patrick.net

China is spying on US citizens even more than the US is spying on US citizens!

Get on TikTok - check it out.

https://www.tiktok.com/

I don't think it's designed to spy on people. It's designed to make people crazy and I'm NOT exaggerating about that.

There's not a single video on there that is educational or thought provoking. It's all cotton candy.

What could possibly be the point on spying on the people that would use TikTok? The people that use it, are devoid of any higher thinking whatsoever. A significant number of users on it, are legitimately insane.

richwicks says

A significant number of users on it, are legitimately insane.

Fact check: plausible

They have access via Perkins/Coie to the FBI databases, so why not?

No fucking shit.

Why this 'news' even rates articles is what shocks me instead.

This was known since like...fucking forever.

richwicks says

What could possibly by the point on spying on the people that would use TikTok? The people that use it, are devoid of any higher thinking whatsoever.

Yeah, I have to agree with you there!

Allowing this chinese cultural spyware and influence machine to continue running is sooo fucking stupid.

If I want to be an optimist here, maybe they fear banning it will cause chyna to retaliate and ban our stuff, and maybe they hope tiktok will just die soon and stop being a problem for us. But I think its silly to allow this and pretend its an acceptable business. We need to stop the BS pretending that were friends.

Duh!

PeopleUnited says

richwicks says

A significant number of users on it, are legitimately insane.

Fact check: plausible

It's Libs of TIKTOK for a reason.

You can't do anything similar on any other platform and it's not because there's censorship on those platforms. TikTok encourages insane behavior.

https://notthebee.com/article/leaked-audio-shows-americans-tiktok-data-repeatedly-accessed-from-china

Patrick says

https://notthebee.com/article/leaked-audio-shows-americans-tiktok-data-repeatedly-accessed-from-china

Go onto tiktok.com

It's just a bunch of insane people - how do you exploit that information?

It's a platform to encourage insanity, not to spy on people. They MIGHT spy on people, but it's like spying on the dregs of society. "Oh, how can I exploit this non binary bread gender person?" - you can't. You can get it fired, maybe, that's it - libsoftiktok will do it for you.

Go to the site:

https://www.tiktok.com/

It's the most brainless site on the internet. I suspect the average IQ of the users there is 90. It's like trying to eat a gallon of ice cream. It's so mindnumbing.

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/babylon-bee-banned-from-tiktok-without-explanation-or-option-to-appeal/

The good news is that Tiktok has less quality content on it now.

https://babylonbee.com/news/china-threatens-to-fire-senators-who-voted-for-tiktok-ban

BEIJING — China's President Xi issued a stern warning to American politicians this week, vowing that any members of Congress who dare to vote for a ban on TikTok will be fired from their jobs.

"We hired all you American legislators to do one job: weaken and destroy America from within," said Xi gravely. "If you can't prove your fealty to the glorious CCP who graciously put you in your position, it will go on your performance review, and trust me — you don't want that to happen."

Already, lawmakers in Washington are backing away from supporting legislation that would ban the use of TikTok on government devices, although they insist it has nothing to do with the Chinese threat. "I just really like TikTok!" said Representative Eric Swalwell. "Fang Fang is on there! Um, I mean, it's so fun and creative!"

"I believe we need to think twice about banning this wonderful app," said Senator Mitch McConnell. "Have you seen the dancing girls on there? Such talent!"

President Xi has warned any lawmakers running for reelection that he won't secretly support their campaigns unless they comply. At publishing time, Army Chief of Staff General Milley had instructed his entire chain of command to download the app.

Google, amazon, youtube, facebk, insta, what's app, etc all collect data from all over the world. China doing same, should not be a surprise.

Curious what can u gather from girls dancing , pics , age, what else?

KgK one says

Google, amazon, youtube, facebk, insta, what's app, etc all collect data from all over the world. China doing same, should not be a surprise.

Curious what can u gather from girls dancing , pics , age, what else?

If they use the app, their phone number, linked accounts and add ons that use the app, their current location, where they work, shop, etc.

Most people, esp. young people, use the apps.

AmericanKulak says

KgK one says

Google, amazon, youtube, facebk, insta, what's app, etc all collect data from all over the world. China doing same, should not be a surprise.

Curious what can u gather from girls dancing , pics , age, what else?

If they use the app, their phone number, linked accounts and add ons that use the app, their current location, where they work, shop, etc.

Most people, esp. young people, use the apps.

That isn't useful information that China can exploit considering that children and weirdos are the ones that use TikTok.

People who use Amazon, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter - they're just pathetic.

KgK one says

Curious what can u gather from girls dancing , pics , age, what else?

Big tech / big brother learns incredible amounts of things about people via phone apps. To most users, it is simply unfathomable how much can be learned and derived.

Like mentioned above, they get location data, phone #, unique id tracking numbers and locations of all wifi access points you come near, and same for bluetooth (every phone you walk near...). And timestamps for each of these things. This data allows them to see your location habits, like your daily path, what stores/locations you visit, who your friends / acquaintances are. This data can easily be combined in massive aggregates, and they can use it to make incredibly scary accurate predictions about your personality, your likes/dislikes, politics, spending/behavioral habits, and more. This data often lets them derive who you personally are.

Just think about a single data stream - location. With location alone, they can easily learn where you work, where you live/sleep at night, and who your friends/family are (2 phones often in the same places at the same times = friends/family/coworker/etc, and the common location tells them even more about the relation, such as if the common location is personal, such as a residential home, and what other types of common locations theyve seen you together at). They also stand a good chance at learning some of your interests: frequent home depot trips on saturdays? Weekend warrior diyer. Weekday mornings filled with Home depot and other construction related locations? Maybe a contractor. Drag strips and auto parts stores? Gearhead. As an example, being a contractor or gearhead will factor into many other predictions about you, much as someone who frequents some trendy soy coffee house - pretty easy to guess the likely politics and interests of each of these groups of people.

Keep in mind they not only get to make predictions about who/what you are by observing these things, but they also learn as they go. Some signals may strongly suggest that maybe 10,000 of their users are gearheads, and they then get to analyze and discover what other types of interests/behaviors is common in gearheads. How many like mexican food? How many are gay? How frequently they leave their home / what hours. Do they go out on july 4th to watch fireworks? Do they ever show up at protests, and if so, which types? Do they vote in person? Do they watch the superbowl (obviously not if theyre traveling during superbowl hours)? Do they go camping? Do they travel? What types of vacations? Each of these answers has further predictive power. The more you know, the better you can predict other things, which allows you to make further predictions. It's self reinforcing.

This is just a tiny example of what they can do with location alone. The whole game gets more effective the more data streams they add into the mix. I guarantee you there's also predictive opportunities in simply paying attention to how fast someone swipes to the next video when the video contains xyz content, or how many hours they can keep you swiping by showing content abc. Did you suddenly stop swping when the algo fed you some woke crap? Did you swipe with renewed vigor for the next 10 minutes when the algo started talking about orange man bad? They can learn so much about you from even subtle sub second differences in your swipe response time.

Sometimes they get lucky and the data is strong and unambiguous, and they may feel 99.9% confident they know your personal name/identity, while other times maybe lesser confident (they know your house has 3 people who sleep there, and maybe knows 1-2 of the names for sure, but arent sure which one you are). It depends on what they want to use the data for as to how sure of their predictions they need to be. But, I think maybe one of the most likely uses (for now) is to influence people, and you dont need perfect accuracy for this, just be correct more often than wrong. It just so happens that knowing all this stuff about people allows them to deliver superb advertising. But, the very same data can be used to advertise can be used for influence in general. It can help them estimate how certain events/actions will be received by various groups in a population, and also how to sway each of those groups towards their desired result. i.e. if they want to encourage the usa to allow more muslim immigrants, the way you optimally craft that argument is very different for a liberal target, vs a conservative, vs a catholic, vs a librarian etc... and even better, they have the data and feedback loops to actually deliver such an influence campaign to these various groups and measure the effectiveness of each tailored argument, allowing them to hone their tactics in time. They can easily test the same argument w/ 100 baristas vs 100 auto mechanics. This allows them to gradually learn how to get better and better at influencing people, because they essentially have unlimited polls to learn from without having to ever conduct a poll.

IMO there's incredible psychological predictive power in all of this. They freely admit they use all this data for advertising, and advertising is really just the art of making people buy the "correct" products and services - manipulation. The same manipulation can be applied for so many other uses. Personally, I think this enormous monitoring and influence apparatus is a large part of why the west seems to have gone crazy these past 10-15 years: it is the very same era where tracking and massive analytics "for advertising" became popular. Foreign govts want this data for the same reason the us govt does - influence and control.

Sure, all this information is 'available' and 'on record', but who can really unravel this surfeit of data, even with sophisticated database analysis tools? Who is worthy of the attention of a 100K a year spook analyst sitting at a computer screen parsing this shit for a particular individual? Who gets the 'one way whorehouse mirror' blackmail?

Only those at the proximity to the Emperor nodes of power are analyzed. The rest lies fallow 'in case of emergency'. It's the 'silence of the fwapping'. China seems to be fucking up big time with its experiments in Borg control. It's not helping them at all, even makes them look surpassingly foolish.

The grandiosity and rampant cruelty of the psychopaths still does not meet their capabilities. They only inflict sorties of disaster, which seems to be their historical norm.

Ceffer says

Sure, all this information is 'available' and 'on record', but who can really unravel this surfeit of data, even with sophisticated database analysis tools? Who is worthy of the attention of a 100K a year spook analyst sitting at a computer screen parsing this shit for a particular individual?

I think this is a very common misconception - that manual human parsing and analysis needs to occur to use this data. Sure, there's always opportunities for additional analysis to be made by individual humans upon certain targets, but the point is enormous amounts of this analysis code is written once, and then run on billions of people. The results are just plain always available, likely updating on a schedule, whether there's anyone who currently wants to view them or not.

Like I said, I think most of the current uses are in aggregate (influence/intelligence campaigns). But just because most people dont have a dedicated human trying to squeeze out extra orange juice on their personal history doesnt mean our data is not being used. Far from it.

https://sashastone.substack.com/p/the-death-of-comedy

The only time I laugh anymore, I mean really laugh is when I watch Tik Tok. I watch short videos knowing I am in the lair of humanity’s ultimate destruction. It’s too good. It’s too addicting. It offers up a glimpse of the kind of freedom we used to have in the mainstream but no longer do. There is no policing thought or speech. There is only the algorithm that keeps giving you exactly what you want. ...

The funny videos remind me of what Twitter used to be before it became the 9th Circle of Hell. I know Tik Tok is bad. It’s a data-gathering machine for the Chinese Communist Party, and it’s also a time-waster and potentially a hypnotic ritual to separate you from your money as you fall into a trance and buy whatever scrolls past you.

But Tik Tok is funny. It’s funny in the way nothing else is anymore. Not even Youtube. The Prince Harry mockery was the stuff of legends.

Facebook, Google bought your medical data from GoodRx.
GoodRx got less than a slap on the wrist. Maybe we should forget talking about data privacy at this point since its too late.

Hircus says

Big tech / big brother learns incredible amounts of things about people via phone apps. To most users, it is simply unfathomable how much can be learned and derived.

Big Tech is non-political ruling party of our country.

Patrick says

https://sashastone.substack.com/p/the-death-of-comedy

The only time I laugh anymore, I mean really laugh is when I watch Tik Tok. I watch short videos knowing I am in the lair of humanity’s ultimate destruction. It’s too good. It’s too addicting. It offers up a glimpse of the kind of freedom we used to have in the mainstream but no longer do. There is no policing thought or speech. There is only the algorithm that keeps giving you exactly what you want. ...

The funny videos remind me of what Twitter used to be before it became the 9th Circle of Hell. I know Tik Tok is bad. It’s a data-gathering machine for the Chinese Communist Party, and it’s also a time-waster and potentially a hypnotic ritual to separate you from your money as you fall into a trance and buy whatever scrolls past you.

But Tik Tok is funny. It’s funny in the way not...

I have literally never seen anything on TikTok that was anything worth consuming. I generally look for educational stuff, either political or technical, and it's just a stream of endless stupidity. Like eating cotton candy instead of a meal. I seriously don't know how anybody can stand it or why it's popular.

Even watching libsoftiktok is nauseating. I don't think 1/2 the people are serious, and those that are, are clearly mentally unhinged. Am I supposed to laugh at how crazy people are?

i too miss days we had freedom of speech, before gatekeepers went cancel culture to control all of us.

FortwayeAsFuckJoeBiden says

i too miss days we had freedom of speech, before gatekeepers went cancel culture to control all of us.

You still have it, just use other sites.

Really, sites that restrict speech, they are just dead for anything regarding information. It's absolutely pointless to watch youtube for example about ANYTHING that is political.

The newest version of tik tok pokes you with a needle for DNA analysis to see how your organs match for harvesting. If you see stealthy Chinese lurking around your house with surgical bags, be afraid, very afraid.

Ceffer says

If you see stealthy Chinese lurking around your house with surgical bags, be afraid, very afraid.

Defeat that harvester by chain smoking and drinking heavily. That way your heart, lungs, and liver will be of no value to him.

richwicks says

FortwayeAsFuckJoeBiden says

i too miss days we had freedom of speech, before gatekeepers went cancel culture to control all of us.

You still have it, just use other sites.

Really, sites that restrict speech, they are just dead for anything regarding information. It's absolutely pointless to watch youtube for example about ANYTHING that is political.

its the culture man, people self censor hard.

Maybe the Chinese use tik tok vids of trannies tonguing and trout pout kissing the cameras as brainwashing torture to break down people who won't wear slave masks.

So, American corporations including the government corporation can collect all the data they want because that's healthy capitalism?