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talking about potentially banning, TikTok. And for a business, that would be kind of a death knell — so obviously they’re going to proactively try to do as much as they can to to separate themselves from any China connection, real or even just perceived. This isn’t the first time that an app has worried U.S. government officials for its possible ties to a foreign government: Regular listeners of The Checklist will recall that FaceApp came under scrutiny because its developers were based in Russia, a fact that concerned both lawmakers and analysts at the FBI. For those unfamiliar with FaceApp, the app generated digitally altered photos of its users via AI neural networks. For most people, it was just a harmless diversion: a fun way to see what they’d look like in a few decades, or with a different hairstyle. But the government was concerned about who had access to all of those user photos, and claimed that the app was a potential security risk due to its developers being based in Russia. We asked Wardle to comment on the issue, and asked a somewhat wistful question: Can we never have fun again? PW: Unfortunately, I don’t think so (not to be a buzz kill)! It’s like, if you’re freaked out that TikTok is tied to China and so you decide you’re not going to use it, OK … but there are all these other social media apps that are collecting just as much data. I’m sure if we looked at Facebook’s privacy policy, or Instagram’s, or any other social media app, they’ll basically tell you that a lot of the content you generate as well as your activities are going to be leveraged, monetized. And that’s what funds these applications — that’s why Facebook is paying billions of dollars when it acquires Instagram. It’s to access all that user data. Luckily, in the case of Instagram and Facebook, it’s all about advertising. That’s easier to swallow. We’ve all had this experience where we think Facebook or Instagram or whatever has to be listening to us, because the ads we see are sometimes so specific. But the scary thing is, they’re able to provide such relevant ads without actually having to listen in, or turn on your microphone or something — which to me is almost scarier, because it shows how much they know about you! So to answer your question about fun — I mean, I don’t have a good answer for that … hopefully you can still go outside and play in the woods, and that should be fine! I think we just have to acknowledge that a lot of the applications we’re using, especially the free ones and the social media ones, are free for a reason. And the price is basically our privacy. And unfortunately, I think the average user just doesn’t care about that. For a lot of social media apps, Facebook and Instagram and the like, hopefully there’s no nefarious purpose behind them. An app like the face swapping app with the data going to Russia? Well, not to get paranoid, but you can envision a scenario where the government of Russia is now building a database of faces combined with location data. And maybe they can say, OK, I want to go in and do a query to find people in the Fort Meade, Maryland area (which is where the NSA is) who are using this app, and see their pictures. And with that, you might be able to build a database of employees of certain intelligence agencies, which you can then feed into a system at the border. So you now have the ability to do a face match when someone enters the country with a passport, and perhaps that person becomes a person of interest. Maybe you approach them with a suitcase with a million dollars and say, “Hey, I know you work for the US government. We’re not going to let you leave the country … or we’re going to give you a million dollars if you just tell us a little bit about what you do”. Granted, this is somewhat of a far-fetched scenario, but it’s also a scenario that could come to fruition based on this kind of information. I think the middle ground is that if you’re working in a field where you need to be traveling anonymously, or if the type of work you’re doing is sensitive, be very careful about what applications you’re installing on your phone. But if you’re just an average consumer, well, I feel like (especially now in 2020) there are bigger things to worry about. But it’s still important for people to be aware that you’re basically giving away this data when you use an app, and you don’t know where it’s going or who’s using it. To come back to TikTok, though, I think that this is likely an application that doesn’t necessarily have any nefarious purpose. I mean, we don’t know for sure, and that’s kind of the issue, but they’re probably making money, and if they have a robust business model where they’re raking in billions of dollars a year, it almost makes no sense for them to compromise that business model by doing shady things to track users. I always try to look at motivations. It was interesting with ToTok, the government spy operation in UAE, because it was “too good to be true”. The government had banned all of the big social media and video and audio apps, and then introduced this amazing free application that everyone started using — an application with no ads! And … no business model. And so you’re like, OK, well, this is obviously too good to be true. It was almost obvious in retrospect. But apps like Facebook and Instagram show ads, so it’s like, OK, my data is being collected so that they can have a well-defined revenue model. So that helps me kind of come to peace with things, because Facebook isn’t going to turn on your microphone to listen to you, as that would get them banned and compromise a very lucrative business. In a roundabout way, that can offer peace of mind, because if you know how apps are making money off of you, then you can also ascertain, in a general way, what they’re doing with your data. And if they’re making a lot of money, they’re unlikely to use that data in illegal ways to jeopardize their successful money-making scheme.