Majority of Americans Say TikTok Is a Threat to U.S. National Security

I absolutely refuse to use TikTok but let's be honest here in that our own politicians and the decisions that they make that are anti-working class and anti-poor are more of a national security threat than TikTok.

Yeah I mean, I downloaded my reddit data and uh... wow. I was surprised to see how much you could learn about someone when it's all bundled up like that 👀

Facebook's egregious behavior (Cambridge analytica) and their most extreme of all data collection makes TikTok look look like nothing.

TikTok has been investigated 20 times the rest and little bad behavior was found -- assuming you accept what's done today as acceptable, which I don't.

People hate TikTok because of trumped up stories in the media.

Notice that NOT ONE SPECIFIC ACCUSATION has been lodged against the company.

Now I sound like I'm defending them. Just the opposite -- condemning the bullshit and racist stories.

Downvote me all you want, but I dare you to find one thing that TikTok does that's as bad as American companies. And post it here.

Eighty one percent of Americans think God will save them, so why would you care about any of their other opinions?

Good. It pretty clearly is. It's not the only one by any stretch, but "a threat" is a low bar. Would a single one of you stand confidently by it being "no threat"?

Hell, facebook is a threat to national security, and it's an American company.

Yes but so are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

I'm not here to defend tiktok but I really don't care what the average person thinks is a national security threat.

This is only because of republican propaganda, which they only did because young people did political coordination on ticktok.

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that same 59% completed the poll on TikTok

Kinda proud I've never installed/used Tiktok ¯_(ツ)_/¯.

Majority of Americans don't understand national security, cyber security, or privacy.

So people are complaining if the CCP censors western social media like Facebook etc. but then discuss to censor chinese social media. Isn't there freedom of speech in America? I mean nobody is forced to use TikTok.

I don’t even have it and I clicked a link my friend sent and my vpn blocked 6 trackers. Can’t imagine what the app has access to

Well of course they're going to percieve a place where alternative ideas and organisation takes place as a threat

The US exports social media platforms all over the world.

Beyond that, many mostly older folks don't understand TikTok, even more than most social media, and because they don't understand the culture of it, they have decreed it a bad influence out of ignorant fear.

Yes, I'm sure China does mine the data, as do we. If my government wanted its citizens to "rah rah murica" in the global powers dick measuring contest, it shouldn't have legislated civic buy in away for the last 50 years to make the owner class richer at everyone else's expense.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/the-wealthiest-10percent-of-americans-own-a-record-89percent-of-all-us-stocks.html

Patriotism is for societies.

TikTok is a threat to my productivity if anything. That app will ruin me if I download it again.

It probably is, but holy fuck I'm hooked on the swiping to the point where I'd miss it a lot

For once a majority agree and are correct.

So are the rest of the "social media" companies too though.

Even if it's Chinese spyware, how would they ban it? You can always install the apk from a third-party source if you're on Android.

Threat to national security? Who could know besides the higher ups.

Threat to society? Again I don't know but god, most of TikTok is extremely cringe and has people wasting so, so much of their time either viewing stupid videos or filming them.

Idk, I just think turning society into a popularity contest/mediocre talent show is.. weird. Collectively, how many billions of hours have been wasted by people staging, viewing and filming simplistic dances due to apps like this?

When we could be doing.. anything of significance.

Sure, there's some informational stuff on there no need to remind me but let's be honest how much of it is basically "Look what I can do!"

Well it has access to the wifi soooooo

I'm going to guess a large percentage cannot fully explain why the think that.

So ban it already…

Well at least we know selling the next war will be easy. Americans still haven't learned to look past the surface of what the talking heads get paid to say.

Meanwhile the historically significant markers like wealth gap and political divide keep growing. Education, housing, and health get worse. But noooo, look at the shiny!

I don't use tiktok because it's bad for me and makes my older phone heat up, but it's a great app that leads you to your very niche interests if you guide the algorithm to do so - that's even despite the 'heating button' that their employees use to make favoured (creators/corps) content go viral.

People truly get so nuts about stuff that just doesn't matter. People who don't even use tiktok are scared of it? Goodness gracious.

It's become acceptable and at times encouraged to react to things with the utmost drama and volume. I really hope this trend goes away.

I don't get it. Either China is getting all my data or the US is getting all my data. I don't see a substantive difference.

Since I'm not in the CCCP debate at all, I'd rather China have it.