(yes, I also see that it says Chinease)
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.
US looks very militaristic to me. It has a very broken democracy, and a history of supporting/causing brutal dictatorships.
The USA hasn’t taken territory since 1946.
The major reason for the USA being so broken is due to deregulation and corporate greed. Which is a little different in nuance to Authoritarian China.
“Um, technically when we lost all those wars for profit and oil, we didn’t seize any land. So, technically, we are the good guys.”
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.
The control the Chinese gov has over tiktok is on a different scale compared to Google and the US
Just to play devil’s advocate here, how many military bases has China got in other countries, compared to the US?
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
Thank you, this is my viewpoint exactly. We are exploited by both but one is after money, the other is a threat.
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. 😂
That’s like saying that Putin couldn’t hurt anyone outside of Russia yet he’s had multiple people killed in foreign countries.
I doythink those are as different as you say. Through the Patriot Act, american corporate spying is US spying.
Okay but one wants to efficiently sell me worthless trash and the other would happily kill me and take my property given an opportunity, so…
But the one selling you trash is also sharing that data with the ones who would kill you.
The things the CCP could do with political blackmail gathered from tiktok would make even Zuck blush.
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.
or worse in the USA.
An estimated 30 to 45 million Chinese citizens died during Mao’s “Great Leap Forward.”
I bet from reading message history they have tons of SSNs and bank details. Probably even information about our military.
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.
Whataboutism
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.
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 hear this all the time. I have this conversation on the regular.
Them: “Oh you think Tik Tok is spyware?”
Me: “yes”
Them: “I’ll have you know so is Google, Apple, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Microsoft, and all the big American companies too”
Me: “Yeah, that’s why I don’t use them”
Them: gasp “you’re just paranoid bro are you a drug dealer or something?”
Me: “no, I just like my privacy. You probably wouldn’t like it if some guy was following you keeping tabs about everything you do either.”
Them: “well I’ve got nothing to hide”
Me: “maybe the next person in power might see your current and past beliefs illegal”
Just ask them if they have curtains or blinds on their windows at home. They have nothing to hide, right?
Me: “do you close the bathroom door while shitting?”
Them: “yes”
Me: “why? You have nothing to hide”
TikTok is Chinese spyware. Chrome is American spyware. Anyone in their right mind should stop using both.
Is your kink getting watched over the shoulder by a big oily fat guy that sweats and breaths through the mouth? Ah and it tries to convince you the buy useless shit
Android phones looking nervously around.
At least u can put custom firmware on android phones, try to get rid of Apple spyware is much harder.
You cannot put custom firmware. If spyware is hidden in drivers, bootloader or even firmware of the modem there is nothing we can do about it. Custom ROMs are just replacing things above the kernel and below apps.
Still of course things average non CIA person should not worry about. Google apps with high privileges are removed with custom ROMs.
I thought android had its own bootloader and I assume drivers (At least Linux has its own drivers). To my understanding if android phones have a bios that’s the only thing that could be compromised but it should just provide the interrupts right? Now that I think about it if Google put a huge bios in there it might be able to access and share things it’s not supposed to. (But I feel like people would have noticed.)
well at this point just get a pinphone64 with linux a d hardware switches
