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?

    • deweydecibel@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      And most people that have an issue with TikTok will also have an issue with Facebook. Not sure where OP got the idea there’s a general consensus that one is ok and not the other.

      We’re talking more about TiKTok now because it’s newer, growing, and on of the most prevalent platforms at the moment.

      The fact Facebook is a privacy invading monster is old news. We’re not talking about it as much because it’s declining and everyone already knows.

      A good deal of Facebook usage also tends to be begrudging because groups and relatives refuse to move off it.

  • shellsharks@infosec.pub
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    5 months ago

    China. Also, no one is saying FB is fine, but since it’s American then gov pretty much shrugs. It was FB after all feeding the NSA yeah?

    • BakuOP
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      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
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        5 months ago

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

      • deweydecibel@lemmy.world
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        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

        • BakuOP
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          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
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            5 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
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        I mean then it’s very likely just China bad, US (or familiarity) good.

      • soviettaters@lemm.ee
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        There’s a non-zero chance that China would sometime want to use Americans’ data against them. All Facebook cares about is selling it to marketers and the US government.

  • paddirn@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    This is the first time I’ve ever seen the phrase “Facebook is fine” ever written out.

    • 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.works
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      Mhm, me as well.

      They all suck dude, they all collect data. It’s just a matter of preference who you give your data to. Or you could live in the stone age and not give any data away, your choice 🤷. (My point is, even Lemmy collects some data, undoubtedly).

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    Facebook is most definitely not fine. However, as far as I know Facebook hasn’t pushed known RCE (remote code execution) exploits into their product updates, which TikTok has. Politicians don’t care about this but literally everyone else should.

    • sheogorath@lemmy.world
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      Facebook is bad but TikTok is bad^bad. I use neither, Soo ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

      For real tho, when me and my partner decided to delete our social media our mental health and relationship improved immensely. It even improved our social lives too, if I wanted to know how someone is doing I’ll just shoot em a text or call em and catch up or setup an outing together.

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        At this point it’s possible that it’s been fixed. I remember hearing about it a couple years ago, in the context of the bug, but I also remember hearing about how a component of their updater, when the app was broken down and deobfuscated, would just run whatever remote code package was handed to it without alerting the end user.

        Even if the RCE has been fixed or removed though, the rest of their security theater is unreasonably bad, and I don’t trust them near enough to ever install their app.

  • /home/pineapplelover@lemm.ee
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    They’re both bad but tik tok is on steroids. There are a bunch of security researchers out there that have uncovered the crap ton of shit tik tok collects. It’s basically a spyware app that also comes with a social media app. From the ground up it was meant to collect personal information and every little bit about your device. I block it on my network because any tik tok device also scans the entire network and I don’t want that to happen.

    • nao@sh.itjust.works
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      By blocking you mean outgoing requests from your network to tiktok servers? Couldn’t it still scan the network and upload the results later?

      • /home/pineapplelover@lemm.ee
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        I block it on dns level but I guess you’re right. If it’s done locally and stored, I guess I’ll smash every phone I see with tik tok loaded up.

    • s38b35M5@lemmy.world
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      You can replace tiktok with Facebook in your comment, and it’s all still true. If you really believe that tiktok is somewhow worse than FB, you aren’t paying attention.

        • s38b35M5@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          What are you basing that statement on? Last I ckecked, tiktok hasn’t been implicated in facilitating genocide, subverting democratic elections, etc.

  • slumlordthanatos@lemmy.world
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    People in the know understand how shitty Facebook is, but at the very least, they’re a private company. ByteDance is Chinese, and there’s very little separation between Chinese companies and the Chinese government.

    So, for all intents and purposes, it comes down to a company spying on you vs. a foreign government spying on you. They’re both invading your privacy, but for different nefarious reasons.

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    5 months ago

    I’ve literally never read any kind of online privacy guide that has said anything like “Facebook is fine”. Not sure where you’re getting that opinion from.

    • BakuOP
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      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

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        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.

  • ohlaph@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Facebook isn’t fine. But TikTok is worse because it’s not fully controlled within our borders.

  • aspiring_sage@lemmy.today
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    Facebook is certainly not fine, it’s just talked about less, especially among the younger generations. Teens and twenty-something’s haven’t been drawn to Facebook for quite some time, while TikTok is currently the place to be if you’re in that age range. You don’t need to convince a Zoomer to avoid Facebook, because Facebook is where their grandma does social media, but TikTok is currently dominating their attention.

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    Haven’t seen this mentioned, but Meta hired marketing consultants to present to the government how dangerous TikTok was just so their Facebook/IG reels or whatever they are called can take their place. This spawned a ton of news articles and opinion pieces about the government talking about this new dangerous TikTok thing and how bad it is. Also, it was very clear that an anti TikTok campaign was happening on Reddit like a year ago, so the marketing didn’t stop with presenting things to the government.

    And I’m not saying it isn’t a breach of privacy. I also use Google maps too, so I’m not too terribly concerned with it. But it does just seem like a marketing smear campaign centralized around the facade of xenophobia and “think of the children”

    I think the issue with this question is the fact that you asked it on a decentralized platform. If you asked this same thing on a centralized social media platform, you’ll definitely get far more pro-Facebook and anti-TikTok comments and less “uh…both are bad CHECK PLEASE”