Tbh they keep saying they’re selling your data but who tf is buying it. Who paying Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok, they must have a lot of wealth because these social media companies rich asl

Information the most profitable resource in the world.

But who is really buying it?

people are fundamentally misunderstanding a lot of these things because they don't work in the actual industry or have technical knowledge to actually understand data.

in the US data goes too ways;
1) metadata is sold with indentifiable information stripped to marketing agencies. it is ILLEGAL to sell identifiable data unless you consent to it (and even then there are stipulations). this is what the lawsuits against FB were, because judges were saying their web tracking was extraneous since it tracked those without FB accounts. metadata just includes browsing habits, time spent on pages, browser information (i.e. what browser, what add-ons you're using, etc.), and some level of geo-location (what city you're in). it does not literally include your name, address, SSN, etc. like people would have you believe. transactions which do include that are typically prosecuted, regardless of what you hear on the news. yes, there are some ad agencies which break the law through things like browser fingerprinting, no that is not technically legal. AI can use metadata to identify people theoretically but agencies do not actually do this themselves. more than often cached data is compared against a database in order to serve ads to the client, not literally to you
2) the narrative about data and intelligence is complicated. despite popular belief, the NSA/CIA/FBI does not just have a vault of every person in the US's DMs. i hate intelligence significantly, but the problem has to at least be represented correctly. data is not simply stored in a giant ass database with file by name. data is used by them to identify "problems" or "anomalies" which is then compounded until they can either get a warrant or validation (which is too easy, that's the real problem). if the government just had information on everyone to the T they wouldn't have to use honeypots for entrapment. intelligence is extremely unethical and does a lot of shady s*** but i can tell you they are not just keeping your p*** searches in some database somewhere. of course, this only applies to citizens; they probably do a ton of crazy s*** with non-citizens and foreigners. but this isn't endorsed by scoial media themselves; this is AGAIN why intelligence has to use honeypots or why the CIA has to use viruses, or why there was a DoJ suit against Apple; because companies in the US do not actually generally cooperate with intelligence.

in other countries this is not the case, the US is very strange in not forcing company compliance unless brought to court. in many other countries (including countries in the EU), social media companies just need to do whatever the government tells them. this is why Twitter has to send out emails saying "your tweet broke the law in pakistan". because twitter, by operating in pakistan, has to follow their rules. which means if you tweet something that's blasphemy in pakistan, pakistan will ask for your data to hold against you if you go to pakistan.

also:

the worry about China and the US is not necessarily that China is spying on some random 13 year old zoomer dry humping the air to dubstep on tiktok or whatever people do on that app. it's that tiktok could be used in proximity of officials and thus either give geoolocation data or be used to intercept data from phones of officials. and while sure, yes, you can say "well just ban it from the phoens of officials" (i agree this is a good approach), what if their kid has it on their phone in the same household? you can compare illegally obtained data against legal metadata to then identify people against the intercepted data. the ban is not really about protecting average US citizens (because yes, their data is more or less worthless to china for the most part), it's for outlier cases which could endanger defense security. the thing is, people don't understand; cyber-defense infrastrcuture in the US fucking sucks. it's ultra-dated. just having an unsecured phone on the same network as a power grid would basically allow people to shut it down. the worry isn't that china is going to do it now, it's that the DoD and intelligence's entire point is pre-planning, and china isn't an ally, so even keeping the possibility open is theoretically a danger the DoD/intelligence agencies want to close. i guarantee trump has nothing to do with this and they simply passed him something to sign off on.

Damnnnnnnn

you and me both know the ban isn't about protecting average citizen's data it's about the app being used in proximity of and/or by government officials for exploitation

Chinese exploitation bad American exploitation good

the ban is being done by the government, it's not being done by direct democracy (or even representative democracy since it's just a dude signing off on it), the reasoning behind it isn't that hard to understand, a government isn't going to do things which actively undercut it. you can complain about it being unfair but the goal isn't to protect citizens it's to protect the government, any conversation about this being about unfair comparisons of data harvesting practices is a non-sequitur.

This s*** kills me every time

Out of the loop: What is so bad about Chinese involvement in TikTok? I see the app called propaganda but I haven’t seen anything to suggest that.

see my post a few posts up on page 5 (starting with "also:"), it explains why the DoD & Intelligence care so much

you’re old

Very interesting, after seeing the clipboard copying thing I’m very skeptical of TikTok

i mean, i don't think it's that hard to understand, the entire purpose of western governments is maintaining/expanding geopolitical power, of course the US government is going to ban an app which they see as a possible threat to their own security?

I swear a good grip of people in this country will rationalize anything as long as the republicans tell them its get back at China.

American social media companies sell data to china, so you'd have to be pretty gullible to think this move was made in a national defense regard

lmaooo

I want the app gone too lol