Benjamin Allocco Is Writing
I don't use TikTok, and I'm not defending it, but I would genuinely like someone to explain, in practical terms, why the Chinese government having user information is so much worse than private corporations having user information which they sell to other corporations and governments as their primary business model.
Mar 23, 2023 at 11:21amWeb
Show threadJoaquimMar 23, 2023

@benjaminallocco Both are obviously bad and there are a multitude of reasons, but one is probably that people are more comfortable with one using the data to make money than the other for political purposes.

TikTok has extremely (and unreasonably) aggressive data collection, and has used it to target propaganda at children, among other users. And though Facebook et al. have been used to influence elections, TikTok can simply do it more efficiently.

Show threadBenjamin Allocco Is WritingMar 23, 2023

@jaybaeta Thank for this thoughtful reply!

To play devil's advocate a little, there is an abundance of evidence that bad-faith government actors and others exploited Meta for political purposes and may have even influenced US elections--basically a propaganda campaign. And yet nobody is talking about banning Meta/Facebook, and talks of regulation seem to have vanished from, what I can tell.

Show threadJoaquimMar 23, 2023
@benjaminallocco And they did it on Twitter, as well, albeit to a lesser extent (2024 is going to be some kind of a year in that aspect). I do think part of the TikTok thing is jingoism; if Meta were Chinese, American politicians would be talking about it in the same way, and be receiving less homegrown lobbying attention (which is probably why talk of regulating it has died down?).
Show threadKris AnnMar 23, 2023
@benjaminallocco It's not, and that's the problem. This isn't about data security; it's about Meta buying politicians' opinion because Meta can't compete with TikTok. If this was actually about data security, it would be talking about all the American-owned companies exploiting user data, too, not just TikTok.
Show threadBenjamin Allocco Is WritingMar 23, 2023

@krisannthemum Right. How does one draw a line between social manipulation at the hands of a corporation and social manipulation at the hands of a government entity, especially when the US is an oligarchy run by corporate interests?

In theory, these things are very different. In PRACTICE, they seem about the same, IMO.