[superfrank]

> Does anyone seriously believe TikTok is a threat to national security?

I think they are in the sense that they're collecting massive amounts of user data about their users and I believe they wouldn't hesitate to share that data with the Chinese government if asked.

On the flip side, I also think their threat to our national security is being made a bigger deal than it actually is by politicians who have an anti-Chinese agenda and companies who see an easy way to cripple a competitor.

[esrauch]

I see this argument about Grinder having data that is blackmail material, but it seems less clear to me that the TikTok data itself would be that interesting if it all became fully public.

Though I say that as someone who has never used the app, and I'm not sure about other data concerns besides blackmail (maybe troop deployments?)

[superfrank]

I don't use the app either, so I don't know the specifics, but I assume it has similar data collection to something like Instagram, so using that as my mental model I can think of a few things:

- I'm sure it collecting location data. In the past people have used data from apps like Strava to actually trace and map the layouts of military bases, so I'm sure you could do something similar.

- I believe the app has messaging as well which could contain private or sensitive data

- In that same vein, I know plenty of people who send things through snapchat and instagram that they definitely shouldn't (think military members taking pictures on base where they shouldn't to try and impress people or devs taking pictures in meetings with sensitive data in the background)

- You could use the app to sow discontent or push propaganda by showing or hiding certain content to certain locations or social groups

- You might (BIG MAYBE) be able to track certain high profile through the location data of their friends or family or running facial recognition on all videos

Some of the things I listed may not be feasible and I'm sure there are things you could do with the data is not listed. The things I listed aren't meant to be concrete examples that I'm saying we should worry about, but rather examples of ways that the data they have can be used in unexpected ways.