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 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.
Facebook is NOT FINE
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.
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.
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.
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
because USA is a hypocrite country
Facebook is most definitely not fine. However, as far as I know Facebook hasn’t pushed known RCE (remote code execution) exploits into their product updates, which TikTok has. Politicians don’t care about this but literally everyone else should.
They’re both bad but tik tok is on steroids. There are a bunch of security researchers out there that have uncovered the crap ton of shit tik tok collects. It’s basically a spyware app that also comes with a social media app. From the ground up it was meant to collect personal information and every little bit about your device. I block it on my network because any tik tok device also scans the entire network and I don’t want that to happen.
By blocking you mean outgoing requests from your network to tiktok servers? Couldn’t it still scan the network and upload the results later?
I block it on dns level but I guess you’re right. If it’s done locally and stored, I guess I’ll smash every phone I see with tik tok loaded up.
Meta/FB doesn’t want anyone else sound what they do
China is the enemy, therefore when they do it it’s bad.
