People don’t like it because:

  1. It’s the new thing. If alcohol were introduced today it would be banned in every country on earth. People tolerate Facebook, Twitter, Insta because that’s what’s been around. They all do the same thing, but TikTok is new and scary.
  2. Short form video is scary! It’s a new form of entertainment, and old people don’t like new forms of entertainment. See: every newly introduced form of entertainment in history, books included.
  3. They are misinformed about what data a mobile application can and cannot do, and the level of security built into both iOS and Android. Rest “assured”, they are collecting as much data as they can – just like every app creator on the planet. What they aren’t doing is capturing mic data while you’re sleeping (that’s not how microphones in phones work), stealing your passwords from your clipboard (OS’s notify users about clipboard paste)
  4. China bad. This primes people to consider negative press about it with a less skeptical eye, feeding the above points. (Don’t misconstrue me as being pro-China, I’m not, and that’s not what this post is about.)
  • Chozo@kbin.social
    1·
    2 years ago

    After they were caught shadowbanning LGBT users “for their own protection”, that should tell you everything you need to know about the CCP-owned app.

  • MrMcGasion@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 years ago

    Agreed. Also if you put a firewall app on your phone and watch how often various “closed” apps attempt to phone home. Twitter (or X now if I have to call it that) and Hulu make far more frequent requests, even when closed, than TikTok does. Not that every request is necessarily related to data harvesting, but a good amount of data about your location can be gathered just by tying the IP addresses your phone connects to their servers from to your account. The amount of fearmongering over TikTok in comparison to other apps seems absurd to me, and I haven’t even looked at any of the apps from Facebook.

  • girl@lemm.ee
    0·
    2 years ago

    Upvoted because this is indeed unpopular. I agree though, particularly that people get stuck on #4. We don’t know what China is doing with our data, any more than we know what Cambridge Analytica (now defunct) or the US gov is doing with our data. It could all be “harmless” ad-targeting, it could be more sinister, we don’t know. Until we know what is being done with the data, then Meta or Google collecting my data is just as bad as China collecting my data.

    Edit: Some sources related to the matter to help others form conclusions:

    https://pirg.org/articles/demystifying-tiktok-data/ they collect essentially the same amount of data, in some cases Facebook collects more.

    https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/02/08/tiktok-shares-your-data-more-than-any-other-social-media-app-study.html YouTube and Tik Tok share similar amounts of data, YouTube (under google) uses most of it for their own purposes (not sure what those are) while Tik Tok mostly sells it to third parties (who knows who they sell to or what they do with it)

  • Cam@lemmy.world
    11·
    2 years ago

    TikTok is Chinese spyware. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube is American spyware.

    I hate the short video thing. I find many zoomers are into TikTok. The short video length, the subtitles on videos, the filters and the attention span effect it causes does not help. Yeah I get it, social media is bad for everyone in high doses, but zoomers are such a subverted generation and short videos do not help, weather that is TikTok or YouTube shorts.

    I am not in favor of banning Tiktok or short video platforms, I wish people will use social media for learning things, exploring ideas and not watching stupid clips of some kid talking about their day. That is what bothers me most about TikTok rise to fame. It is not how it is Chinese based and a privacy nightmare, it is how it changes peoples interaction online and how they use the internet.

    • charles@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      2 years ago

      People said the exact same thing about YouTube, and people’s desires for fame. The world still turns.

      All to say, like all social platforms, on TikTok there are good and bad, people of all shapes and sizes. Rest assured, people are learning on TikTok, (and YouTube, and Facebook). Yeah there’s misinformation, just like every other corner of the Internet.

      • Cam@lemmy.world
        01·
        2 years ago

        People said the exact same thing about YouTube, and people’s desires for fame. The world still turns.

        True. The way content was consumed back then was more enriching I guess compared to the short video format now in days.

        Rest assured, people are learning on TikTok, (and YouTube, and Facebook).

        You can learn lots on YouTube and other simular platforms like LBRY. You can’t learn much on Twitter or Facebook. Tiktok “learning” is short clips oviously like “Did you know” or “Here are 3 thing you can do with your phone” but this is not deep as watching a 20 minute YouTube video on WWII history for example.

        • charles@lemmy.worldOP
          0·
          2 years ago

          Have you used TikTok? How long do you think videos can last? Because they can be up to 10 minutes; plenty of time for quality content. Not to mention, many longer videos are broken into multiple smaller parts (similar to tweet threads).

          To your specific point, there are some excellent WWII scholars producing TikTok content on topics such as countering Holocaust denialism.

          Beyond that, there are many things people can learn more efficiently outside of long-form content. Recipes are a great example: search engine algorithms have made recipe websites a complete disaster. Literally no one wants to read (or write) about my step grand uncles 3rd cousins summer cabin, but SEO demands bloat. In a short form video, there’s not as much time for algorthmically mandated filler.

          • Cam@lemmy.world
            01·
            2 years ago

            No I do not use TikTok but I do know videos can be 10m long. However many TikTok videos do end up outside of TikTok like on YouTube or LBRY and they are usually under 1m.

            I am sure there are lots of WWII channels on TikTok, but the tall video format, and the effects are just annoying.

            • charles@lemmy.worldOP
              0·
              2 years ago

              The video format is made for the device format where most people consume it. It’s just as annoying when someone clips a widescreen formatted video on TikTok. The ability to learn from something isn’t affected by the video being horizontal or vertical.

              • Cam@lemmy.world
                01·
                2 years ago

                If you look at most videos on the internet. Videos that are tall are not usually educational compared widescreen videos. If a content creator wanted to make a video on WWII, they will likely use video editing tools and whip up a widescreen video. When people want to share how their day is, they do not use a video editor, they open up an app and record themselves.

                I find tall videos annoying, even on smartphones.