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?

    • wahming@monyet.ccEnglish
      32·
      8 months ago

      No, I think if I was a local in China and said something like that, I would.

    • shastaxc@lemm.ee
      11·
      8 months ago

      No, you’re terrible at interpreting analogies. I’m saying we in the US do not have to be afraid of being arrested for criticising our government or its officials. You do have to worry about that happening in China.

      You can literally find multiple articles on this exact thing happening. The CCP has every opportunity to refute these claims if they really were fabricated, but they don’t because they want their populace to be afraid to criticize the government.

      That is why using Facebook in the US is not seen as bad even though Facebook is a US-based company, you don’t have to worry about the US government coming after you because you say that Biden looks like a raisin.