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Banning TikTok Won’t Keep Your Data Safe | Pompous billionaires, authoritarian regimes, and opaque oligarchs are hoarding our data. Only an alternative online ecosystem will stop them. (foreignpolicy.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/12778902

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[–] 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

First, it's not a TickTok ban. It's a ByteDance ban. ByteDance could sell TickTok to another company outside China and TickTock would be fine in the US.

Second, it was never about protecting user data. It was about preventing China from tweaking the algorithm to try to subtly influence public political opinion, instead of maximizing generic rage and political polarization, to exploit for ad dollars.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Yet nobody cares about US companies like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube manipulating public opinion with their algorithms.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    This isnt the point.

    An adverserial nation shouldnt be able to influence public opinion like that.

    We all understand that those companies do nefarious things. Imo its quite a bit different when its a whole ass country purposefully manipulating public opinion and they dont like the united states.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    I get it, i don't want to live in China but i don't want to live in whatever Elon Musk has planned for the US, either, and his wealth gives him undue influence over... pretty much everything. You're not convincing me you've got a consistent take here if you're cool with Twitter but not TikTok.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Nobody cares because they are US companies.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Seems bizarre that people are okay with public opinion being explicitly manipulated by a very small group of people with very little overlapping interest with the public, but not okay with public opinion being explicitly manipulated by a very small group of people with very little overlapping interest with the public from a foreign country.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    You're exactly right on both counts. When you hear it from politicians, the sound bite (byte?) is "to protect the children" which is ambiguous. I take it to mean to protect the data of my children, somebody else takes it to mean to protect my children from being brainwashed and the children running the social media companies take it to mean it's protecting their right to wealth. It's win win win!

    If the US govn't were serious about protecting people, they'd implement GDPR and put data privacy into the hands of the individual.

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