this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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I have a few feelings about it. First, I’m an average middle-aged middle-class straight white cisgendered male and the TikTok algorithm feeds me tons of stuff that is very pro feminism, pro trans rights, anti racist, pro labor. In a very touching and uplifting way a lot of times, actually. I’m a boring person but VERY passionate about these socially liberal issues and it gives me what I want and need to feel like a force of good, keep up with social issues, stay involved in some way feel passionate. My TikTok feed is woke as shit and good for me. I simply don’t see this on Facebook, YouTube and all the rest. I don’t see it. Of course everyone’s algorithm is different…
So maybe TikTok uses my attention for evil…data harvesting, influencing, hacking…I don’t know. I don’t trust china any more or less than most people. But how much do we trust meta, Google, Apple, Microsoft etc? I don’t particularly.
I may just be naive…but I do see a lot of good things that TikTok does, as dumb as it sounds.
Many friends have asked me the same thing. My response is, I don't trust American companies either. I trust it if it's open source and audited like all the security and privacy tools I use. Reddit was one of the last apps I had that wasn't open source. Now I'm completely degoogled and use Lemmy as social media and a place to find information.
People will come at me with "privacy is dead and impossible" or "well you're racist because you don't like Tik Tok because it's Chinese, you use Google and Microsoft ". Nope, I use Linux and a used degoogled Pixel. I went out of my way to avoid their crap.
If you want some resources I really like Mental Outlaw, Techlore, The channels Hated One, The New Oil, privacyguides, privacytools, and all the Lemmy privacy and degoogle communities.
But imagine if it weren't.
Weren’t what?