• Womble@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Isnt that pretty damn suspicious? We’d rather just shut down than sell it as a going concern?

    • exanime@lemmy.today
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      7 months ago

      I think it’s a gamble… Too many people love tiktok (don’t ask me why) that they know the pressure on the gov would be terrible

      More importantly, a forced sale (with a time limit to boot) is bound to fetch them the worst deal ever

      I think they are calling their bluff

      And before anyone comes at me with some stupid fallacy, no I don’t love the Chinese government or I’m trying to imply tiktok has nothing to hide and it’s the source of rainbows and warm sweet buns

      • huginn@feddit.it
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        7 months ago

        They love tiktok because the algorithm works extremely well.

        No other social media actually targets you as well as tiktok does. Instagram is constantly trying to shove you in the direction of whatever makes them the most money even if it’s entirely unrelated to your interests. YouTube is clueless to what you like with shorts. Tiktok surfaces new content that is basically unseen anywhere else (thousands of views not millions) that perfectly fits your interests.

        Could other platforms do the same thing? Probably: but they’re too short sighted to do so.

        • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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          7 months ago

          I don’t think “shortsightedness” is the difference. The sheer amount of privileges TikTok requires on your device speaks to Cambridge analytica levels of personal profile knowledge.

          Couple that with the endless scroll, hot people doing thirst traps, flashy idiocy, flashing icons hugging the full screen image, no discernible window with controls tempting you to back out or log off…it’s the “perfect” tech product. One that’s endlessly addictive. That’s what makes tech good. They know you better than you know yourself, and they will shamelessly serve you exactly what you didn’t realize you wanted to see.

          • huginn@feddit.it
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            7 months ago

            The sheer amount of privileges TikTok requires on your device

            The fuck are you on about?

            Tiktok has a total of 0 granted permissions from me.

            By default it has the same perms as other similar apps: Google Advertising ID.

            That’s it.

            You can’t opt out of that: it’s Google.

            If you give it a fuck load of perms that’s your fault. By default it has less access than Discord.

            You’re just parroting bullshit you’ve heard elsewhere.

            I’m a professional Android developer: Tiktok isn’t requesting anything strange. It asks for camera, audio, and storage access when you record a video. That’s exactly what you’d need to ask for: nothing more or less.

            • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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              7 months ago

              lol k.

              I just looked it up again because you made me second guess myself. But i distinctly remembered a laundry list of permissions on the App Store. My lemmy client isn’t letting me upload he screen grabs for some reason, but the detailed tracking information took up four screenshots. So…you might wanna double check that.

              • huginn@feddit.it
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                7 months ago

                Let’s play a fun game:

                Which of the following 2 screenshots is TikTok’s permissions?

                Is it the one that can prevent the phone from sleeping and runs at startup? The one that sends sticky broadcasts?

                Or is it the one that accesses the AdId Api?

                I’ll give you a hint: I already told you which one it is.

                • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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                  7 months ago

                  It’s the second. But the Apple App Store alerts you to it reading up browsing history, your physical address, “other user contact info” besides name, phone, email, and physical address, whatever that could mean, as well as your “other financial info” besides your payment to them, “other diagnostic data” besides crash, performance data, and app use…

                  Maybe this is just a matter of opinion but those few things alone are way too much. But hey, you do you.

                  • huginn@feddit.it
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                    7 months ago

                    Are you talking about the App Privacy page specifically?

                    Because that page is about as useful as “known to the State of California to cause cancer”

                    Any social media with advertising will have similar alerts as to what it might be collecting.

                    How would it be collecting that you might ask?

                    It’s not on your phone: Your browser and your apps are sandboxed from each other. They cannot read from each other. It’s a constant pain in the ass for session persistence, you end up having to use wonky nonce patterns to maintain sessions from app to browser & vice versa.

                    They’re collecting it from advertising ids that are on your browser. It’s the Google Ad Api - That’s it.

                    Go ahead, look at Instagram or Youtube. They’ll have the same laundry list of “Browsing history, Physical Address” etc.

                    TikTok isn’t conjuring that from thin air - It’s just that it, like any other advertising app, is using the publicly available data about you to advertise.

                    Again a side by side:

                    Which one is TikTok and which one is Instagram?

                    TikTok isn’t doing anything that the other apps aren’t also doing - The other apps are just fucking awful at knowing what you want to see.