I've always said as a regular citizen I'm far less worried about Chinese spying than domestic commercial surveillance. I don't live in China so I care far less if they are collecting my social media metadata vs the stuff going into Five Eyes databases simply for crossing some 'foreign' pipe in the US/Europe/Canada.
Although I doubt much is different in practice with the US version as far as ICE is concerned. Much of this stuff ends up in commercial data brokers which the government buys, these TikTok posts are already public, private data was already subject to warrants, and TikTok has always deranked politically controversial stuff.
I agree. I removed TikTok apps from all my devices just before the handover happened. Too bad, a US startup I used work for had good luck with ads on the ‘old TikTok.’ I wonder how much damage this handoff will end up doing to small American companies.
Old Tik Tok really had my number. Ironically since Trump took it over, New Tik Tok has been feeding me a bunch of Gen Z socialist stuff I have no interest in.
I just went though my old bookmarks one last time before deleting my account. The number of fun, enriching, and creative videos on that platform really puts YouTube to shame.
It really feels like nothing good lasts forever these days, but they had a good run.
I stopped using Twitter after getting constantly suggested to follow Musk and read his tweets along with all the crazy right-wing accounts he was promoting no matter how many times I clicked "Not interested in this post". It was clear it was purposeful.
Human memory is very short. I'm afraid convinience wins even when there is measurable negative output. Nobody talks about Cambridge analytica in these days anymore even it was scandal or a lot of people smoke even when this is hurting them.
Never understood the tiktok hype. Using a social media platform as a tought police device looks exactly like something MAGA voters realy like. I have the feeling US people realy hate there children
I’d be surprised if this data wasn’t already available through American dominated companies like Meta the same way.
More and more, I’m starting to think this was never really about “privacy” itself. Coming from the US government, it even sounds a bit ironic given the laws that are currently in force. Nothing is truly private in today’s world. And if the article is right, a lot of this data is already brokered and sold online, so China can buy it the same way anyone else can.
So I assume it’s about something that’s harder to sell to the public. For example, giving China a bigger opening to shape public opinion or influence elections, or other national security angles. I’d consider that a real threat too.
And of course ordinary greed helped. For pennies, US tech effectively acquired one of the biggest social platforms on the planet, basically through state pressure.
Heh, who would’ve guessed that the old saying "data is the new oil" would be so... literal.
> ICE is now utilizing advanced social media monitoring to perform “sentiment analysis.” By scraping TikTok and other platforms, they can monitor the emotional and political temperature of entire geographic areas, identifying resistance hot spots. This completely undermines the particularity requirement of the Fourth Amendment.
How’s this not a dystopian mass surveillance tech tyranny!? Where are the people crying about “not wanting to end up like Chyna” or whatever?
So for the average person, simply to counter or at least hinder the above, they have to stop using social media completely, and implement ad blockers on the dns level. They can still use federated social media I believe without issues, especially if it’s used from the web browser and not through a smartphone app, to avoid the MAID mentioned.
I've always said as a regular citizen I'm far less worried about Chinese spying than domestic commercial surveillance. I don't live in China so I care far less if they are collecting my social media metadata vs the stuff going into Five Eyes databases simply for crossing some 'foreign' pipe in the US/Europe/Canada.
Although I doubt much is different in practice with the US version as far as ICE is concerned. Much of this stuff ends up in commercial data brokers which the government buys, these TikTok posts are already public, private data was already subject to warrants, and TikTok has always deranked politically controversial stuff.
I agree. I removed TikTok apps from all my devices just before the handover happened. Too bad, a US startup I used work for had good luck with ads on the ‘old TikTok.’ I wonder how much damage this handoff will end up doing to small American companies.
None. Ordinary user don't care about this stuff.
Most of my friends in their 20s have been complaining about their TikTok feeds being less engaging.
Old Tik Tok really had my number. Ironically since Trump took it over, New Tik Tok has been feeding me a bunch of Gen Z socialist stuff I have no interest in.
I just went though my old bookmarks one last time before deleting my account. The number of fun, enriching, and creative videos on that platform really puts YouTube to shame.
It really feels like nothing good lasts forever these days, but they had a good run.
Maybe they switched to rage bait algorithm? I can't really use xitter because of this amazing feature.
I stopped using Twitter after getting constantly suggested to follow Musk and read his tweets along with all the crazy right-wing accounts he was promoting no matter how many times I clicked "Not interested in this post". It was clear it was purposeful.
They may care after some US citizens join the immigrants in concentration camps.
Human memory is very short. I'm afraid convinience wins even when there is measurable negative output. Nobody talks about Cambridge analytica in these days anymore even it was scandal or a lot of people smoke even when this is hurting them.
Never understood the tiktok hype. Using a social media platform as a tought police device looks exactly like something MAGA voters realy like. I have the feeling US people realy hate there children
I don’t use TikTok either, but this is akin to saying “never understood the heroin hype”
There is a large difference between engaging rationally with something from afar, and being a user of the most addictive product.
I’d be surprised if this data wasn’t already available through American dominated companies like Meta the same way.
More and more, I’m starting to think this was never really about “privacy” itself. Coming from the US government, it even sounds a bit ironic given the laws that are currently in force. Nothing is truly private in today’s world. And if the article is right, a lot of this data is already brokered and sold online, so China can buy it the same way anyone else can.
So I assume it’s about something that’s harder to sell to the public. For example, giving China a bigger opening to shape public opinion or influence elections, or other national security angles. I’d consider that a real threat too.
And of course ordinary greed helped. For pennies, US tech effectively acquired one of the biggest social platforms on the planet, basically through state pressure.
Heh, who would’ve guessed that the old saying "data is the new oil" would be so... literal.
> ICE is now utilizing advanced social media monitoring to perform “sentiment analysis.” By scraping TikTok and other platforms, they can monitor the emotional and political temperature of entire geographic areas, identifying resistance hot spots. This completely undermines the particularity requirement of the Fourth Amendment.
How’s this not a dystopian mass surveillance tech tyranny!? Where are the people crying about “not wanting to end up like Chyna” or whatever?
So for the average person, simply to counter or at least hinder the above, they have to stop using social media completely, and implement ad blockers on the dns level. They can still use federated social media I believe without issues, especially if it’s used from the web browser and not through a smartphone app, to avoid the MAID mentioned.
Sounds like pretty standard intelligence gathering that every police force in the world does.