The majority of Americans — about 59% — say TikTok a threat to the national security of the United States, according to a recent survey of U.S. adults. The findings from Pew Research Center’s…
“Majority of Americans think dungeons and dragons is a threat to the national security”
Most of those probably just don’t like that their kids are on it all the time. At least some do understand that the real threat is all the data it is constantly collecting from our cameras and microphones as well as location data. It’s not limited to kids either, plenty of adults in jobs that should be secure are walking around with a Chinese wiretap/homing beacon in their pocket.
I’m honestly more worried about local companies getting this information from me at such a constant rate. We have plenty of enemies at home, and the rich around here have done infinitely more damaging things to me and my family than anything the Chinese have done to us yet.
I get this perspective, but I think it really down plays the lack of control we have over foreign products.
Like, if a US company put a bunch of employees in place and then had them simultaneously break into people’s houses, the US could arrest those who orchestrated the problem.
If a Chinese company did the same thing, sure we can arrest the individuals (if they’re still in the county), but we’re completely powerless as a nation to do anything to those that started the problem or those that escaped the country before we found out what they did.
Like the normal concepts of what’s legal are just out the window, everything is legal when you’re talking about nations vs other nations.
Thing is, neither the US nor Chinese company doing a home break-in is a realistic concern.
Realistic concerns are more along the lines of them sharing data that could rightly or wrongly get you on the radar of US law enforcement, or get you discriminated against in some way.
In terms of realistic concerns, your data being in US rather than foreign hands seems like significantly more of a problem.
I mean it is in the same way Facebook is.
A majority of Americans also think they’re of above average intelligence. I found this. Just now.
Roughly 70% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say TikTok is either a minor or major threat to national security in the U.S.
Either a minor or major threat. 😂
Polls are bullshit, both to design and to report. It’s maddeningly hard to whittle down human opinions to neat little answers. It’s a science and an artform, really.
You’re not entirely wrong, but I have a related degree and actually did polling back in the day, so I’ll add some nuance.
Most reputable political polls are surprisingly good. Pollsters get it wrong far far less than people think they do. Which is astonishing, given you’re often polling a thousand people, to discover the opinions of millions. The problem is that people fail to read the small print, don’t understand basic statistics or probabilities, and media misreport what they actually say.
Best example: 2016 US election. No one who knows a bit about polling was at all surprised by Trump winning. IRC if you aggregated, he had a 1/3 chance of winning. Him winning was invariably within the margin of error of many many polls. But the media misinterpreted them and then blamed bad polling for their own mistakes.
And that’s not surprising. Polling how someone will tick a box on an election day in the near future, by asking them to do the equivalent of tick a box in a poll? Likely to be quite good predictor.
More vague stuff like this, it’s harder. You’re not necessarily measuring what you’re measuring, and because the media invariably misrepresents scientific studies and polls, you need to read the small print and what they actually asked.
In any case, here’s the pollsters article on it (including sample size, methodology, etc.):
And the questions they asked:
https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/SR_2023.07.10.23_tiktok_topline.pdf
For example, it would have been interesting if they’d asked “Is TikTok a threat to national security in the United States?” rather than “How much of a threat…?”
Changing the answer scale would likely also have resulted in different answers.
Also, do respondents know what national security is? It’s a pretty vague term for layman.
Hell, do all respondents know what tiktok is? Because if you asked people if the Umbrella corporation is a threat to national security, it’s like that many would answer yes.
