About Tik-Tok

So....Like I said, it's shady. I understand the EULA (End User License Agreement) as far as data collection is concerned, ensuring that you don't use their 'product' for things it was not intended for, or illegal purposes, or otherwise gray-area things that are financially profitable to you (such as software piracy, producing burned copies of the software such as a game or movie etc, and then selling it for a profit etc)

...But what I do not and have never agreed with is why any company says by allowing you to use their product they must in turn have the right to collect and/or track information on you such as personal, identifiable information, or even on-line patterns/habits, use that info to track you and/or also SELL the information to third party companies whether in your country of origin or elsewhere around the world.

And in many ways nowadays, just about every company is doing just that in some way, shape or form.....But they cloak it all in cleverly described 'legalese' within the EULA (which, let's face it-- no one actually reads) and other companies are not so blatant. FOr example, while both companies do this to varying degrees, there is definitely a wide degree of difference between the information-collection practices of Facebook (which has had several major lawsuits, court cases etc brought against them since 2009 for such things) and Microsoft. There is also a difference in public perception of these two companies: Micosoft, the company that develops Windows operating system, which about 84% of all PCs/Laptops/Workstations/Servers etc around the world run on....People need this, companies need this to run, and they trust it....so they perhaps don't think twice about what kind of information MS may be collecting in order to provide this service/platform to them.

But Facebook, the platform itself is sketchy (in my books)...Why post pictures, videos, personal information about yourself, your habits, your life struggles etc on the Web for hundreds, or hundreds of thousands of people to see? It's called a private life for a reason: It is meant to remain private. And the idea of "friends/followers"? Gimme a break. You may have a "friends list" of 20,000 people-- but do you REALLY know each any every one of those people? No. Even if your list was much smaller, say 50-- I would bet that on any given day you only talk and share intimate details of your life or your day with no more than 10 of those 50 people. So if that is the case, why have as many of 50 people on your "friends list". They are not your friends. Do you think the more you have, the bigger your list is, that it somehow makes you 'cooler' or more popular?

I admit, I was on Facebook for about six months about 13 years ago....But this was long before the question about Intellectual Property or Information Collection was ever raised. I used it to connect with a small handful of people that I knew in public school, but the novelty soon wore off and after about six months, I deleted all my photos, everything I had written and made sure to delete (not just deactivate) the account. I also then deleted the email address that was associated with that facebook account.

But it is for these reasons that I have resolved to never use facebook or any other form of popular Social Media ever again. Not Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, Vimeo, Pintrest, Skype, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Snapchat or any other popular platform. There's so many of them, I've lost track. I have a Google/Youtube account, though I rarely sign-in, and I do not have my own "Youtube Channel" as many others do.

For people who truly know me, they have my cellphone number and they know my landline number and/or email address. If they want/need to contact me, they know how to reach me. If they are interested in hearing about me, they can connect with me that way and they will ask.