A while back there was this teardow post on reddit and HN as well, if I remember correctly, where some developer reverse engineered the tiktok app.

Or at least thst is what the post he made wrote it out to be.

I actually took the time to read through that looong post and read through his massive dumps of completely irrelevant logs and code dumps.

Only to find that there was not a single case of the tiktok app using anything but the official OS API on both iOS and Android.

Not a single case. And yet the post generated this common belief that it was straight up malware thst would hijack your device.

They did use the API to the fullest, just as most major social apps do, but there was not a single example of the app going beyond that.

I hate tiktok, and hate how China is violating human rights. But I am not going to indulge myself in lies to further that sort of agenda.

Facebook's privacy standards are not a very high bar.

I suggest glancing at the Citizen Lab report[0], I've read Citizen Lab research before and I generally find it high quality.

I think the takeaway here isn't that TikTok is good for privacy but that it's unlikely to be wielded in a manner similar to malware. Yes, it collects data. No, it isn't going to randomly activate your phone's microphone and spy on personal conversations without your knowledge.

[0] https://citizenlab.ca/2021/03/tiktok-vs-douyin-security-priv...

Alternative title: TikTok is as bad as Facebook for privacy.

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Wow didn't know it was that bad