The fundamental difference is who is in control, and for what purpose.
American spyware is controlled by corporations, and is all about selling you shit you don't need.
Chinese (and Russian) spyware is--apparently--controlled rather directly by their respective governments, and is being used to suppress democracy and increase polarization in the US and EU.
I don't like any spyware. But the latter category--spyware that's functionally state-sponsored--is clearly more immediately dangerous. The former is more like a slow-growing cancer.
51All of the US corporate social media platforms are part of the US military-industrial-intellegence complex now. Look at their boards of directors and executives. Look at the Twitter Files. Look Hamilton 68.
Look at Reddit:
- Facebook Partners With Hawkish Atlantic Council, a NATO Lobby Group, to “Protect Democracy”
- Jessica Ashooh: The taming of Reddit and the National Security State Plant tabbed to do it
- A Reddit AMA Claiming To Be A Uyghur Quickly Exposes A CIA Asset Slandering China
- r/neoliberal was created by a neoliberal think tank » BPR Interviews: The Neoliberal Project
.
TikTok as well. The US already forced them to move their service to the US on an American-owned hosting provider, and they have already put people with a history of aligning with “American interests” into executive positions, like CEO Shou Zi Chew and vice president Michael Beckerman.They have their eye on the fediverse now: Atlantic Council » Collective Security in a Federated World
30Twitter files are mostly a tool for Elon Musks policy. Wiki entry shows enough of why they are problematic. The Hamilton 68 controversy isn't a big thing like you are pretending. If anything their database was misunderstood. https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-hamilton-68-russian-online-influence-tracker-2023-2?op=1
1
So it's only okay for them to suppress democracy and increase polarization if they use American platforms? Because that's already happening.
15
13I'm not defending China here, but since Snowden we now know that American corporate spyware does serve the government. And they are suppressing democracy - this isn't a democracy yet, and peaceful protests for democracy are met with violent police resistance - Occupy, BLM, etc.
I sincerely hope that Lemmy can grow large enough to serve as a staging ground for democratic protests in America, just because it's not corporate controlled.
7The former is more like a slow-growing cancer.
One that we can actually fight, I might add, and we should.
7Absolutely.
I mean, that's part of the reason that I'm here, rather than The Place That Shall Not Be Named. That, and because my account was permanently banned because I suggested torching the house of a someone flying a nazi flag.
2
I would love to know how all the cat and cooking videos in my tiktok feed are being used to suppress democracy 🙄
-4
My main reason is I'm an American, China (probably) can't do shit to me. But here I'm subject to so much shit America can do legally and illegally, with zero repercussions.
If China fucked me in particular over, odds are it would at least spark debate here. If America spied on my messages and stopped me from protesting something, that's just a Tuesday afternoon here.
The only reason why Congress wants to ban it, is due to pressure from news agencies and the government, because TikTok can't be controlled by the CIA. You can't manufacture consent of the people if the content comes from someone else you don't control.
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/13/1237501725/house-vote-tiktok-ban
They'll ban tiktok but won't punish overly aggressive police.
They'll ban tiktok but won't make food or rent affordable.
They'll ban tiktok but won't denounce Israel's bullshit.
They'll ban tiktok but won't cancel student loans.
They'll ban tiktok but won't take Covid seriously.
42Fucking preach
9Deleted/removed because I meant to reply to someone else.
3no, tiktok is controlled by an adversial power that intentionally manipulates what you see to shape your opinions. theyve already blatantly lied to all of their users by a forced pop-up of what the bill against them contains. you can protest in america, you cant in china. if you think so, please go and say xi jinping is a stupid loser in beijing and see how long til you get arreated
2
Hah! yeah
How does Microsoft always fly under the radar?
192013: Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages
Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users' communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company's own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian.
The files provided by Edward Snowden illustrate the scale of co-operation between Silicon Valley and the intelligence agencies over the last three years. They also shed new light on the workings of the top-secret Prism program, which was disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post last month.
14Well yeah, by default Microsoft holds your encryption keys. Why wouldn't they be able to unencrypt it? Implement Customer Key if you want to hold your own encryption keys.
1
For fun context, Google "Microsoft Vortex Service"
4
I'm not big of a fan of Chinese surveillance but to most peoples point that have already posted here, if this was about privacy then the government should be passing laws to protect consumer privacy as a whole and not just targeting Chinese companies. Really shows that the government doesn't give a shit about your privacy just who's able to get it.
12The USA has a very strong first amendment. Cruise social media and you can find Americans literally calling on fellow Americans to overthrow the government. And these people are largely left alone by the government. Heck, a fair number of folks who were involved in the January 6th insurrection are still walking free.
Contrast to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_dissidents#Detained_and_jailed_people
But yes. The US is absolutely not perfect.
8https://www.npr.org/2024/03/13/1237501725/house-vote-tiktok-ban
Advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have called the bill "censorship plain and simple," arguing that "jeopardizing access to the platform jeopardizes access to free expression."
At 27 years old, Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost is the youngest member of Congress, and he opposes the bill.
"I think that it is a violation of people's First Amendment rights," he said. "TikTok is a place for people to express ideas. I have many small businesses in my district and content creators in my district, and I think it's going to drastically impact them too."
The fact that Republicans started it is enough for me to be at least suspicious of why its even being considered.
EDIT: Also lol at "strong first amendment rights" when redneck states ban any books with queer or black characters. And lmao at "Strong first amendment rights" when people get fired for talking about forming a union, let alone even trying to make one.
11Communist Control Act? Sounds like First Amendment to me.
7Lol comment removed for (I guess?) linking to a Wikipedia article on Chinese dissidents...
0
The concern about TikTok acquiring your private information for marketing purposes is a red herring. The concern of our government here is propaganda and narrative control -- power.
6I'm European and I definitely feel that way. I don't like American spyware, but I trust the Chinese government much less than I do American corporations.
5Vibes-based threat modeling, a classic.
13Remind me again who was wiretapping Merkel's cell phone? China right? Oh wait no sorry, it was the USA.
13Who was caught wiretapping.
Between August and September 2007 Chinese hackers were suspected of using Trojan horse spyware on various government computers, including those of the Chancellory, the Ministry of Economics and Technology, and the Ministry of Education and Research.[180] Germans officials believe Trojan viruses were inserted in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint files, and approximately 160 gigabytes of data were siphoned to Canton, Lanzhou and Beijing via South Korea, on instructions from the People's Liberation Army.[181]
From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_intelligence_activity_abroad
It is a very long Wikipedia article (as is anything involving CIA activities abroad, to be sure).
0How about I share something from my own country. What I reckon is that only some of my data goes to the US government through Google, Microsoft etc. while the Chinese government controls corporations like tencent much more than the US government controls US corporations. Besides all that, services from Microsoft and Google are much harder to avoid than for example tiktok and Huawei. So the US is getting my data no matter what, I might as well limit how much of it goes to china.
-2
looks like US propaganda machine is working smoothly in Europe
7Yes, we're all aware that Europeans are racist.
4Looks like there is no concrete basis for threat modelling. Xenophobic biases, everywhere!
2
A whole lot of censoring on these posts on lemmy.ml
4Just look at Rule #1 and try to say you expect anything else.
0
If I had a nickel for every time I saw one of these posts, I'd have two nickels, Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice on the same day
3And posted by the same account that was created yesterday!
4
Fuck the USA and fuck China. Spyware sucks no matter where it's from.
1They are not the same thing. Facebook is bad too (and actually, a platform-neutral legal restriction based on behavior would be better), but TikTok is absolutely unique in the type of threat it poses:
- The Chinese government treats communication networks as their personal hoovering-attachment for any data they might want. Companies are required by law to operate as an arm of Chinese intelligence, both in terms of giving information and in terms of manipulating what information people on their network are allowed to see. The FBI and NSA definitely spy on Americans too to some extent, but it's simply not in the same league or with the same type of goals.
- It's not just your TikTok data. It's photos and files on your phone, your contacts, your messages, basically anything that the app with its too-permissive permissions can get its hands on, can potentially go up to Chinese intelligence.
- TikTok is not structured like any other app. It has features like custom-downloading and running arbitrary binaries from its central server that honestly don't even make much sense except as spying apparatus (consistent with #1).
- What China might do with this unprecedented level of access to everyone's phones is malevolent in a different way than, say, Facebook's access to everyone's data. Like Facebook they have the ability to e.g. influence an election, but they also have the ability to try to blackmail an individual to compromise them, or do for-real torture in the real world (say by tracking down a dissident via TikTok spying and then having one of their little Chinese-police-in-America units grab them).
Citations:
- https://thehill.com/opinion/cybersecurity/532583-for-chinese-firms-theft-of-your-data-is-now-a-legal-requirement/
- https://www.proofpoint.com/us/blog/threat-protection/understanding-information-tiktok-gathers-and-stores
- https://www.currentware.com/blog/block-tiktok/
- https://www.businessinsider.com/china-hong-kong-spy-agency-official-presence-national-security-laws-report-2020-6 https://www.npr.org/2023/04/17/1170571626/fbi-arrests-2-on-charges-tied-to-chinese-outpost-in-new-york-city
-1Chinese-police-in-America units
Five Eyes governments & corporate media Cold War II propaganda slop: False Witnesses and Sinister Plots: Exposing the CIA Connection in the ‘Chinese Police Station’ Narrative
What is the Chinese state going to do to you from the other side of the world, other than feed you targeted ads? Attack you with Havana Syndrome or turn you into a Manchurian Candidate via 5G? Why would the Chinese state be the least bit interested in you?
Does no one remember how ridiculous the red scares and the first cold war hysteria looked in the rear view mirror? Because the new hysteria looks just as ridiculous to me now. Same cartoonish propaganda, same credulous acceptance of it.
10Do you have a source that is a little more reliable?
1
Tankies trying so hard to have any spyware be acceptable. Sorry (not sorry), but tiktok is just as evil as Google.
-3I am tired of the unspoken Western Big Tech apologia. TikTok OBJECTIVELY collects far lesser data than Big Tech apps and services, according to reports from 2 reputed data collection analysis companies. Moreover, the below assumes you have an account, which is not even needed to use TikTok, unlike Instagram or Snapchat.
https://clario.co/blog/which-company-uses-most-data/ https://www.truepeoplesearch.com/insights/info-tech-companies-collecting-from-you
One of the key important aspects of threat modelling for your desired privacy is the acceptance of facts instead of false nationalist opinions.
Moreover, while TikTok collects basic data, it never forces you to login other than for commenting (for obvious reasons) and similarly personal things, unlike Instagram. If you open an IG link in web browser, you cannot replay the video second time, and if you scroll the account’s posted images and videos, you will not be able to flick through a second time.
Unlike Tiktok, with Western platforms and services like Facebook, you give phone number, contact book, IMEI, location data, email, some name or pseudonym et al. With TikTok, none, because you do not need an account for it.
Facebook/Instagram and major Western platforms' data collection on a user is more than what TikTok does on a user, even if there is an account on both services. On top of this, TikTok does not have tracking pixels, ad networks, CDN and other methods of tracking on other websites, unlike Facebook ecosystem. This allows Facebook ecosystem to correlate, interlink and form data clusters on users and IP addresses. Remember how Facebook ecosystem disallows accountless access? Or how they C&D’d Barinsta developer Austin Huang, citing they dislike anonymous access to Instagram?
Western platforms also inject malware in browser using domains like https://netseer-ipaddr-assoc.xy.fbcdn.net/, something TikTok does not do if you do not have an account.
This is precisely what makes TikTok objectively so harmless without an account, and even with an account, relatively far less harmful. It does not mean TikTok does not collect data, but the difference is too wide. These are the facts, free of American nationalist propaganda.
I do not even use TikTok.
1I read through the first link you provided, it doesn't align with your claim "TikTok OBJECTIVELY collects far lesser data than Big Tech apps and services."
We go section by section
TikTok is worst here, collection all possible voice, face, environment data
Again TikTok infer as much information as possible, worst among all listed.
The later couple section did not mention tiktok, so I cannot compare it.
Finally
TikTok ranked number 3 in among all the social media, above clubhouse and twitter, just below facebook and instagram.
1TikTok OBJECTIVELY collects far lesser data than Big Tech apps and services
This is not true for a number of reasons, first being that once the data gets sent to a Chinese server, it's gone. It's like a void. Those "data collections analysis" can speculate, but they truly have no idea what happens with that data. Another reason that TikTok is as bad as Instagram, is that they farmed all the data from the in-app browser. Every click, scroll, everything.
You can argue that they have a different approach to data farming, and they do: they try and rope you in, trick you into giving them your data. But it's demonstrable wrong to say that they collect less data. I wouldn't say they collect more data than typical west social media platforms, but I think it's disingenuous to say they're somehow better.
-2
Whos tankies ?
0
Tankies failing to comprehend the fundamental difference between an actor who tries to make money off you and an actor trying to manufacture dissent and influence the public narrative
-7Yeah because Facebook totally doesn't do that.
18Point taken, though it’s still an American company they could crack down upon if they prove too dangerous too.
To be clear: I don’t want to get spied upon by anyone and I don’t use most of the American services for that reason. But obviously domestic bad actors are better than bad actors controlled by a foreign and hostile government
-6
Libs failing to actually read Manufacturing Consent.
8I would argue it is xenophobia and dishonesty rather than a misunderstanding.
5
trying to manufacture dissent and influence the public narrative
That shit is all over American social media too buddy. If that's the issue it should all be banned.
7I’m game
The us government probably not tho
3
trying to manufacture dissent and influence the public narrative
Damn, was Noah Chomsky talking about China in his masterclass documentary?
3
