Are you talking about the App Privacy page specifically?
Because that page is about as useful as “known to the State of California to cause cancer”
Any social media with advertising will have similar alerts as to what it might be collecting.
How would it be collecting that you might ask?
It’s not on your phone: Your browser and your apps are sandboxed from each other. They cannot read from each other. It’s a constant pain in the ass for session persistence, you end up having to use wonky nonce patterns to maintain sessions from app to browser & vice versa.
They’re collecting it from advertising ids that are on your browser. It’s the Google Ad Api - That’s it.
Go ahead, look at Instagram or Youtube. They’ll have the same laundry list of “Browsing history, Physical Address” etc.
TikTok isn’t conjuring that from thin air - It’s just that it, like any other advertising app, is using the publicly available data about you to advertise.
Again a side by side:
Which one is TikTok and which one is Instagram?
TikTok isn’t doing anything that the other apps aren’t also doing - The other apps are just fucking awful at knowing what you want to see.
I really wish I could post those pictures. I opened the “learn more” page on the App Store. It does list some of the same info under a few different headers, but I take that to mean it’s more detailed info to apply to their multiple tracking desires.
As soon as a user starts using TikTok, the company begins building a profile about them, including their interests, political leanings, sexuality, and every other variable that could impact the selection of videos they see. TikTok also collects information about users’ keystroke patterns, location information, browser history, and even biometric information (face and voice print).
https://www.thequill.ca/features/2023/2/17/five-reasons-why-tiktok-is-a-privacy-nightmare
I’m not a social media person, so I was never going to use the app anyway, but I’m also pretty strict about what apps I’ll download. It’s probably a security blanket, but I try to do what I can. I’ve changed my mind about downloading a couple of apps that required way fewer permissions. So maybe my opinion is different than others’.
My point here is less that TikTok is totally cool with privacy (they’re not)
It’s that tiktok is just as invasive as all other mainstream social media but they provide a better service than any other social media.
That’s it: They do more with the exact same.
You can drop instagram straight into that sentence and it reads the same. Except Facebook tracks you even when you don’t have an account.
As soon as a user starts using Instagram, the company begins building a profile about them, including their interests, political leanings, sexuality, and every other variable that could impact the selection of videos they see.
I see. Maybe that’s true. I don’t think we even know the true extent of their snooping. Any of them. It’s probably much more extensive and creepy than any of us could ever know.
Although, I do think them providing “better” service is subjective. It’s basically vine, right? Vine had an “explore” page, right? I would definitely agree they provide a more stimulating service than any other social media company.
But if you asked them their mission statement, their answer would be “providing customers with a great experience.” Though, if you could actually get the non-PR answer, their goal is to maximize engagement with an app people have a hard time turning off, while maximizing profits by dominating the data broker market.
Would you say they’re providing customers a better experience? Or that they’re the most effective social media company? I’d argue that probably every new iteration of social media, and every year they exist, they get more invasive. They’re finding new ways to streamline their profit centers. And they’re…free apps. So….
That’s all I’m saying. I don’t know for certain who’s more invasive, but I will say it’s a race to the bottom and we’ll never know who actually won until there’s a whistle blower. That’s…not a good sign. I’m sure we can agree on that much.
