Should you delete TikTok from your phone? | TikTok | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/21/delete-tiktok-phone-data-facebook
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It’s a tough time to be a TikToker. The video-sharing platform owned by the Chinese technology giant ByteDance has been censured in India, accused of “spying” by the president of the United States, and has provoked the ire of former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith in the UK. Listen to the prognostications of some politicians or visit certain corners of the internet and you’d think TikTok was a deep-state plot to capture your data so it can be mined by Chinese spies.
The truth is more complicated. We happily hand over just as much data to plenty of other apps, including many based in Silicon Valley, and much of the same data we produce when using apps such as TikTok is also posted on YouTube and shared through Facebook. If we’re worried about Chinese snooping, then it’s worth remembering the revelations first aired seven years ago about the US National Security Agency eavesdropping on all our communications. While TikTok may have been described as a “data-collection service”, the same could also be said of Facebook or any other popular social media platform.
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Arguments against TikTok have been amplified by supposed evidence of its wrongdoings. The amount of data the app collects was used as proof that something was awry – despite the fact that multiple experts have said TikTok is no different in this regard from Facebook (TikTok’s head of public policy recently stressed that the company is incorporated in the US, where its data is stored). That the app until recently accessed a user’s mobile phone clipboard has been cited as definitive proof of a deep-state conspiracy, but LinkedIn and Reddit have also only just stopped doing the same. One post by a pseudonymous Reddit user sparked anger after they alleged that TikTok is “a data-collection service … thinly veiled as a social network”, but the user lost evidence for their claims because of a motherboard failure – the digital equivalent of your dog eating your homework.