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I mean, if that’s the question you want answered…
X uses a native browser controller when you open a link, so the app can’t see what you do in there.
Whereas TikTok uses a managed webview… which they have been caught injecting keyloggers into.
Back in the olden days, we called this a cross-site scripting attack.
Seems like meta were trying something similar with thier replacing all links in Facebook messenger with thier fbrpc://facebook/nativethirdparty?app_id Links, but seems like they gave up on it because it was all broken.
Yup. They’re all dangerous monsters.
IMO, it doesn’t even matter who’s worse, cuz they’re all bad enough they should all be subject to aggressive regulation with the goal of establishing safe interop off-ramps for people to stop using the services or at least use more trustworthy clients.
In my estimation, TikTok is worse, but that’s not even what the ban is about. It’s because China is spying instead of the US. That’s not a reason to defend TikTok though, or to oppose the government’s decision — cuz they were accidentally right, for the wrong reason.
That's where I'm at. If in an alternate universe Congress did something like banning the distribution of harvested data, even just to foreign entities, and TikTok then refused to comply, then I'd be fully in support with them getting banned for it.
Here in the real world though, Congress apparently doesn't have the balls to pass blanket privacy rights like that, because you see, that'd catch some of the wrong fish. I think it says a lot about the state of modern social media that all they were willing to go after TikTok for was something as nebulous as "national security risk".
It is really difficult to write down good regulations. There are so many diverse issues with tech companies. For instance, data harvesting, misinformation, addiction (to short-form content), propaganda, anticompetitive practices, tax evasion etc etc. Ideally there would be some good-standard platform/tech company so we have some idea how to deal what to regulate towards. Otherwise it’s a really tough task.
Finally a reasonable answer that isnt propaganda or stupidity