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Comment by CharlesW | Hacker News Reader

> Can anyone point to something that TikTok is doing that FB/Google/Twitter aren't already doing, that we should be concerned about?

If you're okay with FB/Google/Twitter sharing all of the data they have on you with the CCP, there's not a big difference.

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I'm more concerned about my government having my data instead of a far away government tbh.

Exactly. The CCP doesn't have jurisdiction over me last time I checked. Although that might be a growing concern as China strengthens relationships with other countries.

I'd argue that's not true, though. They don't have legal jurisdiction over you, but they could potentially have digital or social jurisdiction over you and your environment, and that's possibly just as bad. Think manipulation of your local government, throwing elections in favour of pro-CCP candidates, and spreading pro-CCP material out to social media and the people around you becoming sympathetic to their cause.

That's the wrong argument because if they infiltrate the local government then they will have access to locally collected data and won't need tiktok. Access to tiktok data gives China surveillance over US that could help in case of future conflicts, just look what Ukraine has done to Russian soldiers using insecure communications.

When your future Senators have hours of compromising TikTok video in TikTok servers, you will be under their jurisdiction.

China is magnificent at long term thinking.

> I'm more concerned about my government having my data instead of a far away government tbh.

I presume you aren’t part of the crowd on HN/Reddit who are (still) upset that Russia used social media to “influence” the 2016 election? Imagine if say, a certain Asian country had detailed information about the habits and desires of millions of Americans, do you think they could do something similar in a future election?

I'm a full blown social media abolitionist. I'm upset about the propaganda wars conducted online. I'm frustrated by the difficulty of filtering through Russian, Chinese, and CIA propaganda online in order to understand history or current events. I do not think that Russia, China, the US, or private companies should have such capabilities.

TFA says "national security threat", not personal privacy threat.

There's a point here at which you have to just rely on your priors, but there's just a world of difference between Google and FB sharing data the US government requests on individuals via court orders, vs the CCP hoovering up data on every single user and using them to build a single giant social credit database.

And yes, maybe everyone is lying to you, and the NSA is doing it already. Maybe they already have radios in your microwave building a database of your breakfasts. We just don't know.

But at the end of the day I know a lot of people at Google and 100% of them would push back on governments requests as hard as humanly possible, and there would absolutely be whistleblowers if this was happening. I'm just not going to equate the two.

You don't think the NSA/DHS has a giant social graph database of US citizens? I'd be shocked if they didn't.

I don't, no.

I do think they are obeying the letter of the legal mandates and have a social graph of all non citizens who have ever been to the US, or interacted with anyone from the US. But not US citizens, no.

Are you familiar with the whistleblower Edward Snowden?

Not trying to defend TikTok, FB/Google/Twitter are not sharing data with CCP, but they are sharing data with CIA owned by Uncle Sam.

As a general rule, the sharing occurs only as compelled by lawful court order. Goog/FB don't really have a choice in complying if they want to continue to exist and do business in the USA.

> As a general rule, the sharing occurs only as compelled by lawful court order.

"Lawful", sure, in the sense that the secret FISA court approved it, and while that's blatantly unconstitutional the supreme court decided that no-one has standing to bring that case unless they can prove that they were themselves being secretly surveilled. I bet everything that TikTok does is lawfully compelled as well.

> Goog/FB don't really have a choice in complying if they want to continue to exist and do business in the USA.

Sure, but again, how's that any different from TikTok's situation?

That's not true at all. All of these social media platforms have LEO portals where they circumvent any privacy settings.

False. The access requires entering a warrant. The authorities can't just access your data arbitrarily. Please cite sources or stop spreading FUD.

True; It was right in the BlueLeaks archive.

that's worse imo

Worse doesn’t make bad better

Which country is known for kidnapping people from anywhere in the world where 95+% of humanity lives? People can be killed based on metadata.

Make your own conclusions who is the scariest here.

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