I’m not here to claim that Tiktok is completely harmless, or that it’s even a good site. I’m sure they absolutely do collect as much personal information as they can, and I’m sure they give it to the Chinese government whenever they ask. But I don’t understand how Meta and Facebook are meant to be any better? There’s always a lot of hoo-haa going on with politicians promising to ban tiktok, and (at least back on Reddit) everybody’s vowing they will never use tiktok because it’s such a privacy invasive site. Yet I never see anybody going up against Facebook, at least the average person, but they collect just as much personal info and I’m sure hand it over whenever any government agency in the US asks them to
It kind of feels to me like this is some sort of country thing. China is bad, so they shouldn’t have your personal info. But the US is the last bastion of free speech and privacy, so their companies would NEVER dare to invade your privacy, and their government would never abuse their power to get people’s personal info
I’m aware Lemmy probably isn’t the best place to ask since most people here seem to be deep into open source software and often privacy focused (so I suppose wouldn’t use either) but this also feels like the only place on the internet I might actually get an answer that isn’t just “TIKTOK BAD”. If you refuse to use tiktok but are ok with Facebook - why?
Facebook is NOT FINE
“Facebook is fine” Ima stop you right there, lol
They are both malware and I wish we could snap them out of existence thanos style.
Only getting rid of half of them? /s
Facebook isn’t fine. But TikTok is worse because it’s not fully controlled within our borders.
Yup, it’s an arm of the state practically, and while FB is bad (oh really bad, don’t get me wrong) the US state department isn’t weaponizing it against journalists.
Since I don’t live in neither country Id be spied by both countries. Just like most of 6b people in the world.
Fuck them both.
Neither of them are fine, but only one is owned by an oppressive regime.
Whether or not the US is oppressive is a matter of debate I don’t want to get into, but they definitely spy on their own people. And I imagine they’re a lot more likely to act on information about someone living in the US than China is.
Great comment. I can’t figure out which “one” you are talking about, because I find Facebook/Meta oppressive.
🙄
How are they oppressive? Are they committing a genocide as we speak, like the Chinese government?
The US government is shipping weapons to Israel, so yes, it is also participating in genocide. The laundry list of US crimes goes back to the birth of the nation and did not stop for a single moment.
China is not great, but don’t be fooled, the USA is an imperialist power built on a pile of bodies, both foreign and domestic.
Right now? Probably.
In the past, definitely: https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/29/amnesty-report-facebook-rohingya-reparations/
I agree that facebook/meta and the way their algorithms push people to the extremes is horrbile but I don’t think that’s the same as committing genocide
Facebook is certainly not fine, it’s just talked about less, especially among the younger generations. Teens and twenty-something’s haven’t been drawn to Facebook for quite some time, while TikTok is currently the place to be if you’re in that age range. You don’t need to convince a Zoomer to avoid Facebook, because Facebook is where their grandma does social media, but TikTok is currently dominating their attention.
Are you referring to privacy or security? In my opinion, they’re both absolute dumpster dogshit for privacy AND security. But facebook (meta) is a US company whereas tik tok is a Chinese company. So tik tok is seen as a security risk because China is an adversary to the west. An adversary is more likely to spy through their product than a friendly nation. So tik tok is seen as a security threat by many in the west. That’s basically all there is to it.
China. Also, no one is saying FB is fine, but since it’s American then gov pretty much shrugs. It was FB after all feeding the NSA yeah?
Not so much saying it, but I personally know several people who’ll argue that Tiktok is a privacy invading god awful website that should be banned then 5 minutes later proceed to doomscroll Facebook
I tolerate Facebook on my network, but tiktok is an absolute no for me, null routed.
Why do you fear the CCP more then the NSA?
I’ll let my previous comment answer that question.
But why tho, what power does the CCP have over you?
If only I could get away with that. Wife would be quite upset.
I mean then it’s very likely just China bad, US (or familiarity) good.
TikTok is owned primarily by western investors and it’s board is majority American. Usually I would be here to give the contrarian opinion that the government that is most likely to harm you is your own and that the majority of people would be better off with a non-cooperating country having your data. However, TikTok is just as likely to hand over user data to the US as Facebook is. It’s the worst of both worlds.
Who said Facebook is fine ? Threads was illegal in the EU due to privacy concern.
American Exceptionalism
That is it.
That is literally it.
Ugh please add /s so people take it as it is
U wot
First, Facebook isn’t “fine” by any measure - That’s what you call a false premise. Tiktok sees more scrutiny generally, initially because of rightful skepticism of a platform beamed into children’s brains, with partial ownership by the authoritarian government of it’s parent country.
That initial well-founded distrust, along with things like this early on, “TikTok memo directed censorship of users deemed ugly, overweight, or disabled, and banned users for livestreams that criticized governments” were then perpetuated by the lazy, ignorant blind racism from the American far right because they were tools to hate then by people like trump.
China is the enemy, therefore when they do it it’s bad.
Facebook is definitely not “fine” when it comes to privacy. It’s less worse than TikTok because it’s an American-based company, so in theory there’s a more accountability compared to TikTok (owned and operated by China).
because USA is a hypocrite country
