news TikTok kept separate internal userlist watching gay content,sparked worker complaints

[Espresso]

 

[LadyDiana]

Oh wow so tiktok is actually evil, shoking!

[Bosque]

Of course they did  This information will be most useful to the CCP in the future 

[terrorblade]

tiktoks algo is crazy

[Archetype]

Ya'll don't even understand how unregulated that company is.  It's the most malicious social media company on earth, worse than Fb and Twitter.  Everything you do in that app can be easily monitored by TT's employees and TT's parent company, Bytedance.  

[Big Bad Wolf]

And this is why I don’t even have the clock all installed on my phone. 

[Haus]

That’s ******* evil. 

[EtherealCat]

im sure they keep lists about all sorts of things everyone does it

[Ms. Togekiss]

wbk that company is evil, but tankies will try to convince you otherwise

[Smarticle]

thank god i also watch cringy straight couple content

 

[Selegend]

of course they know i'm gay 

my content is: selena gomez, taylor swift, shirtless hot man, dog & cats. that's all my algorithm is about 

 

Edited May 5, 2023 by Selegend

[Fifteen]

15 minutes ago, Big Bad Wolf said:

And this is why I don’t even have the clock all installed on my phone. 

 

[Contessa]

1 minute ago, Smarticle said:

thank god i also watch cringy straight couple content

 

Thank god for bisexuality!

[Reginald]

8 minutes ago, EtherealCat said:

im sure they keep lists about all sorts of things everyone does it

You're right, and it's a problem. In the US we're already seeing this play out against our citizens. Some Republican prosecutors have forced Facebook to turn over user data related to women who they have accused of seeking "illegal" abortions. 

 

Data/privacy is a major concern, this is one of many reasons I don't use social media anymore. 

[Communion]

Quote

Other topics in TikTok’s data set also included lists of users, but the former employees didn’t consider those topics to be sensitive.

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The data represents users’ interests and isn’t necessarily a sign of someone’s identity, the spokeswoman said. Users who engage with LGBT content on TikTok may not identify as LGBT themselves, just as there are people who enjoy baking content but aren’t bakers, the spokeswoman said

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Internally, some employees had argued that the data was safe to collect, because it didn’t indicate whether users really were members of a particular group, some of the former employees of TikTok said. 

Quote

Social-media platforms including Meta Platforms also track similar data-

 

No comprehensive U.S. privacy law regulates the practice of collecting sensitive data. 

Quote

At TikTok, the company organizes all the videos its users post into a web of clusters, sorted by topics, the former TikTok employees said. The clusters span the universe of TikTok videos, including ones named: mainstream female, alt female, southeastern black male, and coastal, white-collar male. Each cluster includes subgroups; for alt female, those included tattoos, some lesbian content, and “Portland.” A cluster about professional basketball, for example, had subgroups about the Golden State Warriors, and star player Steph Curry.

 

TikTok tracked the categories of content and users on its app in an effort to understand trends and find ways to boost engagement, some of the former employees said.

Quote

TikTok executives became concerned that this data was too widely available within the company, and in 2021, TikTok restricted access to the dashboard, reducing the number of employees who had access to it, according to some of the former employees

It eventually becomes "boy who cried wolf" when fearmongering and China baiting over imagined geopolitical threats are prioritized while choosing not to even thread some needle about consumer tech as a whole and its problematic aspects. 

 

It taking them 10 paragraphs for make the argument that tracking LGBT content as a topic is bad because "Chinese companies all have to listen to the Chinese government, because Chinese people have no free will, and this will be used to blackmail US politicians". 

 

A genuine critique of Big Tech globally and the harms algorithms can have on attention spans or media consumption could be interesting but instead I guess Biden being blackmailed for surfing the FemmeBoyFridays hashtag and being spied on by China is more interesting of a story? 

 

Media narratives like these is why the world at large laughs at America. 

Edited May 5, 2023 by Communion

[Rev8]

1 hour ago, Archetype said:

Ya'll don't even understand how unregulated that company is.  It's the most malicious social media company on earth, worse than Fb and Twitter.  Everything you do in that app can be easily monitored by TT's employees and TT's parent company, Bytedance.  

And to think atrl is defending it so much

[cockatoo]

1 hour ago, Smarticle said:

thank god i also watch cringy straight couple content

 

They still know you're a gay boy boo

 

 

OT: Tbh it was scary how quickly I started getting shown gay content on tiktok

[Smarticle]

5 minutes ago, cockatoo said:

They still know you're a gay boy boo

 

 

OT: Tbh it was scary how quickly I started getting shown gay content on tiktok

Good thing i'm not gay

 

[LustSpell]

Happy I never made an account there and phased out all other social media in my life. No ******* thank you

[Helios]

Is this just kind of the algorithm? Like you watch one video then your feed is a lot of the same content? Anyway the lives on there are a kiiii. The way people debate and get so heated while the hosts are just looking at the camera stone faced will never not be funny.

Edited May 5, 2023 by Helios

[XIAN]

2 hours ago, Big Bad Wolf said:

And this is why I don’t even have the clock all installed on my phone. 

TikTok Tracks You Across the Web, Even If You Don’t Use the App

[JustHoran]

9 minutes ago, XIAN said:

TikTok Tracks You Across the Web, Even If You Don’t Use the App

They all do this. NEXT!

[JustHoran]

Tiktok is no different than the rest of them, Meta is more dangerous by far.

[Sergi91]

Oh no… they can see I enjoy watching TikTok’s of men showing their bubble butts 

[Archetype]

Quote

Social-media platforms including Meta Platforms also track similar data-

 

No comprehensive U.S. privacy law regulates the practice of collecting sensitive data. 

@Communion While this is true, it's also misleading, as the FTC and other government commissions prefer to target specific groups of companies (or target one company) to implement and test new regulations and policies without broad application across tech and social media companies as a whole.  This means that some companies (Fb, for example) are operating with the most comprehensive data and privacy standards (and regulations that only target Fb) in the industry whereas others, like Twitter, Google, or Tiktok, are not or to varying levels, and unless there is a political reason to do so, they are mostly ignored by the FTC.  The truth is, unless the government is given a political reason to look deeply into a company's data and privacy practices, they get away with a lot.  

 

Fear and political objects are fueling the current investigations into Tiktok, but the actual outcome is a net benefit to anyone who uses the app (unless it's banned ofc).  The govt shouldn't stop there though... if they want tech companies to act responsibly, they need to prove that they can broadly implement and ENFORCE regulations to everyone.  They also need to ensure they do not overstep... the FTC just proposed regulating Fb to the point that the FTC would need to approve every single new feature proposed by the company, which is insane.