Summary

Many Americans are migrating to RedNote, a Chinese-owned app based in China, raising significant privacy and security concerns.

Experts warn that RedNote, based in China, is subject to Chinese laws, including the Personal Information Protection Law and Data Security Law, which grant the government rights to request data and cooperation with intelligence operations.

Enforcement of these laws is often opaque. Analysts highlight risks of data collection, algorithm manipulation, and censorship on RedNote.

Critics argue the U.S. lacks comprehensive privacy laws, driving users to platforms like RedNote that may pose even greater risks than TikTok.

  • Refurbished Refurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org
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    2 months ago

    Yeah, obviously, but the US isn’t going to implement privacy laws because that would impact American tech corporations as well, who also do mass data collection.

    • nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 months ago

      Which means they’ve legislated themselves into a game of whack a mole. Without true regulations all they can do is wait for the next mole to pop up.

      • Saleh@feddit.org
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        2 months ago

        Incoming: all apps offered on the appstore must be whitelisted and approved by the DOGE. If a social media apps is not approved they can sell themselves within 24h to Musk in order to get apprlval.

  • TheFogan@programming.dev
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    2 months ago

    I thought that was kind of the point… people started using red note because it was openly what the government fears Tictoc could be as a form of protest.

    What’s next a news story that says people printing out their browser history and dropping it off at the chinese embassies, might be giving their private data to china?

  • Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 months ago

    Boo hoo! The US can’t spy on it’s people anymore because everyone got wise and switched to foriegn apps.

    This has nothing to do with the security or privacy of the people. They’re pissed because they’re losing power over them.

    On a side note, everyone that has joined REDnote is waking up to the lifetime of propaganda the american government has been feeding them. This past week has been wild.

    • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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      2 months ago

      there’s genuinely been some class consciousness getting into play

      i saw some users from both countries compare prices of eggs and vegetables, and they even did the necessary math of accounting for average wage and cost of living. the chinese users are not allowed to talk about their politics (sadly; this is a bad thing) but they are allowed to talk about foreign politics and they are probably bigger fans of Luigi Mangione even than i have seen in English speaking social media. there are candid discussions of queerphobia as well in its different social (and for the US, political too) manifestations between countries.

      • SoftTeeth@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        The funny thing is at any point the US government can ban the collection of personal user data. It could just be illegal for any company to do this in the US.

        But like you said, it’s just about the US wanting to spy on its own citizens but not wanting other countries to.

        • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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          2 months ago

          “it’s okay when we do it” —the US on literally everything it criticizes in other nations

        • RyeBread@feddit.org
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          2 months ago

          Look at the companies with the highest market cap in the US and just start counting how many make money from selling personal data. The US will never implement wide sweeping privacy laws. To the detriment of everyone.

      • WanderingVentra@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        The Chinese aren’t the ones firing people for posting pro Palestinian things on social media or attacking protestors on college campuses or protecting white supremacists in Oregon or Washington. That’s our agencies, our cops.

        • kibiz0r@midwest.social
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          2 months ago

          First of all: US companies and agencies will be assholes about what you post, wherever the content is hosted. Same for Chinese companies and agencies.

          Second: I’m not advocating for using US state-controlled social media. But China-controlled social media is not any better, and I certainly wouldn’t call switching to it “getting wise”.

          Particularly switching to one that’s known to inject keyloggers into its webviews, especially when keyloggers seem to be a staple of Chinese state surveillance.

          As we can see, the vendor finally sat up and took official notice of this severe, privacy-affecting software bug on June 25th–only five days before Wu, who has previously tweeted about a vulnerability affecting the same Sogou software, was paid a visit by Chinese authorities.

          Wu explicitly drew this connection in my discussion with her:

          Five days after Tencent (Shenzhen) admits to the IME vulnerability, the Chinese person (in Shenzhen) who originally publicized it suddenly gets dragged in by the cops and forced offline.

          NONE of them could read English to see my account does not even make China look bad, it was all Baidu fucking translate and demands why I was talking about Signal and the keyboard

          Her account concluded with an unsettling revelation about the risk she would face if she were to continue tweeting: having already received two “strikes” from the authorities, a third could mean a years-long prison sentence.

          I had to sign and fingerprint a “confession”.

          • WanderingVentra@lemm.ee
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            2 months ago

            Ya but when it’s posted on a social media they can’t control and you aren’t American, they can’t stop it. It’s why videos of the genocide were all over Tik Tok but not US social media. The US does the same things, but with Instagram and similar (even in your first article it shows they have that capability and worse. Which checks out, I’ve had Instagram and FB make ad suggestions for things I’ve searched on completely different apps or web pages, or sometimes just something I’ve talked about.)

            I would argue that Chinese controlled social media is better if you’re trying to get past US censored channels and surveillance and you live in the US. Same if I was in China, I’d be saying the about US social media probably.

            Of course fediverse service would be the best case scenario.

    • Filthmontane@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I just learned from red note that Chinese people don’t pay property taxes. Once they pay off their mortgage, they just own their home. I’m definitely the one living in a third world country.

  • Filthmontane@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    If all my data is for sale and China can just buy all my data from Meta, Amazon, Google, etc. Then why not just skip the middleman? At least if I give my data directly to the CCP, Zuckerberg won’t have access to it.

    • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      FBI: “Be careful what Apps you use because they are all collecting data on you” “Cover your Webcam, it is probably hacked” “Turn off location on your phone, because that’s being hacked” “All of our phones are being spied on by China from a back door via the telco infrastructure that the Government refuses to correct, because they want to spy to”

      Congress: “Tiktok is the biggest problem”

    • lud@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      In general those companies don’t sell data.

      It’s not in their best interest to sell data when they could instead sell ads using your data.

      • andallthat@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I agree with you on the web privacy legislation, but the point u/Filthmontane was making is that the CCP could have our data anyway, by buying it from Meta or Google, so at least giving it directly to China is better (in that at least Meta and Google don’t have it). I think that argument is only half-serious, but after the whole Cambridge Analytica debacle still more serious than it should be…

    • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
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      2 months ago

      I doubt it. These things are controlled by the CCP and the CCP is loving the way Israel just keeps exposing Western hypocrisy.

  • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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    2 months ago

    excellent to know so we are going to make and enforce privacy regulations so this pattern doesn’t keep repeating itself

    … right?

  • twinnie@feddit.uk
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    2 months ago

    I don’t understand, why are exactly are people moving to RedNote? I’ve never heard of it.

    • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Some of it is ignorance. People see TikTok is banned, google “TikTok alternative,” and click on the first sponsored result. They would need to know (and care) why TikTok was targeted in order to find something better. People hear that RedNote is the next app, so people go to RedNote, and therefore it becomes the next app.

      Some of it is astroturf. Do the people telling you that RedNote has become popular have any interest in making RedNote popular? Is RedNote really exploding, or is it just interesting to talk about? Like is it going to snow heavily tomorrow, or is it good for weather services to get eyes on their content? Hype has its own inertia.

      Some of it is real. RedNote was already very popular in China, and there is already a lot of content. People comparing it to Loops, for example, might find Loops sadly lacking in content and influencers. Influencers go where their audience is, and the audience follows the influencers. Nobody wants to be the last one on the new platform, and it’s fairly simple to make the switch, so a whole lot of people jumped into RedNote at once because they don’t care about CCP data mining or political issues.

      • dx1@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Who, the people selling the Mandarin translator pens? Are they behind the Tiktok ban too?

    • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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      2 months ago

      people would rather have their personal data stolen by the chinese government than the US who poses much more of an immediate threat.

      detractors describe this as astroturfing but that’s BS. congress brought this on themselves by making such a clearly self-serving gesture.

      • cocomutative_diagram
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        2 months ago

        I don’t know though. CCP certainly love their alt-right cousins, and they probably spent and will continue to spend a huge amount of money to get them elected in the western world.

        Given CCP more data and means to produce such influence might not be the best of ideas.

      • CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        people would rather have their personal data stolen by the chinese government than the US who poses much more of an immediate threat.

        Oh sure. Chinese living in the US telecom network for years isn’t a threat. China compromising critical US infrastructure isn’t an immediate threat.

        And the issue is less about stealing your data (although that is an issue), it’s about being shown pro-CCP and anti-American content by a Chinese app. It’s about direct foreign influence by an adversarial county (the government, not the people, apparently that distinction needs to be pointed out to people here).

        • dx1@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Oh no, hypothetical biased information. How will our brains process it in the event that it appears.

            • dx1@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              Not sure what you mean. We see the problem with FOX viewers. You look at the people using TikTok for news (myself included), there’s actually strong media literacy because they’re learning about what deceit looks like.

              • CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                We see the problem with FOX viewers

                Only a subset of Americans see Fox as trustworthy, and everyone outside the US (myself included) sees Fox as pure propaganda.

                people using TikTok for news (myself included), there’s actually strong media literacy because they’re learning about what deceit looks like.

                This hurts my soul so much. I think this just says a lot more about American education than anything else.

                • dx1@lemmy.world
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                  2 months ago

                  Frankly, if you were on TikTok at all, I don’t think you were following who I was following. It’s like YouTube. You can post stupid meme dance videos, you can post lectures by historians. I don’t appreciate the condescension. When you are seeing things on there - primary source evidence, not any kind of propaganda - that directly contradict what you hear from conventional media, you’re forced to develop skills to account for the disparity. Otherwise, without that info, you just stay in a bubble - which was precisely the intention of the ban.

        • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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          2 months ago

          I see more pro China anti American content in one day on Lemmy than I have in my entire existence on TikTok and RedNote combined.

          You are running off imagination, assumptions and vibes.

          • CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            I see more pro China anti American content in one day on Lemmy than I have in my entire existence on TikTok and RedNote combined.

            I don’t have a reason to doubt this, although I don’t see this (any I’ve never used TikTok). Lemmy being an open platform means that it’s rife for propagandists to spread their views. No one said pro-CCP and anti-American content was exclusive to TikTok or RedNote. But Lemmy is far more neutral than most other platforms, which means both pro and anti anything content has an equal chance. It just comes down to the userbase.

            And with that openness comes the possibility for people employed to promote pro-CCP content also.

            You are running off imagination, assumptions and vibes.

            You dropped a comma there.

            But no, I’m not running off of imagination or assumptions.

    • RagingRobot@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I bet it was because they saw propaganda on tik Tok telling them to. But I’m sure they all feel like it’s their own choice and that they are sending a message to the American government.

  • IceFoxX@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    I think the Chinese hackers inside american isp’s hardware etc are a way bigger risk…

    • Loss@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      Given they just use backdoors put in in order to allow warrantless surveillance by the NSA and FBI, they’re not a threat.

    • Bone@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Someone did. You can write words on them. They come in a pad. Sometimes sticky!

      • gidostro@lemmy.cafe
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        2 months ago

        But they don’t have directions on how to 3d print a gun, and absolutely no references to Tiananmen Square!!

  • Trilobite@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    I doubt the Chinese are going to sell our information to insurance companies to raise our rates like every company in America

  • RangerJosie@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Yeah. A ““security risk”” of all us fucking slaves realizing what a raw deal we’ve got.