I guess it's pretty much impossible to stop these companies from gathering data, there's too much money in it, it's too easy to implement, and there's no cohesive force to stop them. I'm wondering whether a crowdfunded effort to feed fake data into these systems would work so we overwhelm them and make their plans a bit more difficult.
mc3301 2 hours ago [-]
"The only winning move is not to play."
If you look at these systems that same way some people look at casinos - places specifically designed to take your money - you realize there isn't a way to change them nor improve your overall experience with them. You just don't go inside. I'm kinda hoping that it becomes the trend in the next few decades to completely abandon these algorithm-driven data-hoarding attention-stealing apps. I've been calling it "digital hygiene", personally.
kibwen 1 hours ago [-]
> I've been calling it "digital hygiene", personally.
Don't forget mental hygiene. Letting these apps have access to your brain causes legitimate brain damage in the same way smoking causes lung damage.
__MatrixMan__ 21 minutes ago [-]
They're not identical concepts, but I've been bringing up "dopamine hygiene" a lot lately and it seems to resonate with people.
Given that these companies tend to converge on addiction as their business model, I think there's a lot of overlap.
banana_sandwich 1 hours ago [-]
I used to be highly addicted to scrolling. Tiktok, reddit, instagram, everything. It nearly cost me my relationship and I swore it off ever since. I’ve been offline those apps for a few months now, and have never felt better. Cant believe what i was allowing to happen to my attention!
mc3301 54 minutes ago [-]
Youtube: There are a few long-form creators I watch, maybe 4 hours a month of content. Besides that, viewing history is off, no apps, browser extensions block mostly everything (comments, suggestions, etc.)
Instagram: I have a 15 minute daily timer, because I sometimes post, and I sometimes receive DMs.
Reddit: Fully blocked, I think I ublocked everything.
Tiktok: I won't even download it ever again. It has an algorithm like no other for sucking me in. Dangerously addictive.
Facebook? Deleted it completely around 2013, so no idea what's going on there.
fragmede 43 minutes ago [-]
How's the dating scene where you are? Whatever bubble I'm in, in the US, while I could not be on Instagram, that would be making things harder on myself.
fragmede 60 minutes ago [-]
How'd you do it?
mc3301 53 minutes ago [-]
I said, "next few decades," but I meant to say "next few years."
1 hours ago [-]
bdangubic 53 minutes ago [-]
it is possible through legislation. slap them with the fine equal to their two previous years ebita combined and all this stops within an hour. of course not like people that need to pass a legislation aren’t bought for a fraction of that.
these things are why frequent comments on HN that go “this company is not using our data for training, it is in ToS etc…” makes me literally LOL.
Setting up a whole-home adblocking solution takes a few minutes with pi hole, and it's got a very functional web interface for actions such as unblocking specific sites for specific systems on your network.
That dns proxy looks intriguing but looks like quite a bit different from the simplicity of pi hole.
tkel 1 hours ago [-]
dnsproxy is a single binary that does everything, very simple.
OptionOfT 2 hours ago [-]
Pi-Hole only works when the tracking / ad scripts are hosted from different domains than the actual content.
cheschire 2 hours ago [-]
Don't worry, when you blackhole the entire tiktok domain, you'll still be able to use grindr.
TikTok will de-anonymize you and connect you back to the ad networks in days, speaking as someone who tried really, really hard to not get it to do that.
They probably have the most sophisticated fingerprinting ever created.
cheschire 1 hours ago [-]
Yep! And luckily Tor Browser works pretty hard at defending against that. It even goes so far as to box the rendered page resolution so it cannot be connected to the same resolution as your main browser.
But you can take first steps by using a simple dns proxy to make things more difficult.
Ferret7446 23 minutes ago [-]
Honestly that probably makes it easier to fingerprint you. How many people do you think actually use Tor? Instead of needing to identify you from millions of users, now they just need to identify you from the five or so Tor users
tkel 2 hours ago [-]
Pretty sure TikTok and Instagram are sharing data somehow as well. My feeds are near identical.
slg 2 hours ago [-]
I don't know, maybe they are colluding, but it is funny to default to that assumption over both platforms just delivering you the same content because you have the same behavior across both apps.
ehnto 18 minutes ago [-]
They don't have to collude, the third party advertisers that collate and provide shadow profiles do that work for them.
yibg 48 minutes ago [-]
Not sure if they're explicitly sharing data, but there does seem to be something that's sharing data across the platforms. When I buy something from Tiktok, the ads for the same thing shows up on my instagram almost instantly. Doesn't necessarily mean they're directly sharing data of course, could be a third party too. But as a consumer that has very little difference for me.
svat 13 minutes ago [-]
If you buy something from Tiktok, you presumably visit the merchant's website, which almost surely will have chosen to have a tracking pixel that sends data to FB (Instagram). You can read a bit about how tracking pixels work here: https://jvns.ca/blog/how-tracking-pixels-work/
In this case it's not Tiktok and Instagram that are sharing data with each other, but the product website that is choosing to share data with both of them.
aprilthird2021 32 minutes ago [-]
It's because you are the exact target demographic consumer for that product, and it's visible in your behavior patterns when using your apps combined with what they know about you (age, sex, location, demographics, etc.)
ehnto 16 minutes ago [-]
Much more likely an explicit retargeting ad network that doesn't realise they already bought it.
Retargeting has been a thing for like 15 plus years now. Visit website for knives, ad network tracking cookie notes that down, same ad network later serves you ads. Or some convuluted data sharing network that has the same outcome these days.
tkel 1 hours ago [-]
Notably, this started happening the day that I made my TikTok account public. My Instagram feed began to be a copy of my TikTok feed. The exact same videos. Even after changing my Tiktok back to private and deleting all of my followers, the feeds are still identical, every single day. My behavior is not. On Instagram, I follow and interact with very different accounts than on TikTok. It seems to me that Instagram is buying or accessing TikTok's data, and it is not through advertising providers, because the identical content is coming directly from Instagram/TikTok and not promoted ads.
fragmede 52 minutes ago [-]
There are three possibilities though. One is Instagram copying TikTok, without their knowledge, the other is Instagram copying your TikTok feed with their knowledge but not their blessing, and finally Instagram copying your TikTok feed with TikTok's knowledge and their blessing. If we take a look at http://TikTok.com/robots.txt, it seems if you make your TikTok public, TikTok is happy to let Instagram take a look at it (but not a number of AI crawlers). What Instagram does with it is up to them, but it's in robots.txt.
witnesprotect67 1 hours ago [-]
Not so laughable after working in big tech
ZuoCen_Liu 22 minutes ago [-]
This seems to be the "original sin" of the current Internet "platform" paradigm.
ptrl600 44 minutes ago [-]
I wonder if that "fake permissions" Android sandboxing thing from like a decade ago still works.
The right to lie to apps should be part of the new tech Magna Carta
mac-attack 25 minutes ago [-]
I hate to sound like a those pesky Kagi supporters, but that is built into Graphene OS.
charcircuit 57 minutes ago [-]
>Article 9.2 (d) processing is carried out in the course of its legitimate activities
TikTok has a legitimate activity of personalizing the feed of users to make it as relevant as possible.
Vpsteroski 1 hours ago [-]
Companies always track data and major social media companies and online search engines ALWAYS keep track of user search history. That data is often sold or used to find out what you are searching about and what brands you like. I guess it IS impossible to stop these big brands :-)
Legend2440 1 hours ago [-]
> TikTok was only able to receive this information with the help of the Israeli data company AppsFlyer and Grindr itself.
So basically, the TikTok app is not spying on your dating apps - your dating apps are willingly selling your information to them, through intermediaries.
This means uninstalling tiktok won’t help. And worse, many other companies are getting your dating info too.
Animats 41 minutes ago [-]
Grindr had a big data "leak" in 2024.[1] Not a "leak", really, just ordinary reselling of people's gay and HIV status. In 2025, a data broker who resold Grindr data also had a big breach. That wasn't Grindr-specific - it included Temple Run, Subway Surfers, Tinder, Grindr, MyFitnessPal, Candy Crush, Truecaller, 9GAG, Microsoft 365, and others. But not TikTok, because TikTok monetizes that info themselves.
If you want to find which apps are the worst at this use GrapheneOS. Amazon flat out REFUSES to work unless it has unfettered access to everything.
bri3d 19 minutes ago [-]
This isn’t likely to be a good indicator. Essentially only the network permission and any fingerprint is necessary for the tracking in this accusation; the idea is not that TikTok were spying on Grindr on the device, but that a device fingerprinting firm who broker both TikTok and Grindr data were able to correlate the user.
gerdesj 2 hours ago [-]
I (UK based) have pfblocker-ng running at the perimeter with quite a lot of blocking. My browser FF has uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger too.
Amazon works fine.
I suspect they work along the rather practical lines of: if we can snag your data we will but if you want to block our efforts at predation but want to spend out, we are fine with that too.
Amazon absolutely will not refuse your money and they are jolly good at extracting it.
hekkle 28 seconds ago [-]
Fair enough, it does make sense that they will maximise their profits where they can, I'm just saying that it (the app not the website) refuses to work unless you provide it a full scope of literally every permission available. Maybe it has more to do with attestation, and verifying that you are not a scammer, than stealing and selling data?
grugagag 2 hours ago [-]
Very likely all other social media are doing it. Not to dimish the harm done by Tiktok but sadly it’s an industry wide phenomenon. Shouln’t forget about surveilance, misinformation, election rigginng and so on.
41 minutes ago [-]
exabrial 1 hours ago [-]
Some state needs to pass an explicit consent law, since consent is too hard of a concept for Silicon Valley and other startups to understand.
newZWhoDis 2 hours ago [-]
I'll post some inside baseball:
Almost everyone in ecom is running every ad network integration they can, no matter the source of traffic.
So if you click a Facebook ad, load a website, enter your information/checkout ALL of your information goes to every other network they integrate with.
You might never use TikTok, you might have every Facebook domain blacklisted, but when you clicked on a Google search "result" (ad) and checked out everything about your order was sent to meta/tiktok/applovin/400 other "networks" via S2S APIs.
Until this is made illegal, the incentive structure will ALWAYS push marketing departments to do this.
MrFots 1 hours ago [-]
I'm already low-consumption, but my personal boycott of any site using shopify, which straight up has all integrations in their js you can inspect, has lowered my consumption even further. I've been emailing stores asking them to switch to bigcommerce, or whatever, and stop sharing their customers' data. Never get answers, though I never expect any.
stefan_ 44 minutes ago [-]
It is made illegal. As the post notes, you need to (1) give notice and (2) data collected needs to be made available in a user access request and (3) deleted irrevocably on request. You must have a legitimate reason to process and store this data (scattershot forwarding to everyone is a prima facie violation). Unless you comply with all of these, you are in violation.
telchior 2 hours ago [-]
I assume TikTok and similar apps are always doing this stuff.
The thing I'm curious about is whether the GDPR / DSB complaints are likely to have any result. Is that likely to just result in some cost of business fines and TikTok goes on with life? Or could those complaints bring about substantial repercussions?
Simulacra 1 hours ago [-]
I don't think any app or service can hold a candle to the data harvesting of dating apps. Social media knows your likes and dislikes, but dating apps knows your deepest desires and wants.
digitaltrees 1 hours ago [-]
That earnest congressional testimony by the CEO looks pretty bad at this point. Either he was lying or doesn’t know anything about how his company works.
Rendered at 03:25:57 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
If you look at these systems that same way some people look at casinos - places specifically designed to take your money - you realize there isn't a way to change them nor improve your overall experience with them. You just don't go inside. I'm kinda hoping that it becomes the trend in the next few decades to completely abandon these algorithm-driven data-hoarding attention-stealing apps. I've been calling it "digital hygiene", personally.
Don't forget mental hygiene. Letting these apps have access to your brain causes legitimate brain damage in the same way smoking causes lung damage.
Given that these companies tend to converge on addiction as their business model, I think there's a lot of overlap.
Instagram: I have a 15 minute daily timer, because I sometimes post, and I sometimes receive DMs.
Reddit: Fully blocked, I think I ublocked everything.
Tiktok: I won't even download it ever again. It has an algorithm like no other for sucking me in. Dangerously addictive.
Facebook? Deleted it completely around 2013, so no idea what's going on there.
these things are why frequent comments on HN that go “this company is not using our data for training, it is in ToS etc…” makes me literally LOL.
https://github.com/AdguardTeam/dnsproxy
That dns proxy looks intriguing but looks like quite a bit different from the simplicity of pi hole.
Or did you still want to be able to view tiktok?
Sorry. Can't help you there. Or can I? https://www.torproject.org/download/ or https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/proton-vpn-fast-sec...
They probably have the most sophisticated fingerprinting ever created.
But you can take first steps by using a simple dns proxy to make things more difficult.
In this case it's not Tiktok and Instagram that are sharing data with each other, but the product website that is choosing to share data with both of them.
Retargeting has been a thing for like 15 plus years now. Visit website for knives, ad network tracking cookie notes that down, same ad network later serves you ads. Or some convuluted data sharing network that has the same outcome these days.
The right to lie to apps should be part of the new tech Magna Carta
TikTok has a legitimate activity of personalizing the feed of users to make it as relevant as possible.
So basically, the TikTok app is not spying on your dating apps - your dating apps are willingly selling your information to them, through intermediaries.
This means uninstalling tiktok won’t help. And worse, many other companies are getting your dating info too.
[1] https://thehill.com/business/4614940-grindr-sold-hiv-status-...
[2] https://www.pcmag.com/news/major-data-broker-leak-might-have...
Amazon works fine.
I suspect they work along the rather practical lines of: if we can snag your data we will but if you want to block our efforts at predation but want to spend out, we are fine with that too.
Amazon absolutely will not refuse your money and they are jolly good at extracting it.
Almost everyone in ecom is running every ad network integration they can, no matter the source of traffic.
So if you click a Facebook ad, load a website, enter your information/checkout ALL of your information goes to every other network they integrate with.
You might never use TikTok, you might have every Facebook domain blacklisted, but when you clicked on a Google search "result" (ad) and checked out everything about your order was sent to meta/tiktok/applovin/400 other "networks" via S2S APIs.
Until this is made illegal, the incentive structure will ALWAYS push marketing departments to do this.
The thing I'm curious about is whether the GDPR / DSB complaints are likely to have any result. Is that likely to just result in some cost of business fines and TikTok goes on with life? Or could those complaints bring about substantial repercussions?