Why is TikTok seen as privacy invading and bad, but Facebook is fine?
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?
Facebook is definitely not “fine” when it comes to privacy. It’s less worse than TikTok because it’s an American-based company, so in theory there’s a more accountability compared to TikTok (owned and operated by China).
As far as I know this isnt even true. Just a common belief because of all the fearmongering about every chinese product. Only 20% of bytedance is owned by chinese investors. Global investors own majority (60%) and employees own 20%
I'm not saying that there wouldnt be concerns about privacy but its not some chinese state owned spyware like people think.
Also the fearmongering about china is asl ocompletely valid since they are spying a lot