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?
Well, not from a privacy guide lol
It’s not one of those things that’s said in so many words, it’s more just a vibe I pick up from a lot of people. Like people I know will see a tiktok link, complain about how tiktok is a glorified data extraction machine for the CCP then proceed to go doomscroll Facebook for the next hour
Not sure how anyone can answer a question based on a “vibe” haha
Facebook is mega bad for data collection and privacy violations though. People probably just don’t talk about it as much because it’s been around for so long; we’re used to it, we know it’s bad and only boomers still actually use it.