Lawmakers ask US intelligence chief to investigate TikTok

&gt; But the lawmakers say because TikTok is owned by a Beijing-based company, it could be compelled by the Chinese government to turn over user data — such as location data, cookies, metadata and more — even if it’s stored on servers it owns in the United States.<p>An analogy: To protect data from potential acquirement by the US government, EU should shut out Google from Europe? This doesn&#x27;t make sense and is completely political. Watching politicians trying to gain brownie points and _sound like they care_ while not actually doing anything useful hurts my eyes.

I find it very intriguing and fascinating the market penetration speed tiktok had:<p>- developed in 200 days<p>- launched in September 2016 in China<p>- launched in September 2017 internationally<p>- in November 2017 it&#x27;s parent company spends up to $1 billion to acquire musical.ly.<p>- it presently has over 500 million MAU users (I think it has them for over a year now, but I&#x27;m on mobile and can&#x27;t find a source for this claim)<p>How do you think it&#x27;s possible for an app appearing seemingly out of the blue to move so fast in such a crowded and mature market like social media?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;TikTok" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;TikTok</a>

There are some interesting results if you check the Google Analytics ID of TikTok.<p>They seem to also manage a somewhat sizable portfolio of gambling sites, sites selling knockoff Sports Jerseys, and adult videotube sites.<p>I am counting about 45 sites right now for UA-75850242.<p>Many Chinese sites seem to operate like this. I believe Huawei has about 500 completely unrelated sites.<p>A sort of SFW “soft core” example of this would be yoma202.com [1] which is also used to manage huaweimarine.com. Please note that Huawei and Huawei Marine separated about 6 months ago technically.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;yoma202.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;yoma202.com</a>

Forget the national security concerns (though they could well be valid, would not be surprised if so) ... what about the potential for child exploitation? The softporn&#x2F;borderline actual porn that children are allowed to post of themselves to be viewed by anybody? It amazes me that very little has been said about this in the mainstream press. Just do a YouTube search for &quot;hottest tiktok videos&quot; and convince yourself that child predators aren&#x27;t using this platform. Some YouTuber did a big &quot;expose&quot; of this a while back and had his video deleted (and then reinstated?), typical YouTube drama etc. but it was quite eye opening. I would never allow my children anywhere near such a platform.

&gt; the lawmakers asked the acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire if the app maker could be compelled to turn Americans’ data over to the Chinese authorities.<p>&gt; Both Schumer and Cotton warn that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is “still required to adhere” to Chinese law.<p>I&#x27;m surprised if there are many TikTok users in the US.<p>What is the draw of that app? The description on Wikipedia says is it is for &quot;markets outside China&quot; but all the content I see upvoted on reddit appears to be from China. Do they just take the popular videos from China&#x27;s version (that the West has never seen) and inject them into TikTok, making TikTok appear to be popular&#x2F;high quality?

OT: The other day in one of Europe&#x27;s biggest consumer electronics retail chain (MediaMarkt):<p>Why does Huawei has 3x more showroom space than all other smartphones manufacturers together, right in front of the entrance and this in <i>every</i> MediaMarkt? No other brand has such a setup.<p>The US is the only country trying to interfere and seeing potential and bigger threats.