>Characterizing device information and IP addresses as "privacy violations" is a stretch.

I agree: this is a characterization I never made. FYI, I also collect this type of data about you when you visit my website. That said, telemetry + totalitarianism = bad combo.

>Irrelevant. The data collection is done by first parties. Encryption doesn't do anything.

Even if data is collected by first parties, encryption is still highly relevant because it ensures that the data remains secure in transit and at rest. It does a lot.

>What does this have to do with privacy? Again, it's fine to be against "blatant algorithmic manipulation of social platforms" or whatever, but dragging seemingly unrelated topics in an attempt to amass as big pile of greviances as possible is disingenuous.

You are aggressive for no reason whatsoever. There's nothing disingenuous: when users are shadow-banned by platforms under dictatorships, they end up flagged, and their private data is often analyzed for nefarious reasons. There's a link with privacy but I'll stop at this stage if we cannot have a civilized discussion.

>Where's the keylogging? I skimmed the article and the only thing I could find was a passing mention about an article that you "was advised not to publish it and I didn’t". How much keylogging could possibly going on in a short video app? Is the "keylogging" just a way to make "we measure how engaged someone is with a video" as sinister as possible?

“TikTok iOS subscribes to every keystroke (text inputs) happening on third party websites rendered inside the TikTok app. This can include passwords, credit card information and other sensitive user data. (keypress and keydown). We can’t know what TikTok uses the subscription for, but from a technical perspective, this is the equivalent of installing a keylogger on third party websites.”

https://krausefx.com/blog/announcing-inappbrowsercom-see-wha...

Please note that this article is outdated (August 2022). Importantly, the article does not claim that any data logging or transmission is actively occurring. Instead, it highlights the potential technical capabilities of in-app browsers to inject JavaScript code, which could theoretically be used to monitor user interactions.