Ben Thompson: TikTok data concerns are overblown compared to algorithmic control
Ben Thompson · Ben Thompson from Stratechery on AI ads, the end of SaaS, and the future of media · Feb 12, 2026 · at 25:10
Stratechery founder Ben Thompson discusses US geopolitical and regulatory efforts against ByteDance and TikTok with the host.
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“The problem with TikTok, and back then everyone was talking about user data. Who cares? Like the whole user data thing, people have this view of like the East German Stasi and like folders, like going through people's data. Like these are like vector databases with like numbers that no human can parse. Like they're, it's really quite anodyne. It was just related to target ads.”
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