Anyone who even compares a for profit corportation to the world’s largest hostile militaristic dictatorship is an idiot. Both bad, but on completely different scales.
I’m honestly more worried about them knowing details on politicians and their families. The most they can do with some rando’s personal info is send them targeted propaganda. Knowing a handful of republican congressmen has lgbq relatives can be used to make them to shift policies.
At the very least, Google and Facebook have to step back if caught. Meanwhile, Chinese companies often don’t care about EU privacy laws. Still avoid them altogether, any way.
Do they? They’ve been caught BIG TIME, and META stock price is at an ATH!
Living like a street criminal for a decade sure puts international politics in perspective, because you can just see straight through the bullshit. It’s just bigger numbers, but the principles and human behavior stays 100% the same.
Meta was sued in India, Brazil, the UK, and the USA for the way they sold data in the 2010s, being fined Billions of dollars total. In July 2019 they were fined 5 Billion in a 3 to 2 vote by the FTC and they’re in the process of a 20 year settlement plan.
Meta also has a proposed trial date for December against the FTC and 46 states after their supposedly unlawful and aggressive mergers to acquire WhatsApp and Instagram, called Federal Trade Commission v. Meta Platforms, Inc. (formerly Federal Trade Commission v. Facebook, Inc.). The Mergers are why their evaluation keeps rising.
As much as China is a festering cancer upon the world, I am willing to bet that for every single trademark horror that is taking place in their society, I could find a match or worse in the USA.
That’s fair but I feel like it’s not in Google’s best interests to collect your photos library, clipboard, message history, contacts info, SSN, banking details, etc and then sell all of it to China for cheap. The extent of Data Collection, and the very obvious malicious intent of it, embedded in TikTok sets it worlds apart.
The US has actively used that kind of info to extrajudically kill people, we know that for sure. We don’t know if China actually did that (they probably did).
The US doesn’t try. It just bombs the fuck out of anyone worth exploiting production of anything any private exploitator willing to play “business” there wants.
Ghastly business, that. Unavoidable, really, and tragic. Anyways, here’s our top stories tonight: the US kills its own population with the most potent designer drugs in history, at a 0% tax revenue! “This is great for the economy”, according to Experts, who warn that the same measures would be “devastating” under Democratic rule.
Compared to the dictatorship who are in the process of seizing land and committing genocides on their (according to them) own peoples, yes the USA are fucking saints. See this is my exact problem, two bad things are not equivalent but so many people fail to grasp that.
Usually they can’t, but they can blackmail. Usually only if you’re really really deep in anti Pooh territory though. Pooh is vindictive and thin skinned like our spray tan guy. Spray tan could for example, work with Pooh to surveil and jail dissenters. It’s not that China is a threat to an individual American or other foreigner in a Western country per se, but as long as they could potentially leverage your data against you they do have a little threat. For the record Pooh and spray tan should be sent to an island together to… Oh shit nvm usually rich people and islands aren’t a good thing. 😂
If you’re someone influential enough to be blackmailed by the Chinese government and you’re using TikTok… You’re really stupid… but average TikTok user, really has nothing to be afraid of China, I think. TikTok is also after money, as far as I know (ads). They are a company. Like Huawei, they might have a close relationship with the Chinese government, similar with Google with the US government.
Most of us are boring. We’re not oligarchs or investigative reporters, nor hold key posts in government or industry, nor are connected to dissenters. It’s not that he couldn’t but it’s almost impossible to see a scenario where either dictator would have an interest in most of us. I neither control anything they want nor block their way to it
While they’re at completely different scales, plus will go to much different lengths to abuse what they find out, It comes down to personal peril. I know exactly how Google will use that surveillance data to my detriment and that they’ll openly sell it to more nefarious entities, however I fail to see how the Chinese government would ever have an interest in my data or in selling it.
I don’t use Tik Tok or Huawei, but that’s for other reasons
You fail to see why they would collect the massive amounts of data that they’ve been repeatedly proven to collect? Sounds like willful ignorance, to me.
Not at all. I understand storage and scaling are cheap, so it’s a great strategy to collect every piece of data about every person. Then you use whatever you need, whenever you need to.
For example, it’s expensive to investigate a Congressman’s past to find that picture in drag for blackmail. It’s much cheaper to collect everything you can so once he becomes a Congressman you can simply search for connections and seconds later have that picture off his college buddy’s computer
I can’t ever go back after moving to Vivaldi, even though it’s chromium. It’s the tiniest of reasons too, like full screen behavior, the gargantuan UI elements, the continuous removal of customization options…
I can set Vivaldi to:
F1 = show/hide info bar
F2 = show/hide address bar
F3 = show/hide tab bar
F4 = instant fullscreen
F5 = sidebar that’s actually useful
The bookmark and history tabs are actually usable, the Quick Command popup bar functions like Vimium, and there’s more customization options than you can shake a stick at.
I say this as a Firefox user who has not changed browsers since it was literally called “Mozilla” and competed with “Mosaic” and “Netscape Navigator” for top position as THE web browser to surf Internet portals.
I love FF to pieces, but it’s simply not usable to me under the current management.
I just tried out Floorp which is basically Firefox with some Vivaldi features. I was like oh okay I get the appeal now. I have to take Vivaldi for a test drive.
God when the whole Tiktok thing in Congress was going on nobody wanted to hear that their favorite big tech social media app was already selling information to China; had been caught doing so multiple times; and had never stopped despite promises and threats of prosecution the next time.
WHAT information? What does China gain by learning that Sparky Douchebag watches BBQ and catgirl fapping videos? Are they planning their invasion based on the Heathers Challenge, or simply stealing our makeup tips?
Look into the research that has proven that the app has backdoors baked in, and combine that with how widespread it is - reaching every level of society; every industry, politician, branch and level of the military. Now remember that research into the Spyware activities of the app.
TikTok is the largest, most successful self-inflicted virus for SigInt ever. [citation needed]
Look, it’s not what bs viral video the algorithm is feeding these people. It’s the spyware it’s putting on the phones. It has been proven that the app harvests all the data it can find and phones it home. Backdoor root-level access has also been proven. If you can’t figure out why that would be bad, you probably have problems pouring water out of a boot with instructions on the heel.
Google using your perceived preferences to sell you underwear and yogurt is not worse than being tracked by the world’s largest hostile militaristic dictatorship.
Well say you googled a lot about abortions in a state that will put you in prison for it. Then it becomes a different situation. Or say you grow mushrooms to treat cluster headaches and the DEA now probably knows about it because that buy the data from all of these companies and can see the many searches you made about it the credit card you used to purchase supplies etc. I feel like China will probably just try to steal your crypto or something
Searching for information about abortion isn’t a crime anywhere afaik, at least not an enforceable one. Google and the state governments are separate entities, and to be used in the US Justice System against you they would need to provide the source for their evidence, which would make really bad publicity for Google which does in fact harm their profits. So the State would have to make a pretty damn good offer to accomplish that. Doubly so for wannabe authoritarian admins like DeSantis, since those are exactly the type of people to turn around and try to restrict the company’s rights and freedoms.
Pretty much the same for the Mushrooms, although self-medicating with full dose mushrooms seems a little over the top to begin with, but I can’t blame the victim in a system where opiates are handed out readily by doctors.
Crypto would probably be harder for China to take than bank funds, but if they did steal a bit from hundreds of millions of Americans then the total loss would be catastrophic for many lives. The USA has no way to fight back in that scenario because while China does utilize American tech brands and products, those companies are not a direct arm of the military the same way that TikTok is for China.
It would be whataboutism if the argument would be one is okay because of the other. It isn’t whataboutism if the argument is that both are unacceptable.
Thank you. I’m so sick of people equating whataboutism with pointing out hypocrisy. Do they want societal acceptance of hypocrisy? Or do they just like to use the new words they learned, like calling every jerk a narcissist?
I disagree on the basis that it normalizes TikTok by even comparing it to something far less harmful. They are both bad but one of them is a military op for the world’s largest hostile dictatorship.
Thats like saying drinking cola and unfiltered piss are both bad for you.
To be honest as a European, I wouldn’t say one is worse than the other. I don’t want to have a race out of it, because it can be argued over in a lot of ways. There is no “not as bad” one, both should be reined in.
Actually, I think what whataboutism is about really is arguments like this. Tiktok is not “normal” and will never be “normal”. But comparing Google to Tiktok and saying Tiktok is worse since it is owned by a dictatorship as opposed to a plutocracy, while overlooking that I can quit or never use Tiktok. In fact, I never did, so I’m reasonably sure they don’t have too much data on me. Google on the other hand is very hard to avoid, as though using Google Analytics to collect my data is illegal, Google is doing all the crime it can do to keep pushing it, along with the rest of its data collection methods.
Neither should be ignored because there are “worse” actors. Both should be held accountable for breaking the law, severely. IMO neither of them is.
I still use discord, can’t just leave gaming with my friends and I already look too much like a paranoid to convince them to switch to matrix or another FLOSS service
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