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0 pointsreillyse4y ago0 comments

My point is that this just appears to be xenophobia and is completely hypocritical. Nearly every app on my phone asks to access the local network.It's a thing. It's not unusual in the slightest. The problem seems to be that this company is based in China. And we don't like China. Maybe that is not what you in particular don't like (I get that you don't like FB) but that is the reason why this is a topic conversation at all. So in effect what the people in this thread are saying is that American companies (and by direct link the US gov) are allowed to spy on people, but foreign governments should not be allowed. That seems like a huge double standard. For the record, I personally would prefer no governments were spying on me - but that doesn't seem to be on the table.

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e_proxus4y ago

Nearly every app?! What apps do you actually use? I’ve only ever seen the prompt a few times, and always for pretty obvious reasons (UniFi, Prompt, VLC, etc.)

giantrobot4y ago

> The problem seems to be that this company is based in China.

You're misrepresenting the situation because you want to frame the whole issue as some xenophobia on my part. The problem is TikTok is a social network with millions of users whose parent company literally has the CCP as a board member and is subject to China's extremely invasive state security laws (requiring warrantless access to corporate data). The app was already an intelligence gold mine and now they've added a vein of platinum.

The only double standard is contained within the strawman you've created. I have the same problem with Facebook or Twitter apps scanning my local network for no reason than to increase their data harvesting. But since TikTok is the subject of the thread I specifically pointed out problems with TikTok. Facebook and Twitter have their own problems, some of them overlap with problems that exist with TikTok.

Neither I or anyone else needs to list the myriad problems with every social network when criticizing any one of them. You're trying to use a tu quoque [0] argument claiming xenophobia and hypocrisy (where none exists) in hopes that distracts from the points being made.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

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