For Friday Faithfuls this week, Jim Adams has challenged us to write anything we want to about TikTok, the Chinese short-form video hosting service owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, which allows users to submit short videos, which can range in duration from 3 seconds to 10 minutes.
Jim noted that, on March 23, members of Congress grilled TikTok CEO Shou Chew during a hearing and many called for TikTok to be banned in the U.S. because this social media site is seen as being a potential national security threat.
I don’t know much about TikTok. I know what it is — a social media site sort of like Instagram and YouTube, I think — but don’t have the app and have never actually seen or used it.
I’ve read about the controversy in the news, but don’t know enough to take a position one way or the other between the alleged threat to national security and the threat to freedom of speech or expression.
So this is a rare instance where Fandango has no opinion to contribute to the discussion. I’ll be interested in reading others’ comments.
This, That, and the Other 
Tik tik is another social media distraction from what’s really going on in the real world 🌎 😳
LikeLiked by 2 people
The Chinese government has a long history of intellectual property theft, so the scope of what they’re looking for goes well beyond classified information or disruptive attacks, as it also extends to industrial espionage to obtain proprietary information. And they can quickly sort through millions of records to find the persons that are of interest to them. They have the ability to connect people, so their interest isn’t limited to people who actually work at key facilities, but also their friends, and even people who live nearby or in the same building. Once they have a person of interest, they can use them in different ways to obtain what they want, such as gaining access through nefarious means to an enterprise system where the person works by launching very specific phishing attacks against the person.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Okay, that’s some serious shit.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I would have thought that they all do this?
LikeLiked by 2 people
They want us to fail, so they can thrive.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Its so icky!
LikeLiked by 2 people
The above description of TikTok is the behind-the-scenes, kind of like explaining Twitter by describing Elon Musk’s bizarre political maneuvers. True, but doesn’t explain the technology or why people use it.
TikTok is video-based, short sets of images, sorted. People like to go in and scroll and scroll and scroll, and those who do videos make them to have micro-content, get a lot of eyeballs watching them doing anything, dancing, cooking, acting goofy etc. So it’s for super short attention spans. People love it; people make a lot of money off the advertisers who support stars who get people to watch it. And those of us who have long attention spans can’t stand it. It’s like walking down the street and seeing one variation of a circus act after another.
LikeLiked by 2 people
🤔 TikTok was never my cup of tea.
Therefore, I have nothing good or bad to say about it.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’ve never used or looked into setting up a TikTok account, and am not interested, I just think a lot of the complaints in Congress apply to additional tech companies.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Elon Musk is mentioned
herein as compromised by CCP…
not the primary discussion content.
The New York Times loses verified status on
twitter, after refusing to pay for the blue check
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m like you, I’ve never had tik tok. As far as I’m aware, people just make little videos on it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I don’t use tictoc either, never have!
never will!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Indian government banned the app and the company from operating in 2020. It was a big move as the majority of the youth used it (I never did). Banning it just helped instagram as they had launched “reels” which was similar to what tiktok offered. Tiktok apparently had shit ton of bullshit videos and crap which was deemed unfit and unhealthy by many. But the most important was that the government recognized it as a threat because of the company’s close ties with Chinese government. And India and China are bad with each other. Not just bad. More than that. I think most of what I said related to tiktok US as well.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Same here
Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone
LikeLiked by 1 person
Don’t have an account, but every once in a while my daughter sends me a link to watch and have seen a few shared on Facebook. Not sure what the security risk is… someone dancing in code?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I don’t know. Something about the Chinese government having access to a lot of personal information.
LikeLiked by 1 person
So much personal information is already online it is scary.
LikeLiked by 1 person