To play devil's advocate... the most common way to end up in the in-app browser is to click an ad.
Non-technical people don't have a concept of "in app browser sandboxing". In their minds they clicked on an ad, they're still inside TikTok, TikTok's UI is showing, TikTok will show prompts based on the content shown... they probably assume TikTok has access to that page?
Honestly I'm more annoyed that Apple allows big apps to use the loophole that is the legacy webview than I am that TikTok uses that webview to do the exact single thing it's good for... having full control over the web content you're showing in app.
That is completely wrong since most users cannot post a website link (hotlink if I need to spell that out...), let alone in a comment.
The only way for a non-ad link to be opened from comments is to copy it and paste it in your native browser.
Business accounts get a special link field that's part of their bio, so again, deeply embedded in TikTok... and those behave exactly like the ads do. TikTok has a permanent "Flag" UI on top of the site, they replace every page load with a TikTok spinner
As expected half the people outraged don't even know what they're outraged about.
In that guy's other comment he was talking about Meta/Facebook too which is what I'm most familiar with and was primarily referring to about people clicking on links.
Even with TikTok I bet people click on profile links more than ads
Also that's not ironic, maybe you are thinking of another word
Non-technical people don't have a concept of "in app browser sandboxing". In their minds they clicked on an ad, they're still inside TikTok, TikTok's UI is showing, TikTok will show prompts based on the content shown... they probably assume TikTok has access to that page?
Honestly I'm more annoyed that Apple allows big apps to use the loophole that is the legacy webview than I am that TikTok uses that webview to do the exact single thing it's good for... having full control over the web content you're showing in app.