Lemmy has taught me that Firefox is the way

TikTok is Chinese spyware. Chrome is American spyware. Anyone in their right mind should stop using both.
- sometimes it’s nice to know that someone’s watching over me tho
  
  and I have no privacy (oh ohoh)
- Meanwhile, my employer forces me to use Chrome or Edge. Ugh.
  
  Tell them you can't as your active X scripts only run under IE6.
  
  If it's for work I don't have a problem, it's the company that's giving their data to the spyware, just don't give it too much personal information

I hear this all the time. I have this conversation on the regular.
Them: "Oh you think Tik Tok is spyware?"
Me: "yes"
Them: "I'll have you know so is Google, Apple, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Microsoft, and all the big American companies too"
Me: "Yeah, that's why I don't use them"
Them: gasp "you're just paranoid bro are you a drug dealer or something?"
Me: "no, I just like my privacy. You probably wouldn't like it if some guy was following you keeping tabs about everything you do either."
Them: "well I've got nothing to hide"
Me: "maybe the next person in power might see your current and past beliefs illegal"
- Them: "my favourite political party will stay in power forever"
- The fact that you have nothing to hide doesn't imply I've to open up anything to anyone without my approval.
  And that's the key here, we are not fully aware of the randomized distribution of your own data for profit.
- Just ask them if they have curtains or blinds on their windows at home. They have nothing to hide, right?
  
  Ask if their house has walls because if it does so should their country.
- Me: "do you close the bathroom door while shitting?"
  Them: "yes"
  Me: "why? You have nothing to hide"
  
  You lock your doors when wanking?

Foreign spyware is stealing jobs from hardworking American spyware.
- This should be a campaign line for 2024

That’s America spyware. I have standards. /s
- Doing at least n amount of spying each day

"But at least is LOCAL spyware 😎"
- Which honestly to me seems worse right I mean its potentially going to someone who is much closer to you geographically (not always of course).
  
  Google using your perceived preferences to sell you underwear and yogurt is not worse than being tracked by the world's largest hostile militaristic dictatorship.
- Me using an android phone and an iPad.

Anyone who even compares a for profit corportation to the world's largest hostile militaristic dictatorship is an idiot. Both bad, but on completely different scales.
- US looks very militaristic to me. It has a very broken democracy, and a history of supporting/causing brutal dictatorships.
  
  The control the Chinese gov has over tiktok is on a different scale compared to Google and the US
  
  The USA hasn't taken territory since 1946.
  The major reason for the USA being so broken is due to deregulation and corporate greed. Which is a little different in nuance to Authoritarian China.
- The things the CCP could do with political blackmail gathered from tiktok would make even Zuck blush.
  
  At the very least, Google and Facebook have to step back if caught. Meanwhile, Chinese companies often don't care about EU privacy laws. Still avoid them altogether, any way.
  
  I bet from reading message history they have tons of SSNs and bank details. Probably even information about our military.
  
  As much as China is a festering cancer upon the world, I am willing to bet that for every single trademark horror that is taking place in their society, I could find a match or worse in the USA.
- Thank you, this is my viewpoint exactly. We are exploited by both but one is after money, the other is a threat.
  
  How can China threatens you? If you live outside of China?
- I doythink those are as different as you say. Through the Patriot Act, american corporate spying is US spying.
  
  Okay but one wants to efficiently sell me worthless trash and the other would happily kill me and take my property given an opportunity, so...
- To be honest I think you can compare them, I feel the word idiot is misplaced here.
- Now look you here- one party is a convicted serial rapist, the other party is elitist.
  They're both criminals.
  So it doesn't matter.
  Which is why you should vote for convicted serial rapist party.
  Nobody likes an elitist.
- While they’re at completely different scales, plus will go to much different lengths to abuse what they find out, It comes down to personal peril. I know exactly how Google will use that surveillance data to my detriment and that they’ll openly sell it to more nefarious entities, however I fail to see how the Chinese government would ever have an interest in my data or in selling it.
  I don’t use Tik Tok or Huawei, but that’s for other reasons
  
  You fail to see why they would collect the massive amounts of data that they've been repeatedly proven to collect? Sounds like willful ignorance, to me.
- This post is about China, but why are you talking about the US?
  
  They're both spyware.
  
  You can't read let alone understand. Dunno what to explain to you when all you have is accusations of failure when they clearly show your own such.

God when the whole Tiktok thing in Congress was going on nobody wanted to hear that their favorite big tech social media app was already selling information to China; had been caught doing so multiple times; and had never stopped despite promises and threats of prosecution the next time.
- WHAT information? What does China gain by learning that Sparky Douchebag watches BBQ and catgirl fapping videos? Are they planning their invasion based on the Heathers Challenge, or simply stealing our makeup tips?
  
  Search the company Tencent.
  Then look at how many shares they have on companies around the world.
  And then think about it. What power does Google have? What power probably Tencent has.
  
  Look into the research that has proven that the app has backdoors baked in, and combine that with how widespread it is - reaching every level of society; every industry, politician, branch and level of the military. Now remember that research into the Spyware activities of the app.
  TikTok is the largest, most successful self-inflicted virus for SigInt ever. [citation needed]

Android phones looking nervously around.
- At least u can put custom firmware on android phones, try to get rid of Apple spyware is much harder.
  
  You cannot put custom firmware. If spyware is hidden in drivers, bootloader or even firmware of the modem there is nothing we can do about it. Custom ROMs are just replacing things above the kernel and below apps.
  Still of course things average non CIA person should not worry about. Google apps with high privileges are removed with custom ROMs.
- Laughs in GrapheneOS
  
  As a person that has been rooting his phone since 2011/12, I wanna go back to those years. Graphene and lineage have not satisfied my itch and having to keep magisking every few weeks sucks. I miss my galaxy, nexus rooting days.

Media platforms are beyond spying. You have nothing to offer.
It's all about controlling information and feeding you what you need to see.
- What you want to see
  
  I honestly doubt that you have full control over that

Anyone using Firefox is a W to me.
- I can't ever go back after moving to Vivaldi, even though it's chromium. It's the tiniest of reasons too, like full screen behavior, the gargantuan UI elements, the continuous removal of customization options...
  I can set Vivaldi to:
  F1 = show/hide info bar
  F2 = show/hide address bar
  F3 = show/hide tab bar
  F4 = instant fullscreen
  F5 = sidebar that's actually useful
  The bookmark and history tabs are actually usable, the Quick Command popup bar functions like Vimium, and there's more customization options than you can shake a stick at.
  I say this as a Firefox user who has not changed browsers since it was literally called "Mozilla" and competed with "Mosaic" and "Netscape Navigator" for top position as THE web browser to surf Internet portals.
  I love FF to pieces, but it's simply not usable to me under the current management.
  
  I just tried out Floorp which is basically Firefox with some Vivaldi features. I was like oh okay I get the appeal now. I have to take Vivaldi for a test drive.
- Waterfox, too
- W?
  
  W = win
  L = loss
  
  She'll promise you more than the garden of Eden
  Then she'll carelessly cut you and laugh while you're bleedin'
  But she'll bring out the best - and the worst - you can be
  Blame it all on yourself 'cause she's always a woman to me

My brother in Christ I use Firefox
- Remember to use also a privacy respecting search engine like searx or at least duckduckgo
  
  I like startpage. It ain't perfect, but it's better than using Google and co.
  
  I use DDG but it sucks because I am a dude on the move and DDG does not allow voice to text

Jokes on you I don’t use either ^i ^use ^discord ^and ^windows ^instead
- I still use discord, can't just leave gaming with my friends and I already look too much like a paranoid to convince them to switch to matrix or another FLOSS service
  
  There’s Revolt and TeamSpeak aswell. The latter is proprietary, but the audio quality is something to behold.

Chinease is an enzyme, but I don't know what it does.
- It breaks down china.
  
  The enzyme seems to only work every few centuries

I only use true blue American spyware

You're not getting it. TikTok is crude, targeting anything that comes in its way, like a shotgun.
Google is like a sniper rifle, that is also a shotgun.
Now, which would you prefer, the shotgun, or the sniper rifle that is also a shotgun.
- Nukes because then I get vaporized instantly. 😎
  
  If I get to choose it goes:
  Meteor strike
  Nuclear detonation
  Grenade
- Can I get a grenade launcher and laser sight for the Franken-gun?

tok bad
- It’s chineasy to pick on the clock
- Ye

- Praying to Lauren Faust??
  
  Fausticorn, Bonniecorn and Twilight Sparkle

It comes from chy-nah
- Unironically, fuck China tho

My opinion on TikTok: always put the first cross in the middle

Remember, when American corporations harvest your private data, that is a good thing.
When foreign countries, that's bad.
This post was brought to you by your friendly Google. Where we will sell your data to any one and every one because we love money.
Edit: Words are important

That's why Google Ultron exists m8

I use LibreWolf (and don't use Tik Tok)

Whataboutism
- It would be whataboutism if the argument would be one is okay because of the other. It isn't whataboutism if the argument is that both are unacceptable.
  
  Thank you. I’m so sick of people equating whataboutism with pointing out hypocrisy. Do they want societal acceptance of hypocrisy? Or do they just like to use the new words they learned, like calling every jerk a narcissist?
  
  Or the argument is to distract or derail the conversation. If it is the conversation going in though...
  
  I disagree on the basis that it normalizes TikTok by even comparing it to something far less harmful. They are both bad but one of them is a military op for the world's largest hostile dictatorship.
  Thats like saying drinking cola and unfiltered piss are both bad for you.