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?

  • loakang@lemm.ee
    0·
    10 months ago

    For the most part, I 90% agree with your stance. However, you can’t take the statement “I have nothing to hide” literally to the extremes. That would be suggesting that the person is okay giving you the passwords for their bank accounts under the guide that they have nothing to hide.

    It’s a common colloquial expression which expresses how one accepts the situation as is. I’ve got nothing to hide doesn’t mean that I then consent to a strip search or house search, those are uncomfortable and inconvenient. You can’t always apply the same single justification to support multiple separate events, because you need the full context. Imagine “can I borrow a dollar? sure thing, you’re my friend” Well whoops, you’ve now just given your friend complete reign over all your money for as long as the friend title exists

    A more accurate interpretation here is “They’re not collecting any information that I’m embarrassed about”

    Sorry, language is messy and oftentimes there are differences between literal and intended meaning. I just wanted to point out why it is indeed, an unfair comparison. You can achieve your point without attacking someone’s (as I argue) correct statement when taken in context, since your underlying point still stands that the majority of people have some limit of sharing information that they would not be comfortable with.