Well say you googled a lot about abortions in a state that will put you in prison for it. Then it becomes a different situation. Or say you grow mushrooms to treat cluster headaches and the DEA now probably knows about it because that buy the data from all of these companies and can see the many searches you made about it the credit card you used to purchase supplies etc. I feel like China will probably just try to steal your crypto or something
The US doesn't try. It just bombs the fuck out of anyone worth exploiting production of anything any private exploitator willing to play "business" there wants.
Ghastly business, that. Unavoidable, really, and tragic. Anyways, here's our top stories tonight: the US kills its own population with the most potent designer drugs in history, at a 0% tax revenue! "This is great for the economy", according to Experts, who warn that the same measures would be "devastating" under Democratic rule.
At the very least, Google and Facebook have to step back if caught. Meanwhile, Chinese companies often don't care about EU privacy laws. Still avoid them altogether, any way.
Do they? They've been caught BIG TIME, and META stock price is at an ATH!
Living like a street criminal for a decade sure puts international politics in perspective, because you can just see straight through the bullshit. It's just bigger numbers, but the principles and human behavior stays 100% the same.
I'm honestly more worried about them knowing details on politicians and their families. The most they can do with some rando's personal info is send them targeted propaganda. Knowing a handful of republican congressmen has lgbq relatives can be used to make them to shift policies.
As much as China is a festering cancer upon the world, I am willing to bet that for every single trademark horror that is taking place in their society, I could find a match or worse in the USA.
Most of us are boring. We’re not oligarchs or investigative reporters, nor hold key posts in government or industry, nor are connected to dissenters. It’s not that he couldn’t but it’s almost impossible to see a scenario where either dictator would have an interest in most of us. I neither control anything they want nor block their way to it
Usually they can't, but they can blackmail. Usually only if you're really really deep in anti Pooh territory though. Pooh is vindictive and thin skinned like our spray tan guy. Spray tan could for example, work with Pooh to surveil and jail dissenters. It's not that China is a threat to an individual American or other foreigner in a Western country per se, but as long as they could potentially leverage your data against you they do have a little threat. For the record Pooh and spray tan should be sent to an island together to... Oh shit nvm usually rich people and islands aren't a good thing. 😂
If you're someone influential enough to be blackmailed by the Chinese government and you're using TikTok.... You're really stupid.. but average TikTok user, really has nothing to be afraid of China, I think. TikTok is also after money, as far as I know (ads). They are a company. Like Huawei, they might have a close relationship with the Chinese government, similar with Google with the US government.
The US has actively used that kind of info to extrajudically kill people, we know that for sure. We don't know if China actually did that (they probably did).
While they’re at completely different scales, plus will go to much different lengths to abuse what they find out, It comes down to personal peril. I know exactly how Google will use that surveillance data to my detriment and that they’ll openly sell it to more nefarious entities, however I fail to see how the Chinese government would ever have an interest in my data or in selling it.
I don’t use Tik Tok or Huawei, but that’s for other reasons
Not at all. I understand storage and scaling are cheap, so it’s a great strategy to collect every piece of data about every person. Then you use whatever you need, whenever you need to.
For example, it’s expensive to investigate a Congressman’s past to find that picture in drag for blackmail. It’s much cheaper to collect everything you can so once he becomes a Congressman you can simply search for connections and seconds later have that picture off his college buddy’s computer
God when the whole Tiktok thing in Congress was going on nobody wanted to hear that their favorite big tech social media app was already selling information to China; had been caught doing so multiple times; and had never stopped despite promises and threats of prosecution the next time.
WHAT information? What does China gain by learning that Sparky Douchebag watches BBQ and catgirl fapping videos? Are they planning their invasion based on the Heathers Challenge, or simply stealing our makeup tips?
Look into the research that has proven that the app has backdoors baked in, and combine that with how widespread it is - reaching every level of society; every industry, politician, branch and level of the military. Now remember that research into the Spyware activities of the app.
TikTok is the largest, most successful self-inflicted virus for SigInt ever. [citation needed]
Look, it's not what bs viral video the algorithm is feeding these people. It's the spyware it's putting on the phones. It has been proven that the app harvests all the data it can find and phones it home. Backdoor root-level access has also been proven. If you can't figure out why that would be bad, you probably have problems pouring water out of a boot with instructions on the heel.
I havent seen anything on it that's any different from Alex Jones' christofascist tantrums, Kanye's Hitler rants, or Tomi Lauren trying to pretend she's a patriot blowup doll
You cannot put custom firmware. If spyware is hidden in drivers, bootloader or even firmware of the modem there is nothing we can do about it.
Custom ROMs are just replacing things above the kernel and below apps.
Still of course things average non CIA person should not worry about. Google apps with high privileges are removed with custom ROMs.
I thought android had its own bootloader and I assume drivers (At least Linux has its own drivers). To my understanding if android phones have a bios that's the only thing that could be compromised but it should just provide the interrupts right? Now that I think about it if Google put a huge bios in there it might be able to access and share things it's not supposed to. (But I feel like people would have noticed.)
As a person that has been rooting his phone since 2011/12, I wanna go back to those years. Graphene and lineage have not satisfied my itch and having to keep magisking every few weeks sucks. I miss my galaxy, nexus rooting days.
I can't ever go back after moving to Vivaldi, even though it's chromium. It's the tiniest of reasons too, like full screen behavior, the gargantuan UI elements, the continuous removal of customization options...
I can set Vivaldi to:
F1 = show/hide info bar
F2 = show/hide address bar
F3 = show/hide tab bar
F4 = instant fullscreen
F5 = sidebar that's actually useful
The bookmark and history tabs are actually usable, the Quick Command popup bar functions like Vimium, and there's more customization options than you can shake a stick at.
I say this as a Firefox user who has not changed browsers since it was literally called "Mozilla" and competed with "Mosaic" and "Netscape Navigator" for top position as THE web browser to surf Internet portals.
I love FF to pieces, but it's simply not usable to me under the current management.
I just tried out Floorp which is basically Firefox with some Vivaldi features. I was like oh okay I get the appeal now. I have to take Vivaldi for a test drive.
I still use discord, can't just leave gaming with my friends and I already look too much like a paranoid to convince them to switch to matrix or another FLOSS service
It would be whataboutism if the argument would be one is okay because of the other. It isn't whataboutism if the argument is that both are unacceptable.
Thank you. I’m so sick of people equating whataboutism with pointing out hypocrisy. Do they want societal acceptance of hypocrisy? Or do they just like to use the new words they learned, like calling every jerk a narcissist?
To be honest as a European, I wouldn't say one is worse than the other. I don't want to have a race out of it, because it can be argued over in a lot of ways. There is no "not as bad" one, both should be reined in.
Actually, I think what whataboutism is about really is arguments like this. Tiktok is not "normal" and will never be "normal". But comparing Google to Tiktok and saying Tiktok is worse since it is owned by a dictatorship as opposed to a plutocracy, while overlooking that I can quit or never use Tiktok. In fact, I never did, so I'm reasonably sure they don't have too much data on me. Google on the other hand is very hard to avoid, as though using Google Analytics to collect my data is illegal, Google is doing all the crime it can do to keep pushing it, along with the rest of its data collection methods.
Neither should be ignored because there are "worse" actors. Both should be held accountable for breaking the law, severely. IMO neither of them is.
TikTok is Chinese spyware. Chrome is American spyware. Anyone in their right mind should stop using both.
sometimes it’s nice to know that someone’s watching over me tho
Sort of... how did you know??
Do you think it's safe to upvote this?
Your social credit score went into the red as soon as you saw that picture, it doesn't matter anymore, it's already too late for you
They'll be knocking on your door any minute now
If Mr Pooh was personally overseeing my day to day I'd feel pretty special
That’s my business.
and I have no privacy (oh ohoh)
Meanwhile, my employer forces me to use Chrome or Edge. Ugh.
Tell them you can't as your active X scripts only run under IE6.
If it's for work I don't have a problem, it's the company that's giving their data to the spyware, just don't give it too much personal information
I hear this all the time. I have this conversation on the regular.
Them: "Oh you think Tik Tok is spyware?"
Me: "yes"
Them: "I'll have you know so is Google, Apple, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Microsoft, and all the big American companies too"
Me: "Yeah, that's why I don't use them"
Them: gasp "you're just paranoid bro are you a drug dealer or something?"
Me: "no, I just like my privacy. You probably wouldn't like it if some guy was following you keeping tabs about everything you do either."
Them: "well I've got nothing to hide"
Me: "maybe the next person in power might see your current and past beliefs illegal"
Them: "my favourite political party will stay in power forever"
The fact that you have nothing to hide doesn't imply I've to open up anything to anyone without my approval.
And that's the key here, we are not fully aware of the randomized distribution of your own data for profit.
Just ask them if they have curtains or blinds on their windows at home. They have nothing to hide, right?
Ask if their house has walls because if it does so should their country.
Me: "do you close the bathroom door while shitting?"
Them: "yes"
Me: "why? You have nothing to hide"
You lock your doors when wanking?
I always lock my car doors when wanking
Foreign spyware is stealing jobs from hardworking American spyware.
This should be a campaign line for 2024
That’s America spyware. I have standards. /s
Doing at least n amount of spying each day
"But at least is LOCAL spyware 😎"
Which honestly to me seems worse right I mean its potentially going to someone who is much closer to you geographically (not always of course).
Well say you googled a lot about abortions in a state that will put you in prison for it. Then it becomes a different situation. Or say you grow mushrooms to treat cluster headaches and the DEA now probably knows about it because that buy the data from all of these companies and can see the many searches you made about it the credit card you used to purchase supplies etc. I feel like China will probably just try to steal your crypto or something
Me using an android phone and an iPad.
US looks very militaristic to me. It has a very broken democracy, and a history of supporting/causing brutal dictatorships.
The control the Chinese gov has over tiktok is on a different scale compared to Google and the US
Just to play devil's advocate here, how many military bases has China got in other countries, compared to the US?
How many McDonald's are there compared to general tso's chicken?
Both comparisons are irrelevant. It is about how much control and access China/US have over tiktok/Google and the user data and algorithms.
The US doesn't try. It just bombs the fuck out of anyone worth exploiting production of anything any private exploitator willing to play "business" there wants.
The ol' "Bomb it to glass" tactic. A classic tragedy.
Ghastly business, that. Unavoidable, really, and tragic. Anyways, here's our top stories tonight: the US kills its own population with the most potent designer drugs in history, at a 0% tax revenue! "This is great for the economy", according to Experts, who warn that the same measures would be "devastating" under Democratic rule.
"Um, technically when we lost all those wars for profit and oil, we didn't seize any land. So, technically, we are the good guys."
The things the CCP could do with political blackmail gathered from tiktok would make even Zuck blush.
At the very least, Google and Facebook have to step back if caught. Meanwhile, Chinese companies often don't care about EU privacy laws. Still avoid them altogether, any way.
Do they? They've been caught BIG TIME, and META stock price is at an ATH!
Living like a street criminal for a decade sure puts international politics in perspective, because you can just see straight through the bullshit. It's just bigger numbers, but the principles and human behavior stays 100% the same.
I'm honestly more worried about them knowing details on politicians and their families. The most they can do with some rando's personal info is send them targeted propaganda. Knowing a handful of republican congressmen has lgbq relatives can be used to make them to shift policies.
As much as China is a festering cancer upon the world, I am willing to bet that for every single trademark horror that is taking place in their society, I could find a match or worse in the USA.
An estimated 30 to 45 million Chinese citizens died during Mao's "Great Leap Forward."
My penis is longer than yours.
What are we doing, just stating random facts?
Not so random. Lay off the whataboutism.
What's relevant about that statement? Or we could talk about the slave trade?
Did you just whatabout my penis?
Thank you, this is my viewpoint exactly. We are exploited by both but one is after money, the other is a threat.
How can China threatens you? If you live outside of China?
That's like saying that Putin couldn't hurt anyone outside of Russia yet he's had multiple people killed in foreign countries.
How could TikTok helps China threatens America (or the world)?
Most of us are boring. We’re not oligarchs or investigative reporters, nor hold key posts in government or industry, nor are connected to dissenters. It’s not that he couldn’t but it’s almost impossible to see a scenario where either dictator would have an interest in most of us. I neither control anything they want nor block their way to it
Is this... Sarcasm?
Nope. But how can an average TikTok user in USA be threatened by China? Concretely/ literally?
I honestly think that Trump is a much greater threat to average American than using TikTok.
Usually they can't, but they can blackmail. Usually only if you're really really deep in anti Pooh territory though. Pooh is vindictive and thin skinned like our spray tan guy. Spray tan could for example, work with Pooh to surveil and jail dissenters. It's not that China is a threat to an individual American or other foreigner in a Western country per se, but as long as they could potentially leverage your data against you they do have a little threat. For the record Pooh and spray tan should be sent to an island together to... Oh shit nvm usually rich people and islands aren't a good thing. 😂
If you're someone influential enough to be blackmailed by the Chinese government and you're using TikTok.... You're really stupid.. but average TikTok user, really has nothing to be afraid of China, I think. TikTok is also after money, as far as I know (ads). They are a company. Like Huawei, they might have a close relationship with the Chinese government, similar with Google with the US government.
But the one selling you trash is also sharing that data with the ones who would kill you.
He's obviously not talking about China here
The US has actively used that kind of info to extrajudically kill people, we know that for sure. We don't know if China actually did that (they probably did).
lol This is simply not true
To be honest I think you can compare them, I feel the word idiot is misplaced here.
Now look you here- one party is a convicted serial rapist, the other party is elitist.
They're both criminals.
So it doesn't matter.
Which is why you should vote for convicted serial rapist party.
Nobody likes an elitist.
While they’re at completely different scales, plus will go to much different lengths to abuse what they find out, It comes down to personal peril. I know exactly how Google will use that surveillance data to my detriment and that they’ll openly sell it to more nefarious entities, however I fail to see how the Chinese government would ever have an interest in my data or in selling it.
I don’t use Tik Tok or Huawei, but that’s for other reasons
Not at all. I understand storage and scaling are cheap, so it’s a great strategy to collect every piece of data about every person. Then you use whatever you need, whenever you need to.
For example, it’s expensive to investigate a Congressman’s past to find that picture in drag for blackmail. It’s much cheaper to collect everything you can so once he becomes a Congressman you can simply search for connections and seconds later have that picture off his college buddy’s computer
This post is about China, but why are you talking about the US?
They're both spyware.
You can't read let alone understand. Dunno what to explain to you when all you have is accusations of failure when they clearly show your own such.
God when the whole Tiktok thing in Congress was going on nobody wanted to hear that their favorite big tech social media app was already selling information to China; had been caught doing so multiple times; and had never stopped despite promises and threats of prosecution the next time.
WHAT information? What does China gain by learning that Sparky Douchebag watches BBQ and catgirl fapping videos? Are they planning their invasion based on the Heathers Challenge, or simply stealing our makeup tips?
Search the company Tencent.
Then look at how many shares they have on companies around the world.
And then think about it. What power does Google have? What power probably Tencent has.
Look into the research that has proven that the app has backdoors baked in, and combine that with how widespread it is - reaching every level of society; every industry, politician, branch and level of the military. Now remember that research into the Spyware activities of the app.
TikTok is the largest, most successful self-inflicted virus for SigInt ever. [citation needed]
That doesnt answer my question. What information?
Look, it's not what bs viral video the algorithm is feeding these people. It's the spyware it's putting on the phones. It has been proven that the app harvests all the data it can find and phones it home. Backdoor root-level access has also been proven. If you can't figure out why that would be bad, you probably have problems pouring water out of a boot with instructions on the heel.
I dont know why nobody seems to be able to answer this simple question:
WHAT DATA?!!
I havent seen anything on it that's any different from Alex Jones' christofascist tantrums, Kanye's Hitler rants, or Tomi Lauren trying to pretend she's a patriot blowup doll
Android phones looking nervously around.
At least u can put custom firmware on android phones, try to get rid of Apple spyware is much harder.
You cannot put custom firmware. If spyware is hidden in drivers, bootloader or even firmware of the modem there is nothing we can do about it. Custom ROMs are just replacing things above the kernel and below apps.
Still of course things average non CIA person should not worry about. Google apps with high privileges are removed with custom ROMs.
well at this point just get a pinphone64 with linux a d hardware switches
Might as well. I will never be satisfied with custom ROMs. I need straight up linux on my phone and none of that android crap.
I thought android had its own bootloader and I assume drivers (At least Linux has its own drivers). To my understanding if android phones have a bios that's the only thing that could be compromised but it should just provide the interrupts right? Now that I think about it if Google put a huge bios in there it might be able to access and share things it's not supposed to. (But I feel like people would have noticed.)
*Laughs in GrapheneOS*
As a person that has been rooting his phone since 2011/12, I wanna go back to those years. Graphene and lineage have not satisfied my itch and having to keep magisking every few weeks sucks. I miss my galaxy, nexus rooting days.
Media platforms are beyond spying. You have nothing to offer.
It's all about controlling information and feeding you what you need to see.
What you want to see
I honestly doubt that you have full control over that
Sure I do, I can change channels
Anyone using Firefox is a W to me.
I can't ever go back after moving to Vivaldi, even though it's chromium. It's the tiniest of reasons too, like full screen behavior, the gargantuan UI elements, the continuous removal of customization options...
I can set Vivaldi to:
F1 = show/hide info bar
F2 = show/hide address bar
F3 = show/hide tab bar
F4 = instant fullscreen
F5 = sidebar that's actually useful
The bookmark and history tabs are actually usable, the Quick Command popup bar functions like Vimium, and there's more customization options than you can shake a stick at.
I say this as a Firefox user who has not changed browsers since it was literally called "Mozilla" and competed with "Mosaic" and "Netscape Navigator" for top position as THE web browser to surf Internet portals.
I love FF to pieces, but it's simply not usable to me under the current management.
I just tried out Floorp which is basically Firefox with some Vivaldi features. I was like oh okay I get the appeal now. I have to take Vivaldi for a test drive.
Waterfox, too
W?
W = win
L = loss
W = watt
L = litre
User name checks out!
She'll promise you more than the garden of Eden
Then she'll carelessly cut you and laugh while you're bleedin'
But she'll bring out the best - and the worst - you can be
Blame it all on yourself 'cause she's always a woman to me
My brother in Christ I use Firefox
Remember to use also a privacy respecting search engine like searx or at least duckduckgo
I use DDG but it sucks because I am a dude on the move and DDG does not allow voice to text
I like startpage. It ain't perfect, but it's better than using Google and co.
Jokes on you I don’t use either ^i ^use ^discord ^and ^windows ^instead
I still use discord, can't just leave gaming with my friends and I already look too much like a paranoid to convince them to switch to matrix or another FLOSS service
There’s Revolt and TeamSpeak aswell. The latter is proprietary, but the audio quality is something to behold.
Wow teamspeak is still a thing? I remember using them back in 03-05 in my CS clan days before even source came out. I'm fuckin old.
It is indeed still a thing. They’re trying their damndest to evolve and move with the times.
Who needs teamspeak garbage when mumble exists?
Revolt is a good alternative. It's not perfect right now though. The android app just redirects you to its website.
tbf Discord on all platforms just.. is a website..
Yeah but you can filter some of its trackers
Chinease is an enzyme, but I don't know what it does.
It breaks down china.
The enzyme seems to only work every few centuries
Or whenever the bull passes through.
I only use true blue American spyware
You're not getting it. TikTok is crude, targeting anything that comes in its way, like a shotgun.
Google is like a sniper rifle, that is also a shotgun.
Now, which would you prefer, the shotgun, or the sniper rifle that is also a shotgun.
Nukes because then I get vaporized instantly. 😎
If I get to choose it goes:
Peacefully in my sleep, at the ripe age of 100, with two girls in my bed
Asleep at the wheel while driving a bus for full of people for me. Just like ol' Grand Pappy.
Can I get a grenade launcher and laser sight for the Franken-gun?
tok bad
It’s chineasy to pick on the clock
Ye
::: spoiler But what if I have another religion? :::
Praying to Lauren Faust??
Fausticorn, Bonniecorn and Twilight Sparkle
It comes from chy-nah
My opinion on TikTok: always put the first cross in the middle
Remember, when American corporations harvest your private data, that is a good thing.
When foreign countries, that's bad.
This post was brought to you by your friendly Google. Where we will sell your data to any one and every one because we love money.
Edit: Words are important
I use LibreWolf (and don't use Tik Tok)
That's why Google Ultron exists m8
Whataboutism
It would be whataboutism if the argument would be one is okay because of the other. It isn't whataboutism if the argument is that both are unacceptable.
Thank you. I’m so sick of people equating whataboutism with pointing out hypocrisy. Do they want societal acceptance of hypocrisy? Or do they just like to use the new words they learned, like calling every jerk a narcissist?
Or the argument is to distract or derail the conversation. If it is the conversation going in though...
To be honest as a European, I wouldn't say one is worse than the other. I don't want to have a race out of it, because it can be argued over in a lot of ways. There is no "not as bad" one, both should be reined in.
Actually, I think what whataboutism is about really is arguments like this. Tiktok is not "normal" and will never be "normal". But comparing Google to Tiktok and saying Tiktok is worse since it is owned by a dictatorship as opposed to a plutocracy, while overlooking that I can quit or never use Tiktok. In fact, I never did, so I'm reasonably sure they don't have too much data on me. Google on the other hand is very hard to avoid, as though using Google Analytics to collect my data is illegal, Google is doing all the crime it can do to keep pushing it, along with the rest of its data collection methods.
Neither should be ignored because there are "worse" actors. Both should be held accountable for breaking the law, severely. IMO neither of them is.