cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/7897866
Thank you American software
Tbh, selling data for profit is not the only thing they do. The cloud act in US exists, and government agencies can get what they want essentially when they want.
This at least applies to the big 3 cloud providers in the picture.
I guess the double standard that is the core idea behind the picture is true. On the other hand, it’s also easy to see why it’s considered different whether your data goes to the NSA or to the CCP, from the perspective of a US citizen.
I am a US citizen, so that does set the context in this case. If my data stays in-house, that is something that is a little more tolerable, but not by much. (Once data out of your hands, it’s basically in everyone else’s at that point. Data doesn’t respect imaginary lines on maps, after all.)
The case with TikTok has been brewing for a while though as that app was a little more cavalier about data collection methods.
Honestly, I believe the meme is mostly a false idea that would only apply to general purpose racists than anyone else. For US citizens, the actual issue is a national security problem. (That logic is applicable to any wide spread app used by any person in any country.) The meme under-cuts that point by classifying the problem as user idiocy wrapped up in a hint of whataboutism while ignoring that TikTok is just another puppet company for the CCP.
There are many countries that have massive privacy issues, but China is probably at the top of that list. They are extremely open about the systems they have in place to track each one of their citizens so it isn’t much of a stretch to assume they would extend that system to people outside of their borders.
All of that mess is still fairly benign until you start weaponizing data that is collected and I could talk for hours about that, actually.