TikTok's package name is crazy. Why does nobody care? Do you?

Question

TikTok's package is com.zhiliaoapp.musically. Obviously when I saw this I googled what zhiliao meant. Turns out, it's chinese for to cure (an illness), medical treatment, or therapy [0]. Keep in mind, this isn't exactly hidden - it's part of the store URL: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zhiliaoapp.musically. I can think of a couple very generous non-worrying interpretations of why it'd be called therapy (I don't know, maybe therapy from boredom or something?), but "to cure an illess" and "medical treatment" seems very straightfoward. Even though I can really only guess what they're "curing" (capitalism? western ideals? I don't know), I don't really want to use an app that can so heavily, yet silently influence my mood and thoughts when the developers have clearly and openly planned on using it for this purpose since the very beginning (since they haven't even changed the name to TikTok, I would guess this was the original package name)I really didn't think that was a very crazy take, but I've told some of my friends and family members about this and the response (across the board) was "well that's crazy, and if I knew about this before I'd probably never would have downloaded it, but I really like tiktok so I don't care"Am I going insane? Are people honestly ok with being openly manipulated like that? Isn't it worrying that they're so addicted they can't give it up when given facts that they admit would have caused them to not use it in the first place?I really feel like this is going to be a huge issue in 5-10 years but nobody will notice it happening.[0] https://chinese.yabla.com/chinese-english-pinyin-dictionary.php?define=zhi+liao, this is consistent with google translate.

sayhong_ · Accepted Answer

You are reading too much into package names. Tiktok is also known as Douyin in China.

AntiImperialist · Answer

You're buying too much into cold war propaganda.

throwaway29303 · Answer

Interesting. You're not insane. You know how infosec people have been warning others about privacy invasion, etc for years and almost no one cared one whit? Or people's refusal to abide by minimal hygiene standards to avoid propagating pathogens because they feel their rights are being infringed upon? People are fundamentally selfish. Thanks for posting.

Exmoor · Answer

So you're theory is that TikTok has some nefarious plan, but that they couldn't help but put a giant clue in their package name? Seems much more likely that it's something that doesn't come through translation well or just a random name they used during development.If you called an app written in an English country "Musical Medicine" I wouldn't jump to the conclusion you were trying to "cure capitalism".

moocowtruck · Answer

this is a very crazy take, just relax and enjoy the app if that's your thing