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beware_of_redditor t1_iu825yp wrote

It’s funny tiktok gets the short end of the stick for this. Has no ever heard of google?

The amount of data and digital footprints they have on individuals is incomprehensible.

Also, especially in the US, if you have a smart phone or acess to the internet, you can be surveilled (tracked) very easily. By the government, companies/orgs, third parties, hackers… Anytime you’re out your phone is pinging cell towers, it’s tracking and storing your movement. If one looked hard enough, they can (literally) find out how many times and at what times a phones flashlight feature was turned on. TikTok isn’t helping the situation but it’s hardly anything new. Maybe people are worried it’s the Chinese, but I don’t want anyone spying on me, domestic or foreign.

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Honest_Palpitation91 t1_iu84hqp wrote

This right here. TikTok is being made a scape goat as all the us companies does the same shit.

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Red_Rabbit_Red t1_iu8etcc wrote

It's because Americans are afraid of anything and everything we're told to be afraid of. We're so obsessed with the great boogeyman in the east that we're ignoring the fact that the call is coming from inside the house.

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[deleted] t1_iu88ucx wrote

[deleted]

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spidersnake t1_iu8g4li wrote

Calling a spying tool a spying tool is not "anti-Chinese propaganda"

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comfortablybum t1_iu9of4s wrote

These companies are using the data to sell ads to us. People think that's fine. They are also answerable to our laws and regulators. China using it to spy and manipulate politics is a different beast. The whataboutism contrarian "well Google does it too" is not a new or helpful take on this. Maybe American's fear of China collecting data can push public opinion to pass laws that will also effect Google, Apple, Facebook, Verizon, and all the other tech companies tracking us.

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Weird_Cantaloupe2757 t1_iu8ooce wrote

The government is more concerned about it because the CCP is an openly hostile foreign power, and them spying on Americans presents a threat to national security that Google and Facebook just don't.

I don't want anyone spying on me either, but there is a very good and justifiable reason for the government to be more concerned about TikTok.

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asdfafdsg t1_iu8zxvn wrote

I bet you thought those imaginary WMDs in Iraq were a very good and justifiable reason to erode your freedoms after 9/11 huh?

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Weird_Cantaloupe2757 t1_iu9060v wrote

Nice whataboutism you've got there

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Boreras t1_iu9956p wrote

It's incredibly funny that when you're told you're not immune to propaganda, you immediately resort to "whataboutism". It's just a propaganda term to immediately shut down all critical thought and any context.

Imagine trying to tell someone they're in a cult and after every clear overlap with other cults they start crying whataboutism.

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Weird_Cantaloupe2757 t1_iu9c2gs wrote

So do you think that the CCP isn't an authoritarian regime with the long term vision of taking down the west in order to become the dominant world superpower? I'm not a fan of US foreign policy, but if you think that China's vision for the world isn't worse by at least an order of magnitude, you are not paying attention. This was obvious to me 20 years ago, and I have felt the whole time since then that the US media was way too soft on the CCP, so I see the current situation as us responding to the wake up call we were given with Trump, Brexit, and Ukraine in recognizing that we can't just ignore the fact that our adversaries are adversaries anymore.

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Boreras t1_iuakr68 wrote

> vision of taking down the west in order to become the dominant world superpower

No, and it's pretty easy to see why because they're not constantly organising coups, installing puppet regimes, drone striking half the world, have military bases on every corner on every street, dictating what and how other countries are allowed to trade, spying on everyone, etc.

The problem is I am paying attention and looking past the enormous propaganda hose aimed at us here in the west. Any self reflecting look at the past fifty years and the above paragraph shows that Chinese foreign policy is orders of magnitudes more peaceful than the US. And you can look at how weaker countries like France, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Great Britain behave to see it's not determined by relative power either, it's ideological. China is in a better position but even compared to those weaker five its behaviour is so much better.

I mean the biggest conflict China has had in the past fifty years is a rounding error for the American rape of Vietnam, which would've been classified as one of the greatest crimes against humanity that century, if not outright genocide, had another country done it.

There is this enormous ideological pressure in the west to justify its monstrous behaviour. You desperately need others to be monstrous too, because that's been the Western policy for the past five hundred years.

> we can't just ignore the fact that our adversaries are adversaries anymore

My and your adversaries are the fucking colonial empires that have raped the planet for five centuries. Stop identifying with your monstrous masters and start caring for your equal brothers and sisters.

Besides the result is not going to be the a world dictatorship under one country as we've had the last centuries but a multipolar world. China is not able to become that dominant, plus India, Nigeria, will develop too.

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