I’m not here to claim that Tiktok is completely harmless, or that it’s even a good site. I’m sure they absolutely do collect as much personal information as they can, and I’m sure they give it to the Chinese government whenever they ask. But I don’t understand how Meta and Facebook are meant to be any better? There’s always a lot of hoo-haa going on with politicians promising to ban tiktok, and (at least back on Reddit) everybody’s vowing they will never use tiktok because it’s such a privacy invasive site. Yet I never see anybody going up against Facebook, at least the average person, but they collect just as much personal info and I’m sure hand it over whenever any government agency in the US asks them to
It kind of feels to me like this is some sort of country thing. China is bad, so they shouldn’t have your personal info. But the US is the last bastion of free speech and privacy, so their companies would NEVER dare to invade your privacy, and their government would never abuse their power to get people’s personal info
I’m aware Lemmy probably isn’t the best place to ask since most people here seem to be deep into open source software and often privacy focused (so I suppose wouldn’t use either) but this also feels like the only place on the internet I might actually get an answer that isn’t just “TIKTOK BAD”. If you refuse to use tiktok but are ok with Facebook - why?
I can’t speak to the privacy aspect, but its at least possible to interact with Facebook in a less algorithmized way, especially if you turn off the news feed and just search for interests or visit grandma’s page. Ticktock, from what I understand, just profiles you into boxes and proceeds to shovel a stream of swill into your trough until you are maximally isolated and radicalized in your echo chamber. I think it’s crazy to trust either and I’m glad to see GenZ shunning FB a little more. I avoided Ticktock, but do have a Facebook account.
I think how you interact with the sites can effect perception of privacy.