Some ex-TikTok employees say the social media service worked closely with its China-based parent despite claims of independence

politics @lemmy.world – 208 points – 5 months ago

Some ex-TikTok employees say the social media service worked closely with its China-based parent despite claims of independence

Former TikTok senior data scientist:

“I literally worked on a project that gave U.S. data to China”

“They were completely complicit in that. There were Americans that were working in upper management that were completely complicit in this.”

Is this where we post the shocked Pikachu face? Or do they only accept Pooh bear memes?

Nice

As an American, I would be appalled if my data were provided to the Chinese government for anything less than Meta charges to provide that info. It’s just unfair to TikTok and I believe in a free market in commoditizing the lives of human beings.

Meta actually doesn’t sell your data (this is complicated and not as good as it sounds: https://themarkup.org/the-breakdown/2021/09/02/what-does-it-actually-mean-when-a-company-says-we-do-not-sell-your-data)

Ok, fine. I concede the point. Replace Meta with 50 data brokers that sell “anonymized” location data on everyone who ever downloaded a free app.

If only anyone could have known

No one could have predicted this. (Satire)

I see Chinese in on tiktok semi regularly at least it seems.

Did the ceo lie to usa congress under oath?

Limitless Peace

Absolutely the CEO lied, but unfortunately our government lacks the teeth to put him in jail.

I wonder how this plays out if he lied under oath tbh.

No one is fighting for tiktok thinking it didn't share info with China. The problem is China can just buy our data from a number of data brokers. Every social media, shopping, and US website collects your info to be sold. That's the problem. The singled out tiktok bc China was collecting it free and people are learning how corrupt our US government is.

Sooo... no different than Google working with the US government, then.

Clearly false - Google is banned in China.

Um, the difference is China is our #1 enemy?

I thought that was Iran? Sorry, I have trouble keeping up with the whole "enemy-of-the-week" thing.

No shit