apply for this sort of thing? Espionage and intelligence almost never meets a certain level of proof that's available to the public eye.
I'm not really sure what to make of Chinese government involvement with TikTok but from the information available, it seems like whatever it is, TikTok isn't being forthright about it.
You can distrust the US government and also think there's reasonable evidence the Chinese government has access to TikTok for domestic or foreign intelligence.
Speaking personally, here's why TikTok concerns me: TikTok is a Chinese business, and China has shown no limit to how much it will meddle in the affairs of and even take control of Chinese businesses for the furthering of the Chinese state's agenda.
Simultaneously, TikTok has captured the daily attention spans of millions of Americans, many of them especially young and impressionable. They've captured their attention in the form of a black box algorithm that promotes content in whichever way TikTok deems most appropriate.
These two facts mean that the Chinese government now has direct access to the brains of millions of young Americans, with zero oversight. Imagine China subtly promoting videos to create outrage and civil unrest in the US, or to feed anti-US propaganda to germinate terrorist groups in the US. These might sound like far flung possibilities, but I think it's hard to say what a country that views the US as its enemy (politically, economically, philosophically) might do with that kind of power, and I don't think we can wait to find out.
Utterly ridiculous to allow TikTok to continue to operate in the current geopolitical climate. China is a surveillance autocracy and has been engaged in adversarial conduct against the West for years - including extensive psyops.
Shut it down, yesterday. Build a local clone so that people can get their fix or whatever. China sure as shit doesn’t allow its citizens to cough up their personal information for algorithmic consumption to Twitter et al.
TBH privacy isn't the concern for me... I think the US can just write off their digital lives as being a tradable commodity at this point. That should be addressed, but TikTok is like a drop in the bucket, and Congress isnt going to do anything about it for many reasons.
The concern is influence. There's nothing to stop the Chinese govt from manipulating the recommendation algo, and that goes way beyond simply deprioritizing Tiananmen Square and such. They could skew elections, amplify issues, changes perceptions on the aggregate...
TikTok itself is painful to see being used by otherwise presumably intelligent persons when other free video hosting services exist, because its entire purpose is to get non-Chinese people using the internet outside of the great firewall accustomed to using a social media platform that's subject to centralized censorship by the CCP and Chinese domestic law. Go post stuff on it about Uighurs, Xinjiang, prison camps, tiennaman square etc and see what happens.
The company that owns TikTok is obligated under Chinese law to provide a data pipeline on users, activity, their back end database to the ministry for state security.
I would have thought governments would be more worried about China spying on everyone and the insane data collection from TikTok (yes it might have an American operator in the US, but I can imagine they found a way to still siphon all that data to the mainland)...its a pretty big security risk if one thinks about it
The fear is that any large Chinese project holding the personal data of Americans is inherently a security concern. It wouldn't be a big issue if Tiktok were French or Korean or something.
The implications, as far as I've understood, is that the Chinese government has access and, theoretically, could be slurping the information that TikTok collects which is seemingly more than some others collect. I'm not purporting to know this is happening but I believe this is the reason for the assertion.
TikTok is a Chinese company bringing in mountains of data on US citizens, including the ability to influence what people in the US see on a daily basis. The Chinese government would never sell that kind of leverage to anyone, let alone to Facebook, which is banned in China.
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