sign in with Apple | Rob Pegoraro

Watching Thursday’s Congressional grilling of TikTok CEO Shou Chew left me convinced of two things: that I am glad not to work in comms for that social platform, and that I may never get the hang of that social platform.

My engagement so far with the ByteDance-owned app could make my apathetic Snapchat use look clingy. I put TikTok’s app on my iPad three and a half years ago, using Apple’s “Sign in with Apple” and Hide My Email to create an account walled-off from my existing online IDs, and then I did next to nothing with it aside from issuing an App Tracking Transparency veto on the app once Apple rolled out that privacy feature.

An Android Pixel 7 phone showing a "No permissions allowed" screen for TikTok in its Settings app; the phone rests on a paper copy of the Washington Post showing the jump of its story covering the March 23, 2023 TikTok hearings.

During the unfortunately-endless summer of 2020, I also put TikTok on a loaner Android phone to see what permissions it would ask upfront, and was surprlsed by how modest its requests were compared to some apps. I still doubt that TikTok represents as much of a privacy threat as data brokers wholesaling personal information collected off smartphone apps, a market that I trust remains open to front companies of the Chinese Communist Party.

I have since seen a fair amount of TikTok videos, just not in the app–shared on Twitter and Instagram and embedded in stories on Web pages.

Lately, I’ve spent a little more time in TikTok itself since my password manager 1Password added the ability to save a “Sign in with Apple” and other single-sign-on authentications. That browser-only feature made it easier to sign into TikTok in a desktop copy of Mozilla Firefox, which I already know will constrain a site’s demands for data.

This tip-toeing into TikTok has left me with a basic, dadcore following list–it includes the Wall Street Journal, so TikTok doesn’t seem to be making more sympathetic to the CCP–and perhaps a puddle-depth comprehension of the platform.

Maybe more TikTok time would have helped me recognize the ugly picture painted Thursday by both Democratic and Republican members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. But professional curiosity aside, spending more time there doesn’t strike me as personal to-do-list material. I still fundamentally don’t see what makes TikTok so fascinating as a social medium, or why I’d want to post there when I don’t need to spend more time on social media.

I feel bad saying that. It could be my age talking: Scrolling from video to video to video (see also, Instagram’s lookalike Reels) can be a fun distraction, but it also reminds me of the annoying person in a college dorm lounge with the TV remote who couldn’t stay on one channel for more than 30 seconds at a stretch.

Having taken all of these steps to quarantine my TikTok usage, I’m also struck by another thought: What the hell was I thinking when I put WeChat, an app that’s far more aggressive with its data demands, on my Android phone during a trip to China back in 2017?

My week has an unusual road trip coming up–to Wallops Island, Va., where Rocket Lab plans to conduct the first U.S. launch of its Electron rocket Friday evening. This is a much smaller vehicle than the others I’ve been privileged to see lift off, but driving to the Eastern Shore’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport is also a lot simpler than traveling to the Kennedy Space Center.

In addition to the stories below, Patreon readers got to read my first impressions of Mastodon, the federated alternative to Twitter on which you can find me as robpegoraro@journa.host.

11/29/2022: Company That 3D-Prints Houses on Earth Lands Lunar Construction Contract, PCMag

I had read before about Icon Technology’s ventures into 3D printing walls of houses on Earth, so when I got an advance copy of their news about getting a contract to do much the same thing on the Moon, they had my interest.

11/29/2022: Verizon’s response to T-Mobile trash-talking: Just you wait, Light Reading

I interviewed Verizon network exec Brian Mecum while at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii last month, and he had some interesting things to say about 5G features that the carrier is not rushing to deploy.

11/29/2022: Former Twitter Trust and Safety Chief: ‘If Protected Tweets Stop Working, Run’, PCMag

I watched Kara Swisher’s interview of Twitter’s former trust-and-safety chief Yoel Roth, and almost none of it gave me any more confidence in Elon Musk’s ability to right the ship he has bought with $13 billion loaned from banks that presumably want to get it back.

12/1/2022: 1Password Can Now Save Your ‘Sign in With’ Logins, PCMag

This new feature at the password manager I use (courtesy of this Toronto firm providing free service for journalists) addresses a real issue I deal with. As in, I’ve opened a few accounts on my iPad using the “Sign in with Apple” option there, then can’t quickly access them on my Android phone or Windows laptop because it would require signing into the Apple account that I don’t use on those devices and jumping through Apple’s two-factor authentication checks.

12/2/2022: What to know before you open your Comcast TV or internet bill: Rates are going up (again), USA Today

TV Answer Man writer Phillip Swann tipped me off to the TV fee increases with a Nov. 26 post, and then Comcast PR let me know about the broadband rate increase.

12/2/2022: Google Messages Gets End-to-End Encryption for Group Chats on Android, PCMag

This would have been a quick writeup of some Google news shared in advance, but ensuring that readers would get a clear look at the tangled backstory of Google’s attempt to upgrade messaging from SMS–and get Apple to play along–always eats up some words.