They are not the same thing. Facebook is bad too (and actually, a platform-neutral legal restriction based on behavior would be better), but TikTok is absolutely unique in the type of threat it poses:
- The Chinese government treats communication networks as their personal hoovering-attachment for any data they might want. Companies are required by law to operate as an arm of Chinese intelligence, both in terms of giving information and in terms of manipulating what information people on their network are allowed to see. The FBI and NSA definitely spy on Americans too to some extent, but it’s simply not in the same league or with the same type of goals.
- It’s not just your TikTok data. It’s photos and files on your phone, your contacts, your messages, basically anything that the app with its too-permissive permissions can get its hands on, can potentially go up to Chinese intelligence.
- TikTok is not structured like any other app. It has features like custom-downloading and running arbitrary binaries from its central server that honestly don’t even make much sense except as spying apparatus (consistent with #1).
- What China might do with this unprecedented level of access to everyone’s phones is malevolent in a different way than, say, Facebook’s access to everyone’s data. Like Facebook they have the ability to e.g. influence an election, but they also have the ability to try to blackmail an individual to compromise them, or do for-real torture in the real world (say by tracking down a dissident via TikTok spying and then having one of their little Chinese-police-in-America units grab them).
Citations:
- https://thehill.com/opinion/cybersecurity/532583-for-chinese-firms-theft-of-your-data-is-now-a-legal-requirement/
- https://www.proofpoint.com/us/blog/threat-protection/understanding-information-tiktok-gathers-and-stores
- https://www.currentware.com/blog/block-tiktok/
- https://www.businessinsider.com/china-hong-kong-spy-agency-official-presence-national-security-laws-report-2020-6 https://www.npr.org/2023/04/17/1170571626/fbi-arrests-2-on-charges-tied-to-chinese-outpost-in-new-york-city
Chinese-police-in-America units
Five Eyes governments & corporate media Cold War II propaganda slop: False Witnesses and Sinister Plots: Exposing the CIA Connection in the ‘Chinese Police Station’ Narrative
What is the Chinese state going to do to you from the other side of the world, other than feed you targeted ads? Attack you with Havana Syndrome or turn you into a Manchurian Candidate via 5G? Why would the Chinese state be the least bit interested in you?
Does no one remember how ridiculous the red scares and the first cold war hysteria looked in the rear view mirror? Because the new hysteria looks just as ridiculous to me now. Same cartoonish propaganda, same credulous acceptance of it.
Do you have a source that is a little more reliable?
The fundamental difference is who is in control, and for what purpose.
American spyware is controlled by corporations, and is all about selling you shit you don’t need.
Chinese (and Russian) spyware is–apparently–controlled rather directly by their respective governments, and is being used to suppress democracy and increase polarization in the US and EU.
I don’t like any spyware. But the latter category–spyware that’s functionally state-sponsored–is clearly more immediately dangerous. The former is more like a slow-growing cancer.
All of the US corporate social media platforms are part of the US military-industrial-intellegence complex now. Look at their boards of directors and executives. Look at the Twitter Files. Look Hamilton 68.
Look at Reddit:
- Facebook Partners With Hawkish Atlantic Council, a NATO Lobby Group, to “Protect Democracy”
- Jessica Ashooh: The taming of Reddit and the National Security State Plant tabbed to do it
- A Reddit AMA Claiming To Be A Uyghur Quickly Exposes A CIA Asset Slandering China
- r/neoliberal was created by a neoliberal think tank » BPR Interviews: The Neoliberal Project
.
TikTok as well. The US already forced them to move their service to the US on an American-owned hosting provider, and they have already put people with a history of aligning with “American interests” into executive positions, like CEO Shou Zi Chew and vice president Michael Beckerman.They have their eye on the fediverse now: Atlantic Council » Collective Security in a Federated World
If I had a nickel for every time I saw one of these posts, I’d have two nickels, Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice on the same day
And posted by the same account that was created yesterday!
