Chinese TikTok alternative RedNote could pose greater security risks, experts say
Chinese TikTok alternative RedNote could pose greater security risks, experts say
RedNote is based in China, which makes the app vulnerable to potential data and censorship requests.
Summary
Many Americans are migrating to RedNote, a Chinese-owned app based in China, raising significant privacy and security concerns.
Experts warn that RedNote, based in China, is subject to Chinese laws, including the Personal Information Protection Law and Data Security Law, which grant the government rights to request data and cooperation with intelligence operations.
Enforcement of these laws is often opaque. Analysts highlight risks of data collection, algorithm manipulation, and censorship on RedNote.
Critics argue the U.S. lacks comprehensive privacy laws, driving users to platforms like RedNote that may pose even greater risks than TikTok.
I doubt the Chinese are going to sell our information to insurance companies to raise our rates like every company in America
It is almost as though TiK Tok's data collection was a symptom of unregulated data collection. If only there was some way to reduce the amount of data companies were allowed to collect. Oh well I guess we can just ban this one as well.
If all my data is for sale and China can just buy all my data from Meta, Amazon, Google, etc. Then why not just skip the middleman? At least if I give my data directly to the CCP, Zuckerberg won't have access to it.
In general those companies don't sell data.
It's not in their best interest to sell data when they could instead sell ads using your data.
FBI: "Be careful what Apps you use because they are all collecting data on you" "Cover your Webcam, it is probably hacked" "Turn off location on your phone, because that's being hacked" "All of our phones are being spied on by China from a back door via the telco infrastructure that the Government refuses to correct, because they want to spy to"
Congress: "Tiktok is the biggest problem"
I think we need legislation to give us privacy in the world wide web and in that aspect you are correct. Where I disagree is that information is harmless and you dont care if the CCP has it or the US has it. In the USA we have freedoms that chinese dont have, also hundreds of thousands chinese nationals are coming through the mexican border. Why are they coming to the US by the hundreds of thousands if China is good and the US is bad. Joining another chinese app is insane and if they reach huge #s they will ban those apps as well.
I agree with you on the web privacy legislation, but the point u/Filthmontane was making is that the CCP could have our data anyway, by buying it from Meta or Google, so at least giving it directly to China is better (in that at least Meta and Google don't have it). I think that argument is only half-serious, but after the whole Cambridge Analytica debacle still more serious than it should be...
Yeah. A ""security risk"" of all us fucking slaves realizing what a raw deal we've got.
I think the Chinese hackers inside american isp's hardware etc are a way bigger risk...
Given they just use backdoors put in in order to allow warrantless surveillance by the NSA and FBI, they're not a threat.
No shit but Americans are god damn stupid and petulant morons that don't think anything but being angry that one of their circus sideshow was being taken away from them.
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Doh
Just doh
Oh nooooooooo
If they ban rednote I am dropshipping my data directly to Xi
Yeah, obviously, but the US isn't going to implement privacy laws because that would impact American tech corporations as well, who also do mass data collection.
Which means they've legislated themselves into a game of whack a mole. Without true regulations all they can do is wait for the next mole to pop up.
Incoming: all apps offered on the appstore must be whitelisted and approved by the DOGE. If a social media apps is not approved they can sell themselves within 24h to Musk in order to get apprlval.
I thought that was kind of the point... people started using red note because it was openly what the government fears Tictoc could be as a form of protest.
What's next a news story that says people printing out their browser history and dropping it off at the chinese embassies, might be giving their private data to china?
If that's true then people are more stupid than i thought
Oh they are. Albert Einstein: Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, but I'm not quite sure about the universe yet.
No shit
Someone: and they just hand over their SSN to you?
Zuckerberg: Stupid fucks
Boo hoo! The US can't spy on it's people anymore because everyone got wise and switched to foriegn apps.
This has nothing to do with the security or privacy of the people. They're pissed because they're losing power over them.
On a side note, everyone that has joined REDnote is waking up to the lifetime of propaganda the american government has been feeding them. This past week has been wild.
I just learned from red note that Chinese people don't pay property taxes. Once they pay off their mortgage, they just own their home. I'm definitely the one living in a third world country.
there’s genuinely been some class consciousness getting into play
i saw some users from both countries compare prices of eggs and vegetables, and they even did the necessary math of accounting for average wage and cost of living. the chinese users are not allowed to talk about their politics (sadly; this is a bad thing) but they are allowed to talk about foreign politics and they are probably bigger fans of Luigi Mangione even than i have seen in English speaking social media. there are candid discussions of queerphobia as well in its different social (and for the US, political too) manifestations between countries.
Security risks, like interacting with Chinese people and undoing decades of our propaganda
Funny how people downvote this even though it's honestly true lmao
The US government’s position on this can be summed up as “massive unaccountable US tech firms having all of your data and manipulating public opinion via their black box algorithms is okay, but Chinese companies doing that is a national security concern”. I call BS. The degree to which China is actually a US adversary is being massively overstated by the US government as they see this as a threat to US geopolitical hegemony and America’s ability to propagandize its own citizens. I have spent some time on RedNote (Xiaohongshu) and all I have seen is friendly cross-cultural exchange and discussion between these supposed ‘adversaries’.
Remember that time that China bombed a US ship in the Mediterranean though, to try to trick us into a war with Egypt?
Wait, that was "Israel".
I want to take it even further down, what effect does China harvesting my data have? I'm a poor white man working in a school in the Midwest with extreme left beliefs. I'm not privy to government Intel, I don't when go to school board meetings. All I watch is redstone tutorials and goblin-core videos. I'm not saying I'm a default demographic, but if you take the entire digital footprint of everyone I know, you're getting terrabytes of wasted space. You can't even use it to radicalize us because we use it for escapism, not news. Not that that's an option, I'd happy sell out this shithole for a stable job and dental, but I don't see China sending me any pizza parties.
US propaganda has been focused on telling people nonstpp how Muslims and Chinese are all just busy hating the US because of their "muuh freedom" and their greatest whishes is to take that "freedom" away. Also they are all underdeveloped peasants according to the propaganda.
The greatest danger to that propaganda model is normal people talking with each other and realizing people are just people with people problems. Doesn't matter where in the world you are. The average person will worry about paying their bills, their work, the health of their family and how their kids do in school.
People in warzones care about staying alive and overcoming their attackers, but even then most people who have been at the end of American barrels or barrels allied to the US just want to be left the fuck alone in their own countries. Very few actually want to destroy the US, despite having their family members murdered by the US or its Allies. (Same goes for people dealing with Russian, French or other foreign military attacks)
Very simple, they can track a lot of your online activity (as well as of course what you watch on TikTok) and any of this could be used for future blackmail.
Or I'll spell it out. 15 years from now you are at middle management position in a defense contractor and some stranger reaches out to you and says they'll dump a bunch of insanely embarrassing shit from your 20s - think evidence of infidelity, porn playlists, etc - unless you do this simple thing, send them some plans now and then or pass along a password. Nobody will ever know.
No not you specifically, you're boring. Whoever is in positions they find interesting.
have spent some time on RedNote (Xiaohongshu) and all I have seen is friendly cross-cultural exchange and discussion between these supposed ‘adversaries’.
Nobody is saying the Chinese people and American people are enemies or adversaries.
I have spent some time on RedNote (Xiaohongshu) and all I have seen is friendly cross-cultural exchange and discussion between these supposed ‘adversaries’.
Do you really not understand the difference between "Chinese people" and "Chinese government"?
Someone go make green note, blue note, yellow note, all the notes!!!!
Someone did. You can write words on them. They come in a pad. Sometimes sticky!
But they don’t have directions on how to 3d print a gun, and absolutely no references to Tiananmen Square!!
excellent to know so we are going to make and enforce privacy regulations so this pattern doesn’t keep repeating itself
… right?
It has Israeli investors so any pro-palestine content won't last long!
I doubt it. These things are controlled by the CCP and the CCP is loving the way Israel just keeps exposing Western hypocrisy.
I don’t understand, why are exactly are people moving to RedNote? I’ve never heard of it.
Probably as a protest move, but in a stupid way.
Some of it is ignorance. People see TikTok is banned, google "TikTok alternative," and click on the first sponsored result. They would need to know (and care) why TikTok was targeted in order to find something better. People hear that RedNote is the next app, so people go to RedNote, and therefore it becomes the next app.
Some of it is astroturf. Do the people telling you that RedNote has become popular have any interest in making RedNote popular? Is RedNote really exploding, or is it just interesting to talk about? Like is it going to snow heavily tomorrow, or is it good for weather services to get eyes on their content? Hype has its own inertia.
Some of it is real. RedNote was already very popular in China, and there is already a lot of content. People comparing it to Loops, for example, might find Loops sadly lacking in content and influencers. Influencers go where their audience is, and the audience follows the influencers. Nobody wants to be the last one on the new platform, and it's fairly simple to make the switch, so a whole lot of people jumped into RedNote at once because they don't care about CCP data mining or political issues.
Who, the people selling the Mandarin translator pens? Are they behind the Tiktok ban too?
people would rather have their personal data stolen by the chinese government than the US who poses much more of an immediate threat.
detractors describe this as astroturfing but that’s BS. congress brought this on themselves by making such a clearly self-serving gesture.
people would rather have their personal data stolen by the chinese government than the US who poses much more of an immediate threat.
Oh sure. Chinese living in the US telecom network for years isn't a threat. China compromising critical US infrastructure isn't an immediate threat.
And the issue is less about stealing your data (although that is an issue), it's about being shown pro-CCP and anti-American content by a Chinese app. It's about direct foreign influence by an adversarial county (the government, not the people, apparently that distinction needs to be pointed out to people here).
Just one of those tic tok trends basically
Bruh
I bet it was because they saw propaganda on tik Tok telling them to. But I'm sure they all feel like it's their own choice and that they are sending a message to the American government.
The news tends to drive things like this, so I don't know how many people are really "flocking" to this Chinese application. This is also so artificial. Forces are driving this and people don't seem to notice.
Regardless of the number, I'm completely baffled. They don't even understand why the US government is doing this in the first place.
These folks are jumping off a sinking ship and grabbing steadfast to the first piece of flotsam that they found... which ironically suffers from the same exact problems that the ship did in the first place. It will inevitably suffer the same demise. It's crazy that those holding on don't seem to understand that.
If you want to keep TikToking or whatever it is people do on that platform, you should join the closest Western version, preferably owned by a multi-billionaire in the US. Their platforms will be protected no matter how much data is stolen and how much privacy is violated. The goal wasn't to stop the communist Chinese government, but ensure that Americans maintain a stranglehold over these vices so that they can benefit from them. People are being used and just don't care.
It sure would have been nice if more people join the fediverse in response to things like this, but alas... it's not quite mature enough yet. They can't look for something like Loops because it just isn't ready. They go to things like BlueSky, completely oblivious to the fact that it can't be what they really want. They don't even know what they want. They just follow the lemmings before them.
Someday this will change for the better. Maybe. Perhaps not.
I'll never personally understand short form video and influencers and everything else around that. But for others, it's a huge deal... at least that's what the media seem to be making it into.
I mean... perhaps this is unintentionally the begining of something good and they just don't realize it yet.
Good luck TickTockers. Even if the platform remains, you're still being taking advantage. The opportunity is now, and you're blowing it. Something completely entrenched has finally been disrupted. You could take advantage of something better, but you're choosing not to.
If you want to keep TikToking or whatever it is people do on that platform, you should join the closest Western version, preferably owned by a multi-billionaire in the US. Their platforms will be protected no matter how much data is stolen and how much privacy is violated. The goal wasn’t to stop the communist Chinese government, but ensure that Americans maintain a stranglehold over these vices so that they can benefit from them. People are being used and just don’t care.
I think this shows a misunderstanding. A lot of the switch to Red Note is conscious of this. That’s why people deliberately chose to go to a Chinese app, knowing that the goal of the TikTok ban never had anything to do with its stated intentions. People on TikTok have been laughing at “Senator, I’m Singaporean” for months.
It’s a large enough movement that the app has added a translate feature and English/Spanish interfaces. It’s actually somewhat annoying to some of the Chinese folks there, and as someone who wants some language immersion, it’s hard to find comment sections without a lot of English conversation.
Everyone knows that US corps Hoover up as much data as they can get from us, so it’s hard to care about data getting to the Chinese government - it’s not like Meta would say no to selling them data. With Cambridge Analytica and the surveillance states building up in the south to make sure women don’t cross state lines for an abortion, the CCP knowing that I’m trans and have lots of gay sex is much less dangerous than my state government knowing that.
Admittedly, there is so much about this that I don't understand. I most definitely don't think that the solution is using billionaire owned data harvesters. I haven't used social media like this for over a decade because it's clear how we and our information is used and abused.
At the same time, I'm unfortunately all too acquainted with authoritarian states. For people to hand over their data to such a state--intentionally--is just mind boggling to me.
So, yes, you're right. I'm misunderstanding a lot. I am not able to wrap my head around how the content of TikTok and/or other billionaire owned media platforms are worth everything that one has to give up to use them. I actively avoided such companies and, as such, the allure of the content doesn't draw me in. Sure, there are things that I miss, but I don't see the exchange as worth it.
Perhaps for some, the move to RedNote is a protest against the arbitrary banning of a single app among a sea of so many others doing the same thing. Perhaps it's meant to expose the intent of the US and Western governments knowing they will inevitably fold (as the US currently seems to be doing), then the ends will just restore things to the way things were before... which is still terrible. Perhaps it's just addicts chasing their next fix. I'm sure there's lots of reasons driving it. From the outside though, it all seems crazed.
There is so very much about all of this that I will never understand. Well, I suppose I do understand enough about human nature to get it. It simply disturbs me. And all the while, the billionaire corps are going to do everything in their power to acquire and use people's data for their own gain. Governments will leverage it with ill intent. And people will willingly let them.
The goal wasn't to stop the communist Chinese government, but ensure that Americans maintain a stranglehold over these vices so that they can benefit from them.
Both. It can be both. And the influence by the CCP is absolutely real.
I feel like this can be true, but if it is... they're dropping the ball in so many other places that genuinely matter.
