No one said they aren't. Yet there's always someone in any given thread about a Chinese app jumping to its defense saying "but Silicon Valley."

So should no one speak out against concentration camps, cultural genocide, and mass sterilization in China today because the same things have happened historically in the United States? China being an adversary should have nothing to do with it? If we can't point out such a problem with an app, then the road we're going down is we can't say anything else about China either.

I think all of these apps behave deplorably. But these kinds of comments try to imply that TikTok is uniquely dangerous when it's just more of the same. The solutions offered also often target TikTok specifically - like banning TikTok in the US, or placing some kind of restrictions on how TikTok can operate.

Why is the solution not to make broad data collection illegal?

Edit:

> So should no one speak out against concentration camps, cultural genocide, and mass sterilization in China today because the same things have happened historically in the United States?

Not at all - those things are genuinely awful, but one key difference is that Facebook, Google, and others are still siphoning up people's data today. This isn't something that happened in the past. I think the comparison is quite valid.

> But these kinds of comments try to imply that TikTok is uniquely dangerous when it's just more of the same.

It comes down to what you believe is the lesser of two evil systems of governance. I will not hesitate to criticize the United States, NATO, the central banks, or the IMF, and I have many problems with them; I would still prefer to live under their system as opposed to the kind of world that China proposes. I live in the United States, and to an extent I want the United States to remain stable. Why should I not be concerned that an adversary in both policy and philosophy gets to have as much influence as TikTok over the minds of millions of Americans?

The only way I could see viewing US tech and China tech as equal is if one has no connection to the soil on which they stand, or perhaps if they live outside those two systems. I don't live outside of those systems. I live in the United States. I don't think the future proposed by the United States or any of its tech companies is as bad as what China proposes to bring to the world.

> one key difference is that Facebook, Google, and others are still siphoning up people's data today.

Again, that is a point that no one is disputing. And why emphasize today? As far as I am aware, TikTok doesn't plan to mine data. It already does. Regardless, I can't see how it's defensible to allow an adversary that much influence over our psychology. It's one thing for us to essentially cause our own problems, but it's another to invite problems from nations that would be thrilled for the United States to either be under its complete control or not exist at all.

Based on published information, Tiktok is behaving significantly worse than any other major player in this market.

Just one example: There are no reports of Meta (etc) logging my keystrokes and data OUTSIDE of what I enter into the app/website.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33049774

What published information? The link you posted is from Consumer Reports which says nothing of the sort.

Speak out all you like.It didn't affect Apple one iota when their factories in China were known for working people to their deaths to churn out more iPhones for the ravenous consumer.

It won't do a damn thing to reduce TikTok's growth either. Nothing will until TT becomes replaced by the next thing.

I don't like companies which business model is spying on people , regardless who their master is. To answer your question(if you really want an answer) , is, hypocrisy, many people have a problem with Alice pointing out that Bob did X thing, when Alice in the first place have also done said X thing. Not justifying anything, or anyone whatsoever, just telling raven how some people might think.

Alice and bob are people who committed those things. A citizen in the US has nothing to do with ww2 Japanese internment camps, slavery, etc so it's not hypocrisy to point out what another country is doing.

If your country do those things, some people might feel is hypocritical, because a citizen of {evil_country} have nothing to do with {crimes}. Just because Alice's country did it long ago, doesn't mean Alice have the higher moral ground over Bob. Again, just pointing out what it is. Don't care, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat,etc can dissappear tomorrow, and I wouldn't notice.

Edit: Typo

> Yet there's always someone in any given thread about a Chinese app jumping to its defense saying "but Silicon Valley."

The reason there's always someone starting a subthread about it is because Silicon Valley and the United States has, had, and will continue to have all the same incentives and problems for international users. [1]

It's not a very interesting conversation, because it adds nothing that hasn't been said a million times, but neither does another lap around the 'China bad' rhetorical track.

[1] And also domestic users, but they have some means of recourse for it.

Well, I don't agree with OP, but the Chinese government is way more involved with its companies than the US is. Here, ostensibly, there's a court and legal process - versus China, where the government has all data by default.

So, any Chinese tech company is de facto going to have all of its data accessible by the Chinese government, by default.

It's interesting to see you make these claims when you know nothing about the workings of the legal system in China.

By Chinese law all data must be made accessible to the government. Of course, it's also an authoritarian state where the government isn't hamstrung by the legal system in any way.

What legal system?

The legal system in China is whatever the party wants it to be.

it's funny you raise that point right after the abortion decision here

> know nothing about the workings of the legal system in China

Hello, I'm an appsec engineer working on product privacy for a large multinational company. I have a pretty accurate, battle tested, mental model about data privacy w/r/t international verticals. I have worked with our China vertical and also worked on key escrow separation models. You might even be able to figure out which company, based on the above.

It's interesting to see you make these claims about me when you know nothing about me.

> Here, ostensibly, there's a court and legal process

On December 16, 2005, The New York Times reported that the Bush administration had been conducting surveillance against U.S. citizens without specific approval from the FISA court for each case since 2002.

In 2011, the Obama administration secretly won permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency's use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans' communications in its massive databases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...

The answer is simple: In the US it's a scandal if the government has open access without a warrant to private citizen data held by companies. In China that's just considered business as usual.

I think this is a common response. But even though the Snowden revelations were a "scandal", nothing bad really happened to the perpetrators. And the FISA court that rubber-stamped the data collection is still operating and still rubber-stamping government surveillance. So, how is it not business as usual in the US? Consider also how law enforcement now has warrantless access to individuals' location data thanks to data brokers and pervasive location tracking in apps[1].

I would really like to see people in North America demand better from their leaders instead of patting ourselves on the back about how at least we're better than China.

[1] https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2022/09/tool-gives-polic...

> even though the Snowden revelations were a "scandal", nothing bad really happened to the perpetrators

This is true, and bad, but consider another difference in this situation:

In the US, companies were able to respond to this revelation by shoring up their security practices, and people exercised their right to openly criticize the government. This is not possible in China.

Security practices? They collaborated with the NSA, CIA, what have you. You are really deluded.

No, it's only a scandal when information about that access leaks.

The US government still has and has always had access to all data about US citizens.

Bizarre that you think that stopped.

It is an espionage organization because it is controlled by an adversarial group which collects and stores detailed individual data. The CIA, NSA, and Google hold the same character.