“Data mining” isn’t as big a threat as data aggregation.
The big tech companies as well as the old sector utilities and commerce have been selling your data for decades, and there are other tech companies that buy it up and put it all together, all specifically to be able to keep and sell entire profiles on people.
The buyers (and the sellers) aren’t all just using it for marketing purposes either.
This stuff isn’t new. “Cambridge Analytica” sound familiar to anyone? They were building political profiles on people and got caught doing it. They are just the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot of entities, including state actors, who are a lot better at this stuff who don’t get caught.
Who actually thinks the likes of China or North Korea or Russia or Iran wouldn’t love to get terabytes of data on American citizens?
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the deep state is only worried about catholics and (legal) gun owners.
I don’t understand the overreaction.
Despite what they tell you, all ‘apps’ gather data. If there is terabytes of data out there to get, that means our government already has access to it. Since that data is on servers connected to the internet, it is accessible by foreign countries, as the internet is world-wide.
Trying to shut down TIK-TOK is like shutting the barn door after all the horses have run away.