• peregrin5@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    They are both security risks. The difference is the SA oligarch has already successfully infiltrated our national security and installed himself in a position of power so we can’t do anything about it anymore.

    Honestly the way he did it was pretty perfect. Create technology and weapons and R&D for the country you want to infiltrate, ingratiate yourself to it’s people, government, and military. Then start throwing money into politics to buy yourself a spot on the cabinet.

    This is a game any bad state actor with a huge wad of cash can play thanks to Citizen’s United.

    • Shiggles@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      Create

      I think you mean buy. Fund is probably the most generous word you could use, but that’s a fat stretch.

        • snooggums@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          He founded Space X, but he did not create the technology and do the R&D alone like Tony Stark. He got the funding though.

          • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Who ever claimed he created the technology? That makes no sense at all. And SpaceX got funding from NASA, just like a lot of other aerospace companies. In terms of value they delivered for that money, they’re far ahead of the competition. Boeing got more money for Starliner than SpaceX got for Crew Dragon. And look how that turned out.

  • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Maybe both are bad?

    “Facebook should be under incredibly strict regulation or killed outright” is also a position I’m fond of.

  • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    They are all problematic. My disagreement with the removal of TikTok is that it should not stop with TikTok. Meta’s apps are an absolute nightmare. Google, Xitter, Amazon, etc., they all need to be curbed when it comes to data collection.

    Data brokering needs to be made illegal or VERY tightly regulated.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      they all need to be curbed when it comes to data collection.

      The problem with TikTok isn’t data collection, though. The stated concern of the US government is that TikTok may be used to inflict foreign influence (ie, Woke Mind Virus Communism).

      That is, incidentally, why the flood of users to RedNote has been so funny. TikTok’s got a bunch of edgy western Zoomers doing “Did You Know Capitalism Is Bad Sometimes?” infographics in between dances. RedNote is just straight up “China Is The Best Country In The World” nature channel style hagiography.

      The US pushed millions of Americans out of the frying pan and directly into the fire.

      • ofcourse@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        Yes, the ban of TikTok has been more about lip service than actual protections for Americans.

        The real solution is passing a comprehensive law that fines/bans any app/platform that is opaque about its influence from governments and its data sharing with governments. But who in Congress today has any appetite for real solutions!

        I had written about this to my reps and their response was a non response - TikTok bad.

    • Venator@lemmy.nz
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      1 month ago

      Seems like meta were trying something similar with thier replacing all links in Facebook messenger with thier fbrpc://facebook/nativethirdparty?app_id Links, but seems like they gave up on it because it was all broken.

      • kibiz0r@midwest.social
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        1 month ago

        Yup. They’re all dangerous monsters.

        IMO, it doesn’t even matter who’s worse, cuz they’re all bad enough they should all be subject to aggressive regulation with the goal of establishing safe interop off-ramps for people to stop using the services or at least use more trustworthy clients.

        In my estimation, TikTok is worse, but that’s not even what the ban is about. It’s because China is spying instead of the US. That’s not a reason to defend TikTok though, or to oppose the government’s decision — cuz they were accidentally right, for the wrong reason.

        • 0ops@lemm.ee
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          1 month ago

          That’s where I’m at. If in an alternate universe Congress did something like banning the distribution of harvested data, even just to foreign entities, and TikTok then refused to comply, then I’d be fully in support with them getting banned for it.

          Here in the real world though, Congress apparently doesn’t have the balls to pass blanket privacy rights like that, because you see, that’d catch some of the wrong fish. I think it says a lot about the state of modern social media that all they were willing to go after TikTok for was something as nebulous as “national security risk”.

  • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    I guess if words don’t mean anything the Elon Musk is whatever you declare him to be

  • Geometrinen_Gepardi@sopuli.xyz
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    2 months ago

    Because tiktok data goes to China, and China is a competitor/geopolitical adversary to the USA. If tiktok was russian, it would be the same story. Besides, tiktok has been proven to be by far the worst data miner you can download from an app store.

    • AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      Messenger is worse by far. This is a verifiable fact just from the permissions requested. The Dunning Kruger in this thread is comical.

      Redditors just turn their brain off when TikTok is the topic

    • Boomer Humor Doomergod@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      China buys a ton of data from Zuck and Musk and a lot of other people.

      The reason it’s being banned is for cutting out the middle man.

      If they actually cared about our data going to geopolitical rivals they’d pass comprehensive privacy protections regardless of where the company is headquartered.

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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      2 months ago

      Not just a data miner, it has some crazy capabilities that are malicious even by the standards of social media phone apps, which were already explicitly malicious. If I remember right, it can download custom code to augment its capabilities per-target, and has encryption to attempt to thwart any attempt to analyze it, which are both pretty unusual amounts of effort to spend from the POV of “we just want to gather your advertising data and listen to your microphone all the time” which are pretty standard things.

  • mydude@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    The problem with tiktok, x, or even red note is that the government ends up with an alternative to their narrative. They can’t have any of that.

    A good example is Israel/Palestine genocide. They lost the narrative war, people woke up. It’s very difficult to put them back to sleep.

    A lot easier to just ban the platform. Security is just an excuse/tool to do so.