TikTok is an addicting app where people post short video clips that can either tell a story, be a dance, comedic, sad, etc. It seems to be a spin off of the popular app "Vine" that went away a few years ago.
I am guilty of having the app to watch the videos posted by others, but I deleted it a while back because it wasted too much time. However, the more I learn about the insidiousness of it, the happier I am that I no longer use it!
Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman is criticizing TikTok for being "fundamentally parasitic," in regards to serious privacy concerns.
The app is a video-sharing social networking service owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based company established in 2012 by Zhang Yiming. TikTok launched in 2017 for iOS and Android in markets outside of China.
Huffman said one of the suspicious practices the company partakes in is fingerprinting, a method of tracking devices for each unique visitor, according to The Verge.
While speaking at the Social 2030 venture capital conference, Huffman said, "Maybe I'm going to regret this, but I can't even get to that level of thinking with [TikTok]. I look at that app as so fundamentally parasitic, that it's always listening, the fingerprinting technology they use is truly terrifying, and I could not bring myself to install an app like that on my phone."
"I actively tell people, 'Don't install that spyware on your phone,' " he added.
Research by data protection expert Matthias Eberl highlights the fingerprinting Huffman refers to as an aggregate of audio and browser tracking, allowing the company to know the types of content each user is following. TikTok parent company ByteDance claims the fingerprinting methods are for recognizing malicious browser behavior, but Eberl offers his skepticism, as the platform seemingly works fine without the scripts enabled.
Other figures in the tech industry have expressed qualms with the entertainment app, such as Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.
"They're huge, they're growing really quickly, they've gotten to bigger numbers faster than we ever did," Sandberg said. "[TikTok is] a Chinese company, if people are concerned about data, I think there's a lot to be concerned about there."
ByteDance is not the only Chinese tech company to stir up privacy-related fears in the nation. This week, the Senate approved a bill to ban the purchase of Huawei equipment with federal funds, to bar the possibility of the company placing their 5G equipment in the U.S.
Critics of Huawei, the most extensive 5G equipment provider in the world, cite concerns about a 2017 Chinese intelligence law requiring Chinese companies to participate in state-backed intelligence gathering, according to a previous report.
So if your children are on this app, or if you use the app, you may want to rethink it!
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