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Is there a reason to care one way or the other about this? Because I haven't been able to come up with one.
Yeah there are lots of reasons. Tiktok has been proven to be harvesting browsing habits, biometrics (facial ID and fingerprints), voice identification, key logging, and more.
You are giving your face, fingerprints, and voice to a state sponsored entity in the age of deep fakes and broad sweeping intelligence operations.
If you're pro China, then this is a good thing. If you care about identity theft, deep fakes, or your credentials being sold on the dark web, then tiktok is a Very Bad Thing.
Seems like the big difference between that and Facebook is China. I'm not sure that's a big reason to be concerned specifically about TikTok.
A US company is held accountable to US law and more importantly, by the US citizens.
If you hand your data to Facebook and they abuse it, there are at least some ways to hold Facebook accountable publicly and financially.
If you hand your data to Chinese sponsored corporations, there is even less accountability.
Make no mistake, all corporations are collecting and exploiting your information, but if you are a US citizen, you should seriously consider not giving persona and biometric data to a foreign power that can't be held accountable.
You can't possibly believe that. When has Facebook ever been held accountable?
Google is your friend.
Firstly, the US government has greater authority and ability to fine or otherwise leverage financial action against companies incorporated in the US.
Secondly, Facebook leadership has been repeatedly called to testify in front of Congress for various reasons in recent years, and in doing so has been held accountable for numerous failures. In August of last year they paid out $725 mil in a class action lawsuit. Although not US, still NATO example: In May of 2023 they were fined 1.2b euros for breach of data by the UK.
They were also recently called to testify in front of US congress about the online child exploitation crisis.
Granted they make billions, but they are getting punished for mismanagement, both publicly and financially. It may be a drop in the bucket, so to speak, but it's been enough for them to change their policies and practices over the years.
Action against tiktok is intended to do the same.
But never does it with Facebook and not over gathering data, your reasoning for banning TikTok.
A slap on the wrist resulting in no significant changes and nothing to do with gathering data.
Not the U.S. government. You could have the same lawsuit against TikTok.
Irrelevant, other NATO countries are not currently trying to ban TikTok.
As above, a slap on the wrist resulting in no significant changes. Also, nothing to do with exploitation of data.
Slaps on the wrist are not punishment and they are not being punished for gathering data. They also make more revenue every single year. They haven't lost any money.
They have not changed any of their data gathering policies except to make them so that they can gather more data.
Stop changing the subject. You said TikTok is getting banned by the government for data gathering. I told you Facebook is not being punished by the government for doing the same thing. All you can do is sue them. Just like you could sue TikTok if you could get a case together.
You have not showed me to be incorrect.
At this point I am choosing to no longer engage in this conversation. Your counter arguments seem to convey so little comprehension (willful or unwitting) that I feel engaging further would not meaningfully contribute to the discussions held in this thread moving forward.
I'm not surprised since you demonstrated very clearly that Facebook has not been punished by the U.S. government for data gathering despite TikTok getting punished for doing the same thing.
They aren't punishing either one for data gathering. It's pretty clear that the powers that be deem that acceptable. The punishments (and whether you think it's valid or not, FB has been punished) are for what each does or can do with that data. Facebook has legal limits on that. China has no legal obligation to adhere to those.
Facebook has, as far as I know, never been punished by the U.S. for data gathering.
I also don't believe they are not allowed to sell data to all foreign countries and companies. Would congress be this upset if Bytedance was a French company? Or even a Saudi company?
I'm no fan of China and I don't want them harvesting data in other countries, but the genie is way, way, way out of the bottle at this point and congress coming down hard on a single company won't do a thing. This is performative bullshit.
https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2023/12-billion-euro-fine-facebook-result-edpb-binding-decision_en
Sorry... your evidence that Facebook would be held accountable in America, unlike TikTok, is a fine they were levied in Europe?
"when has Facebook ever been held accountable?"
There you go. I'm not going to chase goalposts.
Context is key. We're talking about the U.S. government. I think it was clear to most people that I was talking about being accountable to the U.S. government.
Do I really have to type out everything in very great detail for you to understand what I'm talking about?
We are talking about accountability.
Yes, very good, your amazing gotcha showed me how I'm a fool.
Now, do you have anything to say about what is actually being discussed- namely, the U.S. government taking action on TikTok but not on Facebook despite Facebook doing the same data harvesting?
See, that's another goal post moved. No, thanks.
I'm not sure how trying to talk about the thing I've been trying to talk about this whole time is goalpost moving, unless you mean moving it back to where I was, but it seems to me like you had nothing actually worth contributing and decided to troll. I hope you enjoyed yourself.
Sure thing, buddy.
It's just classic moral panic. Our politicians really want us to hate China when it's like, nah bruh I hate Microsoft.
I wouldn't call this "classic moral panic". I would characterize it as our nations leaders demanding that Tiktok revisit their data collection practices in the interest of protecting US citizens.
If politicians cared about privacy they would be passing a law that inhibits Meta AND Tiktok. American industries get away with simmiliar level of BS, but privacy isn't a concern to American politicians so long as it's American eyes watching.
If politicians care one iota about privacy they'd be limiting and regulating what the government itself, some thing they have total control over, can aquire as data.
If politicians actually have a shit about protecting US citizens data, they'd push for legislation to protect US citizens data from all data harvesting apps. Instead "china bad, ban".
Yes. It's not great that they're banning a mass communication app. Tiktok is very often used for political communication and while I might support limiting the power of corporations in our political communication I don't support the consolidation into even fewer hands.
Well, they're not banning the app but foreign ownership. I wish they were targeting the data scraping practices, but then that'd hit US companies, too...
See I honestly think it's because they're so old that they genuinely don't understand that issue
They're going after TikTok because foreign ownership of a National Security related industry gives them Red Scare flashbacks
Most of the leadership are people who went through the Cuba-Turkey missile crisis, and it fucking shows, you could show these people a hello world program and they'd think it was hacking.
Don't run yourself ragged worrying about malicious intent when plain old incompetence suffices Occam's Razor
The average politicians may not present themselves as being smart, but the lobbyists, think tanks, advisors that interact with them and influence their behaviour are not dumb. Rather than assuming it's either malice or ignorance, we can instead opt for a more middle ground assumption: it's both malice and ignorance, symbiotically feeding off each other.
Congress people are paid to be ignorant and lobbyists are paid to keep them that way.
No, no, no! Ted Stephens got them all up to speed with his famous "Dump Trucks and Tubes" educational lecture. Now they're all experts.