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What's going on with TikTok getting banned? (mander.xyz)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Not that it personally affects me- I'm not in USA and it's one of the platforms I dislike the most. But I can't find a concise explanation for why.

I've searched for news articles and those I found either don't address the reason behind the ban and talk about US politics, or are vague about it, saying it would collect user sensitive data.

I've also found lists of countries banning TikTok from government devices, okay I understand that, and some countries banning it completely because of cultural sensitivities, which I doubt is US' case.

Fair enough. What kind of user sensitive data would it be collecting? Isn't this what most social media apps do already? What makes TikTok stand out in this regard?

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago (1 children)

What kind of user sensitive data would it be collecting?

From texts and data accessible from your phone or browsing cookies, to straight up biometric data of all kinds that they can use to train their models on.

What makes TikTok stand out in this regard?

It's Chinese. If you think the US has bad data protection & privacy laws, it's practically in the negatives in China where you have an authoritarian mass surveillance state.

Those more specific issues aside, there's also a lot to say about the type of content it promotes on a social scientific level and what that does to specifically youths that are exposed to it. We see a lot of downright dangerous challenges, bad advice, lots of scientific or political disinformation, social pressure for online exposure, bullying, etc.

[–] Sethayy 1 points 4 months ago

Its also important to note 'why not just ban that type of tracking? No sane citizen would prefer to be stalked'

Its a massive market for Facebook and much much easier to push propaganda with it, so no sane politician would do they - they just gotta be extra sneaky and make it a racist thing