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?

  • Meatballs
    83·
    10 months ago

    Tiktok is considered worse because it’s involvement with a foreign government.

    • Baku@aussie.zoneOPEnglish
      82·
      10 months ago

      Sure but this seems to be a thing in many countries, not just the US. I live in Australia, so both of them are involved with “foreign” governments. In fact, most of the social media people here use is owned by foreign companies

      • CheshireSnake@iusearchlinux.fyiEnglish
        91·
        10 months ago

        I’m in Asia. I can’t speak for everyone but the people I know distrust the CCP much more than the US government. Sure, the US is far from blameless, but at least over here the CCP has a much worse reputation. I guess that’s one factor.

        Another is more than a few people seem to think Meta is strictly a private company while tiktok is somehow being used/controlled by the Chinese government.