Banning TikTok Won’t Keep Your Data Safe
foreignpolicy.com
Pompous billionaires, authoritarian regimes, and opaque oligarchs are hoarding our data. Only an alternative online ecosystem will stop them.
  • Steve@communick.newsEnglish
    175·
    2 months ago

    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.

    • winterayars@sh.itjust.works
      93·
      2 months ago

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

      • Plastic_Ramses@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 months ago

        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.

        • winterayars@sh.itjust.works
          21·
          2 months 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.

        • would_be_appreciated@lemmy.mlEnglish
          51·
          2 months ago

          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.

          • Steve@communick.newsEnglish
            44·
            2 months ago

            Not really. One can be dealt with if needs be, since they’re US companies. The other can’t because it’s the Chinese government.

    • Anonymouse@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      2 months 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.

  • Autonomous User@lemmy.worldEnglish
    144·
    2 months ago

    First ban Discord or Instagram.

    You know they won’t cos they don’t give a shit about our privacy, about us.

  • kbal@fedia.io
    6·
    2 months ago

    New idea for a web service: Give it the url of an article decrying the sorry state of corporate social media and hyping up some zany theoretical alternative that nobody’s heard of, and it tells you whether or not the author gives any hint of having heard of the fediverse.

  • Ilandar@aussie.zone
    3·
    2 months ago

    As I said last time this was shared, the article isn’t really about TikTok - that is only used as a recent example of why these big proprietary datasets are problematic. The main point of the article is really to explain why we need an alternative and how it could work, using the example of Getgee. I wish more people would read past headlines, especially for interesting articles such as this one.

  • foremanguy@lemmy.ml
    22·
    2 months ago

    If you want to really make a change do not ban anything just stop advertise it and promote it. The people next will switch to privacy alternatives. It’s not the TikTok fault it is the society fault. Meaning there is one solution and it’s to change massively the society

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
    11·
    2 months ago

    How about we just create some laws governing data collection and addictive behaviors? It shouldn’t just apply to a few companies either it should be a simple policy that everyone must follow. It also needs to relatively easy to understand and clearly documented on how to be compliant