Even if TikTok were suddenly wiped off every phone on the planet, a competitor would take its place. TikTok simply takes advantage of people's desire to be entertained and apathy over privacy issues.
I believe privacy advocates view private information without nuance, whereas normal people do not. Many people would not care a lick of you could figure out they ate at subway earlier in the day, whereas this is worrying to privacy advocates.
81% of Americans believe the potential risks of companies collecting about them outweighs and benefits. 79% are very/somewhat concerned about how the data collected on them is used. The big issue 81% also believe that little or no control over the data collection. Interestingly not only do people also feel that the government will do nothing to hold companies accountable, they are also concerned about how the government is using their data.
Such results are demonstrated in every single survey. People are overwhelmingly concerned about how companies are using their data, but feel completely helpless.
[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/11/15/americans-an...
I mean if you’re concerned about your data and feel helpless, simply don’t use the app. But TikTok keeps rising doesn’t it.
The problem is "simply stop" is actually not that simple
People who intend action-X do not also intend all the consequences of X, nor are even plausibly aware of what those are. And even when they are, those are often so numerous that a time-bound agent (a person) isnt going to enumerate and weigh each for most actions.
One common case is collective action problems, eg., the tragedy of the commons: by each fishing to their intended amount they harm their ability to fish in the future, which was not intended.
Social media is a very plausible case: by each posting to their intended amount, their create the unintended result of the "gamification & publication of social life as such", and thus harm their future ability to socialise as intended.
Nearly every single major site is tracking you alongside enabling tracking by third parties. Something as innocuous as a call to Google fonts works as a sufficient tracking source. Your phone, regardless of who you pick, is not only tracking you but also readily forwarding everything on over to various government agencies with effectively 0 accountability. "Smart" cameras and other server connected street view cameras are even gradually destroying real life privacy - even being able to create effective real life tracking thanks to those handy OCR friendly license plates we all have.
Trying to preserve your privacy by not using TikTok is like trying to combat climate change by not barbequing. It will have a non-zero impact, but even if literally every single person did this to the point that TikTok went out of business - absolutely nothing would meaningfully change.
https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq/privacy
It seens like an odd thing to lie about, given how nefarious they are with other things.
It's interesting because this issue is also completely bipartisan. 75% of Americans believe there should be more government regulation on what companies are allowed to do with data, including 70% of republicans.
Most people aren't making informed, nuanced decisions about their privacy. Most people think online privacy doesn't impact anything more than what ads they see and so they don't care out of ignorance.
If people were aware of when and how the data they gave up is used against them they'd probably reconsider their views. The trouble is that people aren't allowed to know, so it's never in their face enough to register for them. People generally aren't great about evaluating consequences that aren't immediate or dangers that are at all abstract. That's what's enabled a multi-billion dollar a year industry to spring up around the buying and selling of data that "doesn't matter" and that "no one cares about".
That kind of thinking lets people get taken advantage of over and over again, get manipulated, lose opportunities, and have their money siphoned from their pockets without even realizing it had anything to do with the data that was taken from them.
Unless things change people will be trying to reassure each other that it doesn't matter who knows what they ate for breakfast even while they're being sorted into digital caste systems that will define and limit their options across many areas of their life.
If you make a new Facebook, you better make something about it different because otherwise people would just stay on Facebook.
It is very much clear that this kind of entertainment is very addictive and if done well it can get people to sink hours and hours into it.
Take a look at the style of the filmmaking from a movie today and a similar movie from 20 years ago. Each scene has many more abrupt cuts, and everything feels much more fast paced.
Even when presented with TikTok's data harvesting or algorithm tweaking to make divisive issues trend more popularly -- no users want to give it up.
Really does anyone have any better rationale that could be used to convince people not to use it? I have older relatives (60s) and younger (teens) that are obsessed with it.
what tangible privacy issues are with tiktok? in india the govt banned it last time over some bs reasons helping instagram but that is unrelated to "privacy"...
tiktok sells ads, instagram/fb sells ads. if i am using both, how is one better and another really bad?
its not like the US based companies aren't in for the money for the highest bidder and even harmful for their own citizens like the recent case of fb snitching on a girl who wanted an abortion?