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Comment by netcan | Hacker News Reader

>> China is not a good faith operator.

Who is? I don't mean to be trite or contrary, but TikTok is coming into an environment where norms are pretty damned shady. Google as you and the article say, also consume user data quite unethically.

FB likewise surveil us for their advertising businesses. They both also happen to host and control a good chunk of political and politically adjacent content within that framework. Police and regulate it with no transparency. FB are also gave us our first big "scandals" with third party trackers and/or data sharing.

Other countries (including, but definitely not exclusively) also use tech companies as espionage assets.

TikTok is just a new pig at the trough.

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Every tech company executive in the USA is not required to operate as an agent for one political party by threat of being disappeared. Our entire internet is not locked down to prevent political dissidents from sharing their views. Our government doesn't pay to flood our social media networks with astroturfing to create the illusion of popular support for its policies. These things add a more serious tone to the conversation, don'tcha think?

No, but they intelligence agencies do the same stuff. And private hidden funders of politicians do the astroturfing... I don't really see much difference if it done by government or people who pay the politicians running the government.

I think it's hugely disingenuous, to the point of bad faith, to pretend there's not a massive difference between the internet in the U.S. and in China.

There’s a massive difference in the internet itself, but the topic of discussion here is data collection, which isn’t really a massive difference.

Exactly. This isn't a general comparison of china to the US. It's a specific comparison of how bad data collection practices and the only (IMO) sane conclusion is that it's all quite terrible. One is not disconnected to the other either. The reason tiktok can collect all this data is precedents and norms established by google and FB.

Politicians are voted in by the people, and giving money to politicians to advance an initiative isn't guaranteed.

You don't really see much difference? Democratically elected politicians versus central party that allows no dissent and has complete control over information and actions of its citizens to the point of genocidal assimilation.

> Democratically elected politicians versus central party that allows no dissent and has complete control over information and actions of its citizens to the point of genocidal assimilation.

You're saying the Chinese government is so powerful and competent that they have complete control over information and actions of over one BILLION people? Wild claims like this one should be substantiated.

Although your name is wildly sinophobic and racist so I doubt there is any evidence you can pull up.

> Our government doesn't pay to flood our social media networks with astroturfing to create the illusion of popular support for its policies.

How would we know if that was or was not happening, either here or, more aptly (for the analogy to be accurate), abroad?

US-based tech companies where collaborating with the NSA on their illegal mass surveillance programmes.

Give it a few years.

I think it would be a mistake for anyone to conclude that because none of these companies is good, they're all equally bad. There is a lesser and greater evil in this case.

OK... What's the case for lesser or greater.

Bear in mind that we don't really know much about how our data is being used at any of these, either directly by the company or by security agencies in their home countries. US security also has access to foreign citizens' FB & Google data via prism or its successors.

The whole argument here seems (to me) to be [1] TikTok collects a scary and unjustifiable amount of data about its customers, just like youtube, FB Etc. [2] We don't know exactly what's collected and why [3] TikTok are chinese.

Singling out Tiktok is neither helpful nor honest, IMO.

Agreed. Rather than targeting a specific country or specific company, make it a large category. Grey areas are where companies, regardless of national origin, can optimize and manipulate. We need to shift the conversation away from "China bad; ban Chinese companies" to one about protecting people and their right to privacy. After all, this is the goal, right? We don't want to be saying "Privacy violations are OK as long as the companies are Western." but rather "People have a right to privacy."

> Who is?

That was my thought. Listing the 'good faith' operators might be feasible, if only because the list would be very short.

>TikTok is just a new pig at the trough.

This issue isn't a bee stuck in my presonal bonnet, but this is a fraudulent response that convinces nobody that didn't already agree with you. I'll explain why.

The people complaining about TikTok were probably complaining about the others for ages too.

Those complainers were shouted down with some version of "well, they're not THAT bad."

Now there is one actor that is seen (at least by some) as worse than the others. The difference in the actor is being raised as a reason to care about their actions (and maybe renew concern about the category of actions at large).

Your response that their actions are not novel is either ignorant or perpetuating a fraud.

Just in cast it makes any difference to you, the Chinese government, who collects all the TikTok data, is a bunch of oppressive mass murderers. Say what you will about Facebook, Google, et al., but they haven't come that far yet.

Then what does it have to do with TikTok?

If the underlying assertion is "ccp is evil," where and why does this relate to TikTok specifically? Why not every other item you are probably consuming?

>> Say what you will about Facebook, Google, et al., but they haven't come that far yet.

They're tech/media companies, not governments. FB & Google are however responsible for the norms under which TikTok can collect data for whatever purposes they want. They're the ones who normalised this sort of shady behaviour. It's a pretty straight line between one and the other.

So it doesn't make a difference to you. Noted.

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