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TikTok
- Thread starter Mike Paul
- Start date
GAC05
Quit buggin' me
TikTok, TikTok - Time is running out........
A time of unprecedented danger: It is 90 seconds to midnight
This year, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moves the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward, largely (though not exclusively) because of the mounting dangers of the war in Ukraine. The Clock now stands at 90 seconds to midnight—the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been.victor bogdanov
Active Member
Leave the data harvesting and information manipulation to google, apple, facebook and microsoft!
Fred Weiss
Merchant Member
I've been trying to figure out just what sort of "data" anyone could glean from TikTok that would be of any national or personal concern.
GAC05
Quit buggin' me
From the posts, they can extrapolate the current levels of the US Botox, Silicon & Saline Strategic Reserves.
Boudica
Back to "educational purposes"
I personally think it's stupid and useless, so I don't much care. I catch articles on my news feed "viral TikTok blah blah..." When I look at them, I see that it's really a platform and inspiration for ridiculous rants, and illiteracy. Clearly the demise of civilization.
That said... I have a teenage daughter, so I asked her what she thinks about TikTok. Since it's supposed to be so dangerous to teenage girls.
After our chat, I'm not worried. Most of the internet is dangerous to impressionable people, who buy into what they see.
As for national security... I'm not sure what data they could be mining from illiterate Internet sensations that could be of any threat.
That said... I have a teenage daughter, so I asked her what she thinks about TikTok. Since it's supposed to be so dangerous to teenage girls.
After our chat, I'm not worried. Most of the internet is dangerous to impressionable people, who buy into what they see.
As for national security... I'm not sure what data they could be mining from illiterate Internet sensations that could be of any threat.
I have no desire at all to create a TikTok account. Even though younger people appear to enjoy it the app seems like a big waste of time to me.
In the early days of Facebook that app seemed really great. I was able to get back in touch with a lot of friends I had during my childhood and teenage years moving from one Marine Corps duty station to the next. It worked a whole lot better at finding old friends than other early social media apps like Friendster. In more recent years the various "American" social media apps became more annoying for all the anger pornography (often political) being allowed to get the most attention in "news" feeds. As good or bad as the US-based social media companies can be they are still not state-controlled entities. That's the big difference with TikTok. As hard as the executives of TikTok try to imply they are their own bosses they only make it more clear they're getting their marching orders from the Chinese government.
In the early days of Facebook that app seemed really great. I was able to get back in touch with a lot of friends I had during my childhood and teenage years moving from one Marine Corps duty station to the next. It worked a whole lot better at finding old friends than other early social media apps like Friendster. In more recent years the various "American" social media apps became more annoying for all the anger pornography (often political) being allowed to get the most attention in "news" feeds. As good or bad as the US-based social media companies can be they are still not state-controlled entities. That's the big difference with TikTok. As hard as the executives of TikTok try to imply they are their own bosses they only make it more clear they're getting their marching orders from the Chinese government.
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victor bogdanov
Active Member
You sure about that?
Boudica
Back to "educational purposes"
So, is the real fear that they control the content, and are brainwashing our kids to embrace the Chinese government?
Again, not worried about my child. I mean she's a bleeding heart environmentalist, who only likes animals, but so was I at her age. And there was no internet back then.
Again, not worried about my child. I mean she's a bleeding heart environmentalist, who only likes animals, but so was I at her age. And there was no internet back then.
Notarealsignguy
Arial - it's almost helvetica
Same here on Facebook. It's all crap now but everyone knew they would fall off once they started to move it towards a revenue producing venture. Same with Amazon. They ran at a loss to give free 2 day shipping for years in order to gain traction but once that pile of early investor money dries up, they have to become like every other business and their model is not profitable.
Notarealsignguy
Arial - it's almost helvetica
TikTok is one thing but I often wonder about all of the Chinese surveillance camera systems that people have installed all over the country and store the stuff on Chinese cloud servers. Talk about helping out the enemy. Bet china restricts Google Earth while us idiots put their cameras in our living rooms.
Boudica
Back to "educational purposes"
Too true. I was an original prime member, it was awesome. I don't really see/feel that prime member beni anymore. Other than the rising annual fee.
victor bogdanov said:
Yeah. Facebook, Twitter, Instragram, Linkedin or whatever are not state-owned, state-controlled entities. That's very clear. The US government has to jump through a lot of legal hoops to subpoena data from those companies, which usually attracts a hell of a lot of publicity. And the gub'ment is often not successful in such attempts. Usually there is so much potential for PR push-back the US government doesn't even try.
The Communist Chinese government has its tentacles burrowed pretty deep into TikTok. If the Red China bosses want to monitor TikTok account activity of someone, such as an American journalist covering Taiwan affairs, they can do so without any difficulty at all or without anyone knowing about it at all.
It's bad enough that any social media app (or most phone apps in general) can gain access to many internal features of a smart phone. A private or publicly traded social media company at worst is only going to be motivated to gather user data for sales and marketing purposes. A police-state government with sinister intentions can go a whole lot farther if it can force a social media company to obey commands. That's what the Chinese government can do with TikTok. If you have the TikTok app loaded on your phone it's possible the Chinese government could access data to track your movements or even listen in on anything you say near your phone if they decide you're a threat to them. With the way voice recognition technology works they could have super computers crunching audio data from many millions of users looking for any key phrases to automatically ding a person into a hot list of people to watch.
There has been a good amount of outcry and even some organized protests against the real possibility TikTok could be banned in the US. Some people have businesses built within TikTok. On one level I can sympathize with their situation. On the other hand there has been zero secret at all about where TikTok was based and its attachments to the police-state Chinese government. The risks of using the app have been out there in the open for years. If the app ends up being wiped off American phones and Internet access it shouldn't surprise anyone.
Boudica
Back to "educational purposes"
So ... If you have a sensitive position within us security, don't have TikTok on your work phone, common knowledge for years. As for the general use of TikTok... The intelligence they are gathering is that there are some ignorant and illiterate people of no real interest. And we need big brother to monitor this why?
GAC05
Quit buggin' me
My youngest son is doing a European rotation as part of the Army in the undisclosed Putin Containment Zone.
Before they left they had everyone switch over from Whatsapp to Signal on their phones.
Being able to message, video, and live-call him over there makes it less stressful on our end and on him too, I think.
I'm sure the other side is taking advantage of this but it's not like they don't already know exactly who is there, where they are, and what they are doing.
The digital, connected world is something else.
Before they left they had everyone switch over from Whatsapp to Signal on their phones.
Being able to message, video, and live-call him over there makes it less stressful on our end and on him too, I think.
I'm sure the other side is taking advantage of this but it's not like they don't already know exactly who is there, where they are, and what they are doing.
The digital, connected world is something else.
Boudica
Back to "educational purposes"
I've heard good things about the privacy of signal.
Internationally specific.
Boudica
Back to "educational purposes"
These guys are too sarcastic to get any point. Why did you use that as an answer? Seriously Paul, what do you think, IN YOUR OWN WORDS?
Johnny Best
Active Member
I like to watch the Chinese women dance to James Brown music on TicTok.
The Chinese army have gotten my info from that and realize that I am in a group that knows GAC05 from Guam and have not invaded the US out of fear of retaliation from the Signs101 quasi military group. that have an outpost close to their homeland.
But what I really like to watch on Instagram is shooting of coyotes with a high powered rifle, one shot and they are taken down.
The Chinese army have gotten my info from that and realize that I am in a group that knows GAC05 from Guam and have not invaded the US out of fear of retaliation from the Signs101 quasi military group. that have an outpost close to their homeland.
But what I really like to watch on Instagram is shooting of coyotes with a high powered rifle, one shot and they are taken down.
Boudica said:
The Chinese government's interests go a whole lot farther than just keeping tabs on "stupid young Americans." They really want to influence the outcomes of our elections. Obviously, going after young adults probably isn't the smartest of ideas.
Young adults are notoriously stupid-bad at voting. At all. They really really suck at it -to an honestly disgraceful level. Not that I have any skin in the game (being an absolute not-smoker) I was surprised Oklahoma's recent recreational Marijuana state question vote failed by a 2 to 1 margin. This is a perfect example of young "voters" talking up a big game at going to the polls yet utterly failing at following through on a pretty simple thing. It's not difficult to go vote. Especially here in Oklahoma. What's their excuse? "Uhhhh, I was too baked at the time to be able to get out of bed; they should have held the election on a different day, dude."
Still, elections can be decided by small percentages. If Red China can make enough young Americans vote they want them to vote (if they show up to vote) it could make a difference in an election outcome.