There’s a good article on Bluesky here.

Is this good or bad? 😊

I guess this depends how you define privacy. One solution may be Particl, but I haven’t tried it so far.

I just stumbled upon that, too, and am wondering how this compares to Librewolf (+VPN) …

A probably highly topical question these days: Are computational word-sense disambiguation and computational word-sense induction possible?

Fair. The article is not specifically about TikTok, though. For example, it mentions the case of Whitney Duan and her ex-husband (here’s an article about it) who wrote a book about that topic. One book review reads:

The Chinese Communist Party depicted in Shum’s firsthand account is the epitome of capitalist excess, with the sons and daughters of high-ranking party officials going on global shopping and gambling sprees, spending the vast sums their parents and relatives amassed through rampant corruption, influence-peddling, ruthless political maneuvering and backstabbing.

But just read the book yourself.

Yes, it’s bad if people are that naive, and it’s even worse when others appear to exploit the despair of people. The app has 32 permissions and contains 4 trackers that openly say that they would collect behavioral data and advertise their trackers using slogans like “we help marketers make better decisions”.

dont think its controversial to think that governement officials shouldnt have any form of social media on their government issued phones. Its insane that governements have worse digital practices than a lot of mid size businesses

Yes. And what makes this thread even more weird is the fact that Tiktok is not even available in China. ByteDance offers a similar service, Douyin, that looks and works just like it, but the Western version is unavailable, and not just for government officials but the entire population.

Furthermore, a lot of other social media is blocked in China not just for officials but for the entire population, e.g., Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and many others. Not that I think these apps are needed, I just don’t understand the critics for blocking Tiktok here.

… an attempt to take over the territorial waters of other countries

Sometimes this appears to happen in somewhat irritating ways as reports say: Micronesia’s President David Panuelo has accused China of making ‘direct threats against my personal safety’

National cybersecurity agency deems TikTok a threat to Czechia

The Czech National Cyber and Information Security Agency (NÚKIB) has today warned Czechs against downloading the Chinese video application TikTok. It has labeled the app a “security threat” and said the public should “think twice” before using it.

Danish public broadcaster advises staff against using TikTok

LOL

Yeah, especially from Facebook and other big tech. They never sell user data. Never. Pinky swear.

This is likely only for US people living in the Boston area: Journalists in the Boston area

I don’t know the person who wrote this post, but accusing someone of extremism (no matter if it’s left or right) because of linking to a news article like this is unnecessary to say the least.

The linked article describes more than “a few incidents”. I think we all read about the death of Mahsa Amini because she refused to wear a hijab or about the 16-year-old Asra Panahi who was beaten to death for refusing to sing pro-regime anthem.

It’s rather a systemic opression as women and girls as well as other minorities are treated like second-class citizens in Iran, and the situation in 2022 has worsened.

A few isolated incidents? How women and girls are treated in Iran has been covered by multiple media “in the west” and everywhere else. You can also ask Iranian women who were able to emigrate and learn more about these “few isolated incidents”.

And, no, this is not a cultural issue nor a ideological one.

This is not new. It happens offline and online (fake product reviews to promote your item, or faked bad reviews on your competitors’). We encountered that for the first time in the early 2000’s. What’s new about it is maybe that they advertise it so openly.

This appears to be one of the hottest market trends with China having the most extensive public surveillance system, but we may assume other regions to gain ground.

We can all see media and NGO websites riddled with trackers, and so are possibly many journalists’ devices. So yes, I’d agree that’s worrying how easy it obviously was.

This is one of the most insightful, straight-to-the-point short articles about Web3 and decentralization I’ve ever read if I may say so.

Thanks. Usually I don’t use VPNs much, but I love Tor :-)

Aha, that’s good question. I don’t know, unfortunately, but I am sure there is someone around more capable than me …

I am not sure whether I understand the question, but I understand Blokada is a VPN. So they’re certainly able to track you across the web. If you don’t trust them, don’t use them.

I found this on tbe web, but I don’t understand that either. So take it with a pinch of salt.

Forgejo (/forˈd͡ʒe.jo/ – inspired by forĝejo, the Esperanto word for forge)

I don’t speak Esperanto :-)

Not yet. They just started, but I thought it’s interesting for the community here.

Don’t know what the best are, but there is The Conversation and Rest Of World, and you may find information also here.

How would you organize the payment processing in a federated marketplace?

Radicle is still in its earky stages. Don’t know where they are heading, but, yes, it’s far from being perfect :-)

Federated marketplace, ie a federated amazon or etsy.

What do you think of Particl? Never tried it myself.

Federated code collaboration

You will know Radicle, but it’s in early development.

It depends what you’re going to do. For example, it could be useful if you collect data of many individuals, and then you want to publish (or sell) the aggregated statistics without revealing data of individuals. So you could share statistics while people’s privacy remains protected.

I hope there will be millions of similar instances one day, because this is part of being federated. This is a distributed network. I can join any community if I want, I can configure my own server if I want, and so can you and everyone else. If your community then scales faster than mine because your content is more relevant or better by any means, that’s fine with me. I can either stay small or learn from you and grow later, and so can all others, just as they themselves want it to be.

At least this is my opinion, this is why I am here.