China is a perfect communist motherland that doesn’t need anyones secrets!
Yes, I also love China and their all-seeing government.
Never used TikTok, but I’m not going to pretend that China (and pretty much every other government if it wants it) doesn’t have access to my data, there isn’t much I can do about it at this point.
EDIT: they do* have it, I’m just sleep deprived
I mean, I have it installed, but I have it installed in a “sandbox” (Co-opting androids work profile feature) I use Insular
But looking now, it seems it hasn’t been updated in a year so I might have to look for an alternative soon if it has issues when I upgrade to Android 16 lol
What is the point of these apps besides duplicating the app space? Does it actually provide any additional sandboxing that the android OS doesn’t do already?
Look into Shelter, it works on latest Android though it’s been several months since the last update.
I already get the same thing from the YouTube app which won’t shut the fuck up about Shorts
YouTube shorts are fantastic. You have to be into misogyny though.
I sign out to view shorts, clear site data, then manually search a couple of “seed” videos I like to get the algorithm picking out new stuff.
It won’t even show you anything unless you have some viewing history. It’s just straight up broken for people who have had accounts for many years.
Lol that’s close to what I do. It used to show you videos based on your likes and subs even with eatch history off but now they will refuse.
So I just temporarily turned on history, watch some seeds, then turn it off again, and voila, it suggests based on likes and subs just like before.
Interesting. All it shows me are cats, hair cut/dying, coffee, animals being silly, and comedic videos.
Mine was all this anti-women stuff, so I closed it and never looked back.
Did you enable saving history, custom recommendations…?
I get IDKsterling, shorts by miniminuteman, institute for justice, tasting history, stuff like that, then occasional cat/funny/meme videos that are largely benign
Log into YouTube on incognito mode
The terrible shit will he there, I saw it for the first time in a while after testing sound on live fedora before installing it on dual boot
So YouTube can see if you’re wearing a fedora & if you are, it shows you a grip of “alpha male” videos?
My shorts are just cats and dogs acting silly and the rare REPO clip…
Uninstalling that app was a game changer…so much better on browser with unblock origin running.
Fr if something works in browser I will never use the app.
Some exceptions for things which require better encryption.
Uuuuuse a foss youtube frontend wooooooo like freetube or pipepipe woooooooooo…
(Insert other ghostly noises)
Pipepipe for life. By far the best YouTube experience around.
I don’t get Shorts. I can’t watch them on my PlayStation, if I click on one on the phone app it’ll disconnect the PlayStation and force me to watch it on my phone.
If you try to upload a video that is less than a minute long, it forces you to do Shorts.
I also don’t get why opening up a community thread or something pauses the video I’m watching on the PlayStation.
I’ve also noticed lately that when I connect the phone app with the PlayStation, about 30% of the time, the video will play extremely slow without sound. I have to close and reboot the YouTube app on the PlayStation to watch anything afterwards.
Sounds like a bunch of shit if you ask me!
Check out revanced.app. You’re welcome.
Neato
If you even have a phone then Google, the phone’s manufacturer, your ISP, the NSA and their respective governments already know everything about you.
But if China has your data, then it is bad. If the U.S government has your data then it’s fine, right?
/s
You can very well fragment what each one knows, and keep certain ones from knowing more.
Google knows I use Android, but the phone I’m holding is running a custom rom without gapps on a private dns server I run over a private vpn that I host on the other side of the Earth.
But, I admit, I’m not as thorough as I should be, one login and a few comments without paying absolute attention to a VPN connection and the veil is pierced.
I could start over, only come here over layers upon layers of obfuscation, but I’m no serial killer, so, meh. At least they don’t know what I’m doing all the time, 24/7, 365…
It’s not just gapps, though. Search, gtags/adsense, youtube, maps, etc are all so pervasive that google effectively controls the internet. You can try run ublock and a plethora of privacy addons, but those are only effective as long as Google is playing nice. Others, like Yandex, are not, and they defeat all those with ease.
Though I’d say running custom rom is an exception from the rule, along with people running with dumb or even no phone, but those are not but a blip on a big picture.
More like “keep your nazis”. The place is fucking infested and every report comes back with “no violation” for literal double lightning bolts and posting that one anti-semetic wojak.
US tiktok data has been hosted by Oracle on their own servers on US soil for several years now, China doesn’t have access to it. Also they can and do just buy your user data from US companies. If you don’t like Tiktok then you don’t have to use it, but fear of Chinese surveillance is a stupid reason to avoid the app.
China most likely has access.
Nothing in this article or anywhere else presents any actual evidence that the Chinese government ever had direct access to US user data, and the claims presented here all predate the transition to Oracle servers, which were conducted in cooperation with the US government specifically to ensure that US user data wouldn’t be available to the Chinese government. The easiest route to our data has been and continues to be buying it from US companies, which is still completely legal.
I have a Xiaomi phone. They already know everything about me.
Tell me, did I have a fever dream about this or does Xiaomi actually have ads in their settings and system apps?
Not that I’ve seen. The only annoying thing is this weird Wallpaper Carousel they keep wanting me to use
It isn’t a dream, more like a nightmare.
I mean, they can be disabled, but it is pain in the ass to do so.
My gf had xiaomi once. Had to visit the doctors a lot before it cleared up.
Haha this joke is funny because foreigners have funny words and sound stupid
Edit apparently need the /s
Ayyyy!
I mean I’d rather China know everything about me than America, since as an American citizen, America is a much bigger threat.
But lets be honest, whether I get an iphone, samsung, or huawei, both countries are going to have all my data.
Facts
You could change ROM. Then the software wouldn’t spy on you anymore
I could, but how phones work with respect to PCs has always seemed very complicated to me and I don’t want to screw up my phone.
Understandable tbh. Depending on your phone, there are chances it’s actually fairly easy to change ROMs, you could also try stuff out on an older device of yours or your family’s
They still know your name, phone number, relationships, and every piece of info ever supplied to or from you in a text message going back as far as it is recorded on every phone which has ever downloaded the app. Your mother, your brother, your sister, your ex.
It’s a cruel and terrible world for those who aren’t ignorant.
They still know your name, phone number, relationships, and every piece of info ever supplied to or from you in a text message going back as far as it is recorded on every phone which has ever downloaded the app.
Only because they bought the info off Microsoft, Facebook, and Google.
It’s a cruel and terrible world for those who aren’t ignorant.
At some point, being terminally anxious over the idea that a Chinese bureaucrat has access to a stack of high school yearbooks does nothing of benefit. There’s a long term material benefit to simply staying off social media (particularly the bigger instances) in a few rare but critical circumstances (getting a high security job, avoiding being hassled by the police). But for virtually everyone else, none of this shit matters.
Heh, nice. Now do American corporations.
Your turn, Captain Noposts!
No wörries I still had a Huawei for several years and still use the Huawei health app.
So I’m pretty sure China could — if they had any interest in — know literally my very heartbeat.
🤢
Health apps scare me. Idfc where it’s from.
I’m ideologically against, but personally, I’m not bothered. Like I do not believe in the bullshit “nothing to hide nothing to fear” rhetoric, I’m very much against it.
But like personally, I’m not really bothered if they know when I have a wank, tbh.
I am worried with what they do with all the data they have, I just don’t think anyone is interested in me personally and if they were, I’d kinda take it as a compliment tbh.
China doesn’t need TikTok to get your data. They can just buy it from data brokers, lol.
Or sell you ads AND not have to pay for it, while also influencing us algorithmically directly. If that’s even the case, that is, which, who even fucking knows anymore. And I’m not even sure we needed tiktok to be pissed at wrongdoings everywhere, including Chinese government wrongdoings. Honestly, tiktok’s algorithm is better than basically any other algorithmic app right now, save for the fact that it obviously is getting very up to date information through my phone somehow.
More like Buys the same data from Meta but okay.
And if I don’t use facebook?
Then they still have a profile on you.
Considering the few times I’ve seen targeted ads, it’s never actually relevant to me, I doubt their profile of me is in anyway accurate.
I use blockers so facebook doesn’t know what websites I’m visiting.
Accuracy is not really relevant to the conversation. The point is that though the Chinese app gets a lot of crap for being a dataminer, the American social media apps are no better and in fact worse because they create ghost profiles of non users and make a ton of money selling that data indiscriminately. There’s no need to take offense, it isn’t a personal attack on your privacy practices.
Ever notice how any time a Chinese app gets highlighted as being for data harvesting, there’s a bunch of people crawling out of the woodwork to claim “whatabout american apps!?”, but whenever an American app gets the same exposer, noone ever goes “whatabout Chinese apps apps!?”
Highly personalized, targeted ads are more dangerous because they can create tailor made political ads. This was happening with Cambridge Analytica and it’s why having any political discussion online is impossible anymore because you’re never really sure what the other person “knows” anymore. Before that shit, everyone got the same speeches, news and ads.
You also have the blackmail factor. I do consider Chinese officials getting blackmail material on American politicians and businesses more dangerous then American companies doing the same. It’s a small margin, but there is a difference.
The best I can do is minimize how much they get from me, give them bad data and block any ads. The few times I see targeted ads seems to imply they think I’m a conservative woman. Who the hell else would want Concern Carry Yoga Pants?
These data harvesting creating fake profiles to sell to ad companies are not my concern. Let these shit companies cheat each other.
You dont think bytedance do ghost profiles…?
I had assumed that’s what they were doing with the data they bought from data brokers like Meta and Alphabet, yes.
Big brain move, let’s make them buy our data from someone else. 🙌
Unpopular Opinion: You folks are missing out.
TikTok is home to some of the most hardcore leftists you’ve ever seen and has content about how to fix our current fascism problem that’ll get you banned on Meta instantly.
It’s also a great to see what real people are taking about since they’re walking down the street or in their cars speaking as a genuine human.
No thanks. Lemmy isn’t great by any means but social media is poison and a direct cause of the current state of affairs
I already have Mastodon for that which is almost entirely made up of transfem devs
Lol, yeah no thanks. Tiktok isn’t reality.
Diamonds in a sea of diarrhea.
