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headgasketidiot t1_j1uaapq wrote

I've seen several government bans of TikTok, but I don't understand what they're trying to accomplish. I see TikTok trackers all over the web. Are they banning just the TikTok app? Are they also banning any app that loads TikTok trackers? Are they going to blacklist every website that loads a TikTok tracker?

For example, Ally bank had a TikTok tracker on its website's account page and presumably its app for months if not years, though it seems to be gone now. Would the Ally Bank app have been banned too? How are users to know if their app has a TikTok tracker? Is the state going to provide a whitelist of apps and websites that they've audited where there is no TikTok tracker?

Maybe this is a bad way to build the web.

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gooker10 t1_j1uet4w wrote

pretty sure it is for the data, tracking, send back to the bytedance parent company, think like Meta has data from FB and insta and created a profile they can package and sell to the highest bidders for those users, and geo locations

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headgasketidiot t1_j1ufgn3 wrote

I guess I should've said that I know what they're trying to accomplish, but I don't understand why they think this will accomplish it.

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blutbad_buddy OP t1_j1up9us wrote

Why the hell does a bank need a TikTok traker?!

Are there people uploading sexy or funny posts about their account?

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headgasketidiot t1_j1urx1x wrote

Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with the content of either. It's purely a deal to create a more complete user profile to sell to data brokers for advertising data. Businesses view it as an "additional revenue stream" when they build an app. If you google "how to monetize app engagement," you'll find a million articles like this one https://www.forbes.com/sites/peggyannesalz/2019/01/14/3-ways-to-make-money-from-app-engagement/?sh=d50442dadc7b

>App companies that have the inside track on data around user activity in and with their apps are sitting on a goldmine. This is because they are the sole owners of valuable first-party data, data that is owned, unique, accurate and—above all—current. Easy to understand why first-party data that is becoming what Maribel Adams, Head of Digital at MediaMax, over in her blog at Street Fight calls “the core ingredient to driving customer acquisition and retention.”

This is a completely normal practice. I don't even mean to call out Ally Bank in particular. This is just how the web works. I recently wrote a whole blog post titled Any App That Could Just Be A Website Only Exists To Track You on just this phenomenon, and it's part of a series I'm writing on the "attention economy." The first part talks about TikTok, too.

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blutbad_buddy OP t1_j1ut4pg wrote

> Any App That Could Just Be A Website Only Exists To Track You

This is why I don't have a cell phone anymore. My SO uses a flip phone that cant run apps and doesn't even have gps. Monetizing my data points and trashing my privacy is a real fucked up thing to do to me as a customer and I do everything I can to make it a pain in the ass to do to me while also giving them the smallest number of data points possible. But on a supposedly secure banking app?! What the actual fuck?!!!

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headgasketidiot t1_j1uxz57 wrote

That's pretty awesome. I consider giving up my phone every now and then, but I am too weak. Props to you for actually doing it.

>But on a supposedly secure banking app?! What the actual fuck?!!!

Yeah, it's a pretty normal practice, unfortunately. There's trackers on all sorts of shit you'd think is private. I even found one on a major pharmacy brand's COVID test appointment scheduling and results page a while back that was leaking patient data and made national news. It's just depressingly normalized.

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inelasticplastick t1_j1wxcfn wrote

my understanding is that TikTok specifically is an emergent critical security concern

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