Are you actually concerned that the Chinese government might get access to your data or is it a matter of principle? What do you think they want to do with it? If they really wanted it could they not acquire it by other means? I ask as I'm genuinely curious. I'm considering install it on my phone to try it out and see how it compares to youtube. I'm not dissatisfied with my youtube feed. Just curious as to how much better TikTok would be based on the descriptions on the article and on this thread.
> Are you actually concerned that the Chinese government might get access to your data or is it a matter of principle?
Both.
> What do you think they want to do with it?
Absolutely no idea. Much like I had no idea what Facebook was doing, or planned to do, with my data back in the 00s. I think we've been down this road enough in the modern era to be distrustful of any entity, especially a government, especially my own government, and especially the Chinese government.
> If they really wanted it could they not acquire it by other means?
If they really wanted to target me as an individual, I am sure they could dig up $THINGS. That doesn't mean I want to do their job for them.
Your line of questioning here, as I've read it, boils down to: "What are you afraid of if you have nothing to hide?"
Possibly, but it could be just be pragmatic - if I lived in the PRC, I would be very, very nervous about sharing some kind of unfiltered feed of my data with state entities. Living outside of the PRC, it's harder to imagine what kind of practical use they'd put that same data to - though that might get more exciting if I traveled to China at some point in the future...
Maybe you're right, but I don't think so. For me, personally, it is kind of personal...
I have visited China multiple times. My wife is Chinese-American. My children are half-Chinese and will, hopefully, be fluent in Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese (MIL is Vietnam-born Chinese and a Vietnam War refugee), and English. A lot of our extended family still lives in China, in Hong Kong and the mainland (and even Taiwan). I am critical of China, online and off, and I have been for many, many years.
This isn't even that new to us, specifically. We decided in 2014 that we were not willing to go into the mainland anymore. Most of my wifes paternal family left Hong Kong after the hand-off in 1997 -- the writing was on the wall for anyone willing to pay attention. Given everything that has happened in Hong Kong in the last year or so, I don't think we'll ever visit family there again, either.
More on topic, though... It's bad enough that I have this nagging feeling in the back of my head about what sorts of bullshit the NSA, etc..., (and how they probably share this data freely, if asked, with the FVEY, allied intelligence agencies, etc...) are getting up to with my data, but I've learned how to deal with that without experiencing too much of a chilling effect. I don't have the mental capacity to fight this on yet another front, especially when my own understanding of Chinese state politics is so inadequate. Thankfully, I can easily opt out by simply not installing and/or using TikTok, or any of the other Chinese state-sponsored spyware, on any of our devices.
> Living outside of the PRC, it's harder to imagine what kind of practical use they'd put that same data to
Their reach doesn't end at their borders. The same can be said of every modern government / state on the planet today.
If you want a specific example, the Blitzchung controversy is worth understanding. [0] There's a list of censorship-related issues on Wikipedia, too. [1]
Oh yes, I don't think that sounds overly paranoid to me under those circumstances at all. I am sure I am on some lists here in the US for having taken both Mandarin and Arabic as an undergrad (I could only be more evil if I'd added Russian).
