Seriously? The company that has been selling/giving American's call data and other personal data (cell GPS, etc.) to our government gets a sweetheart deal and pays less than the other corporations do? Anyone else think that's a weird coincidence?

There are tons of malware apps that can do the same thing, though. Hell, The NSO Group used Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp to do that, why aren't those apps banned by the US Govt?

What information have I provided to TikTok - my email, my birthdate, and maybe a couple other items, of non-security value> What information can they gain from my account? They can see that I like to watch crafting/woodworking videos, funny videos, and will sometimes pause enough to watch a few seconds of hot girls in bikinis dancing around. Oh, no, we've already lost WWIII without a shot fired!

Seriously, though, our country (United States) has no real laws for data brokers or website date security - everything we do (and have done) online is available for a price to anyone willing to pay - even the Chinese government. If the US Govt wants me to believe that they give a shit about my personal data falling into the wrong hands, then they need to create new data security regulations closer to home before worrying about what the Chinese might do with TikTok data - when they can just outright buy EVERYTHING there is to know about us online - plus whatever data is sold on the black market from data breaches at major companies every couple of months. Once the US Govt does something about that (and I don't mean sternly worded letters or hand-slaps), then I'll believe they care about keeping my info private and *THEN* they can start banning foreign apps.

But in the meantime, leave my dancing bikini-clad girls alone!

Anyone remember the good old days when there was ONE video streaming service and you could pay one monthly fee and watch almost everything you wanted?

And then the various big companies started getting greedy and wanted to launch their own streaming service, and it got to the point where if you wanted to watch a variety of shows, it would end up costing as much, if not more than cable TV?

And then the big companies started cheating on their contracts and terminating the streaming rights of multiple shows and movies so they wouldn't have to pay the writers/actors/etc a share of the streaming rights?

It was right about then that video piracy started seeming like a good idea again.

If you go to the ER at your local hospital and they ask you "Do you want a real doctor with years of training and actual real experience who will use up to date medical technology to diagnose your issue(s) and prescribe real medication that has been clinically proven to help/cure your condition? Or, would you prefer to see a faith healer who will anoint you with essential oils while praying over you?" then it's an issue - and you should really re-think your choice of hospitals....

I didn't give a crap about homeopathic remedies that could only be purchased at gas station checkouts and in "Health Food" stores. People that want to believe that have their right and choice to be wrong - unless they're forcing it on their kids in lieu of actual medical treatment. My issue was when CVS started making shelf space available for items that have NOT been clinically proven to do anything and are NOT meeting FDA approval guidelines, Now, you've got non-medical "medicine" in bright and shiny packing on the shelf next to real medicine so that all of the people who claim it's real can point and say "See, I can buy it off the shelf at CVS - a "real" drug store - it must be "real"!

Agreed, where can I subscribe to this newsletter?

Yes, but they're paying a DIFFERENT internet service provider, they should ALSO be paying the internet service provider that their customers are using to access them, at least according to ISPs.

Imagine if you shipped a package and paid the shipping fees, but when the recipient goes to pick it up, they have to pay again to receive the package - this is how our Internet fees work as of today. But then the receiving company says "Hey, we should be getting some of that 'shipping' money, too, as our customers wouldn't even be bugging us for packages if "Big Shipping" wasn't sending us packages every day!" This is the future that ISPs want - to double dip and get paid again for something they didn't even do.

I love how every article about this makes it sound like all you need is a thumb drive and you can steal a Hyundai or Kia. They gloss over the fact that you have to still get inside of the car somehow and break open the steering column and THEN you can insert something roughly USB shaped into the ignition switch, turn it and drive off.

Not sure if it's typical fear-mongering headlines, or just shitty reporting.

AND.... thanks to the US Govt, that may not be available much longer, either.

Not true. You can deactive your Threads account which will stop all new interactions, set your account to private, uninstall the app, etc. You can't cancel your Threads account without simultaneously canceling your Instagram account as they are one and the same thing. They are currently working on a way to separate them.

Tik-Tok knows my birthdate, my phone number, the password I created when I registered with them and a lengthy viewing history of woodworking & crafting videos and more than a few "hot girls dancing in bikinis" videos.

How exactly is that going to enable an easy China win of WW-III?

And why is it every single time there is tech that scares people they have to include "oh, and we're pretty sure there is child sexual material involved, too" with zero evidence?

Can you imagine the sort of havoc the Chinese government could wreak if they had access to our private kissing data!

It's bad enough that they have access to how many videos I've watched of "hot girls dancing in bikinis" data from TikTok, but THIS - THIS GOES TOO FAR, I say!

Lawyers are pissed that they can be replaced with a small shell script of a series of If Then statements....

And if by "common sense" you mean "split the project across companies located in the states represented by the people in power of making such decisions so that they could all get a chance to suckle at the teat of taxpayer money", then you're correct.

You can use something like Brave with ScriptSafe or NoScript

But this goes completely away with Google's Manifest V3 which blocks these blockers and enforces tracking.

Don't be evil my ass.