TikTok keeps a list of everything its users watch and do. It keeps a list of users who watch videos about tattoos. It keeps a list of users who watch videos about wearing dresses. How would it know to recommend you more gay stuff if it doesn't know you like gay stuff?
TikTok is a spyware company. Always has been. "They include gay people in their spying!" is not news.
There really is no reasoning with some people.
You compare two somewhat dissimilar things and people say you’re comparing apples and oranges.
You compare two very similar things and they say you are doing a whataboutism.
The original comment seemed to be worrying that TikTok is constantly branded as Spyware while Facebook etc are branded as advertising companies, seemingly powered by distrust of China.
There is no explicit "list;" the title is being deliberately dishonest to foment outrage.
> A TikTok representative told the Wall Street Journal that the data set was accessible on the dashboard to authorised employees only and that the dashboard was deleted in the US almost a year ago.
That said, the fact that even a database view exists is a problem. The threat is real-- it's the same reason the Chinese were interested in buying Grindr.
Historically, one party has shown indifference to refugees and it's not the left. Your entire comment is complete bullshit you made up to confirm your world view. Please be constructive, and not transparently strawman-ing
There's presently an on-going war between Somalia and Somaliland. Have you heard much about it? To be sure, it has received some coverage from western media, but I haven't heard many people talking about it. There has been virtually no mention of it on Hacker News. Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been displaced but almost nobody except the usual war voyeurs are talking about it.
The average westerner, left or right, doesn't care about refugees unless they can somehow relate to them (they look the same or have a relatable lifestyle) or unless those refugees start showing up at the borders of western countries.
The point was not that Westerners care about overseas conflict as much as other countries, but that indifference to conflict was somehow part of "Wokeness"
Unfortunately both the Obama and Biden administrations have been pretty bad on immigration and refugees. We’re about to have a very foreseeable crisis in 2 days when Title 42 expires. A lack of bipartisan cooperation is certainly part of the issue, but it’s hardly a priority for Democrats. I think Obama admin officials even admitted that it was because most Americans don’t care.
My point was not that most Americans care about these issues, but that not caring about them was singularly unique to a woke agenda. Obama is not as left as some media outlets make him out to be, and neither is the old guard of the DNC
I think “duh, of course they have this data” is missing the point.
A lot of comments here seem to be hyper focused on the inherent properties of a social network necessary to serve users relevant content. As a tech community, we’re better equipped to understand this inherent property, but arguably the average user won’t have the same intuitions.
There are two ways I think this can be read:
1) TikTok does what every social media platform does, but because of the cultural context, articles like this seek to warn users that their preferences are now on a list somewhere. In this case, it’s not that the existence of a list is surprising, but that who holds the list is worrisome.
2) Above and beyond the base functions of a social network, TikTok specifically maintains topic-specific reports for <reasons>. If this is indeed true, it just magnifies the concern, because now it’s not just about “TikTok could do this”, but “TikTok is doing this”.
In other words, it’s one thing to have data about users as a natural byproduct of running the network. It’s another thing to build highly sensitive reports on that data, and depending on who builds those reports and why, questions will naturally arise.
What’s not clear from the article is which thing is happening.
> “TikTok does not identify individuals or infer sensitive information such as sexual orientation or race based on what they watch.”
If they’re going to do something nefarious with this kind of data, it’s not necessary to infer orientation or race. This is a non-answer.
I also follow several LGBTQ+ content creators on TikTok, and I'm straight. I also follow a variety of racially-oriented content creators (mostly in the BLM and Native American rights space), and I'm white.
Obviously, that's the whole purpose of it. Track what you like, and show you more of it.
And this is not a problem, as long as it's handled with care, and not leaked or abused. It doesn't even matter who might be accessing the data, be it China, USA, the Church, your eternal enemy, whatever... It's crucial data, which can be weaponized against people depending on the political situation. And people should be aware of this and should have a strong interest in implementing strong laws for protecting those data and being linked to their identity.
TikTok is a spyware company. Always has been. "They include gay people in their spying!" is not news.