People don’t like it because:
- It’s the new thing. If alcohol were introduced today it would be banned in every country on earth. People tolerate Facebook, Twitter, Insta because that’s what’s been around. They all do the same thing, but TikTok is new and scary.
- Short form video is scary! It’s a new form of entertainment, and old people don’t like new forms of entertainment. See: every newly introduced form of entertainment in history, books included.
- They are misinformed about what data a mobile application can and cannot do, and the level of security built into both iOS and Android. Rest “assured”, they are collecting as much data as they can – just like every app creator on the planet. What they aren’t doing is capturing mic data while you’re sleeping (that’s not how microphones in phones work), stealing your passwords from your clipboard (OS’s notify users about clipboard paste)
- China bad. This primes people to consider negative press about it with a less skeptical eye, feeding the above points. (Don’t misconstrue me as being pro-China, I’m not, and that’s not what this post is about.)
This has been my entire experience in discussing TikTok. Tons of vitriol, never any meaningful rebuttals.
It’s frustrating. I’m a scientist, one of the values I hold is to learn when presented with new information. There are very few topics that I feel 100% confident about (for example I’m open to being wrong about this tik tok issue, but I will never be open to “alternative views” of the holocaust), so I appreciate when people take the time to inform me why/how I’m wrong about something. I will go back and edit my comments to avoid spreading misinformation. But I’m not going to change my mind just because some rando on lemmy said “nuh uh, you’re wrong”.