You know how when the FIFA scandal broke nobody was really surprised? “FIFA is corrupt!” ”Yeah, no kidding?” said people while wondering if the myriad of arrests and corruption cases was going to affect their local match schedule at all. It seems like we as a people will happily tolerate egregious acts of blatant evil so long as they don’t affect us noticeably. To that end, TikTok.
The UK has decided that it’s probably not a good idea for senior politicians to have tiktok on their phones. This is just another example of governments in western countries realizing that the software that security experts have been claiming is a data privacy nightmare is, in fact a privacy nightmare. This has been going on and off since the Trump Administration, where he made mutterings about banning the app from the US. And even then, when people would be justified in their distrust of the statement, almost everyone seemed to be readily accepting of the claims about data collection.
It didn’t get banned of course, and now, two and a half years after that first attempt, the social network is as powerful as it ever be. Peerless in its creation of funny moments, horrendous advice, and “lifehacks” whose only real value is to be collected by YouTubers who collect them and react to them on their channels. The entire genre of which unwillingly vindicates the old =3 format of yore, what with nobody getting salty or losing that much revenue on this one. But behind all of these, naturally, is the blatantly obvious dark side.
Despite assurances that TikTok does not send American data back to its servers in China, a report by Buzzfeed News claims that US data has been “Repeatedly Accessed” from China. Entirely aside from the fact that it’s not even “We don’t collect personally identifiable data” or that these assurances are brought only to the United States while the rest of the world just has to deal with their precious info being securely stored behind the great firewall, there’s still the issue of being unable to opt out of any of this data collection.
And I know because I can feel the heat of the hands just hovering above the keyboard. Yes, I know you don’t care about foreign governments having your information. It’s not important. It’s publicly accessible anyway. You have nothing to hide and anyway, the only information they really want is the one from people who actually have authority over important things. To which I would reply by asking politely for the copy of all of the information of your phone. And, of course, with a sincere and honest wish that you are never in a position where all of a sudden that information could prove extremely useful.
We all seem to go along with these things and desperately attempt to justify ourselves. “Oh, other governments are just as bad,” is a particularly good one. I at least try to make whomever wants my information to work at it before they send me ads for lovely things I can’t afford. Though in the case of TikTok, I decided to go old-school to make them work for it.
The best way to do that is to not use TikTok
