I am tired of the unspoken Western Big Tech apologia. TikTok OBJECTIVELY collects far lesser data than Big Tech apps and services, according to reports from 2 reputed data collection analysis companies. Moreover, the below assumes you have an account, which is not even needed to use TikTok, unlike Instagram or Snapchat.
One of the key important aspects of threat modelling for your desired privacy is the acceptance of facts instead of false nationalist opinions.
Moreover, while TikTok collects basic data, it never forces you to login other than for commenting (for obvious reasons) and similarly personal things, unlike Instagram. If you open an IG link in web browser, you cannot replay the video second time, and if you scroll the account’s posted images and videos, you will not be able to flick through a second time.
Unlike Tiktok, with Western platforms and services like Facebook, you give phone number, contact book, IMEI, location data, email, some name or pseudonym et al. With TikTok, none, because you do not need an account for it.
Facebook/Instagram and major Western platforms’ data collection on a user is more than what TikTok does on a user, even if there is an account on both services. On top of this, TikTok does not have tracking pixels, ad networks, CDN and other methods of tracking on other websites, unlike Facebook ecosystem. This allows Facebook ecosystem to correlate, interlink and form data clusters on users and IP addresses. Remember how Facebook ecosystem disallows accountless access? Or how they C&D’d Barinsta developer Austin Huang, citing they dislike anonymous access to Instagram?
Western platforms also inject malware in browser using domains like netseer-ipaddr-assoc.xy.fbcdn.net, something TikTok does not do if you do not have an account.
This is precisely what makes TikTok objectively so harmless without an account, and even with an account, relatively far less harmful. It does not mean TikTok does not collect data, but the difference is too wide. These are the facts, free of American nationalist propaganda.