Temu—the Chinese shopping app that has rapidly grown so popular in the US that even Amazon is reportedly trying to copy it—is “dangerous malware” that’s secretly monetizing a broad swath of unauthorized user data, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin alleged in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
Griffin cited research and media reports exposing Temu’s allegedly nefarious design, which “purposely” allows Temu to “gain unrestricted access to a user’s phone operating system, including, but not limited to, a user’s camera, specific location, contacts, text messages, documents, and other applications.”
“Temu is designed to make this expansive access undetected, even by sophisticated users,” Griffin’s complaint said. “Once installed, Temu can recompile itself and change properties, including overriding the data privacy settings users believe they have in place.”
Unsurprisingly, defenders of dictatorships always have to resort to whataboutism to defend the indefensible.
As per usual, this whataboutism is lazy and inaccurate as well.
I mean, I don’t like either malware. They are banning tiktok due to security and spying on US citizens, as well as some election interference. These are all things that FAANG can and will do, but since they’re American it isn’t regulated nearly as much as they should be. All invasions of privacy are bad, it’s not whataboutism to call out the holes our regulations have by being overly specific to only “adversarial countries”.
Yeah malware is bad. It does however become amusing to see people use whataboutism not because they care, but to downplay what X group is doing. So more comes across as approval due to not condemning the act but more reactionary response to being upset X group is being made to look bad.
That usually when whataboutism gets brought, since it draws in people who actually don’t care about the concern that is brought up but more a defensive concern.