I’m not here to claim that Tiktok is completely harmless, or that it’s even a good site. I’m sure they absolutely do collect as much personal information as they can, and I’m sure they give it to the Chinese government whenever they ask. But I don’t understand how Meta and Facebook are meant to be any better? There’s always a lot of hoo-haa going on with politicians promising to ban tiktok, and (at least back on Reddit) everybody’s vowing they will never use tiktok because it’s such a privacy invasive site. Yet I never see anybody going up against Facebook, at least the average person, but they collect just as much personal info and I’m sure hand it over whenever any government agency in the US asks them to

It kind of feels to me like this is some sort of country thing. China is bad, so they shouldn’t have your personal info. But the US is the last bastion of free speech and privacy, so their companies would NEVER dare to invade your privacy, and their government would never abuse their power to get people’s personal info

I’m aware Lemmy probably isn’t the best place to ask since most people here seem to be deep into open source software and often privacy focused (so I suppose wouldn’t use either) but this also feels like the only place on the internet I might actually get an answer that isn’t just “TIKTOK BAD”. If you refuse to use tiktok but are ok with Facebook - why?

  • Baku@aussie.zoneOP
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    19
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    9 months ago

    Not so much saying it, but I personally know several people who’ll argue that Tiktok is a privacy invading god awful website that should be banned then 5 minutes later proceed to doomscroll Facebook

    • Scott@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      9 months ago

      I tolerate Facebook on my network, but tiktok is an absolute no for me, null routed.

    • deweydecibel@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      That’s entirely anecdotal, and confirmation bias to boot. How many people do you know that use neither? I’ll bet it’s sizable.

      Yeah, there are some that don’t use TikTok but use Facebook, but that’s not evidence of a trend. Especially when Facebook has legitimate uses that you can’t easily replace with the other platforms

      • Baku@aussie.zoneOP
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        9 months ago

        You’re not wrong, it indeed is anecdotal, but I’m not a data analyst, and I’m not going to run a global survey asking anybody who’ll answer whether they use one but not the other. All I can go on is what I’ve seen, and among my friends who use Facebook (most of them), I’d say 70% or so either believe, or act like they believe Facebook is less of a data theft machine than tiktok

        Not sure what else you want me to say

        • loakang@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          9 months ago

          Well there’s also the thought “well I was already on Facebook from the beginning so they already have my data anyways, whereas TikTok is a completely new entity that would be collecting massive amounts of new information” It’s like going from 90 to 100(Facebook) versus 0 to 100 (TikTok).

          Also Facebook didn’t start off being advertiser focused which is like a frog in slowly boiling water situation, but with TikTok the water started off boiling.

    • Azzu@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      I mean then it’s very likely just China bad, US (or familiarity) good.