60 Minutes – “Her name is Frances Haugen. That is a fact that Facebook has been anxious to know since last month when an anonymous former employee filed complaints with federal law enforcement. The complaints say Facebook’s own research shows that it amplifies hate, misinformation and political unrest—but the company hides what it knows. One… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: E-Commerce
Survey – Trust in Big Tech is in free fall
Protocol: “According to a new report by the Public Affairs Council and Morning Consult, public trust in the technology industry has declined steadily since 2018. Trust in the tech sector hit an all-time low this year, according to a new study by Public Affairs Council and Morning Consult. Once the most trusted sector in the… Continue Reading
The Wall Street Journal Facebook Files
The Facebook Files – A Wall Street Journal investigation – “Facebook Inc. knows, in acute detail, that its platforms are riddled with flaws that cause harm, often in ways only the company fully understands. That is the central finding of a Wall Street Journal series, based on a review of internal Facebook documents, including research… Continue Reading
This wild Chrome extension lets you bend websites to your will
FastCompany – “PixieBrix can declutter Amazon, bring to-do lists into Gmail, add custom search options to Google, and more…The ability to remove the unwanted parts of any website is just one of PixieBrix’s features. You can also add custom action buttons to your favorite sites, create sidebars that gather supplemental information as you browse, and… Continue Reading
Cisco 2021 Consumer Privacy Survey
Cisco Secure – Building Consumer Confidence Through Transparency and Control: “Protecting privacy continues to be a critical issue for individuals, organizations, and governments around the world. Eighteen months into the COVID-19 pandemic, our health information and vaccination status are needed more than ever to understand the virus, control the spread, and enable safer environments for… Continue Reading
There’s a Multibillion-Dollar Market for Your Phone’s Location Data
The MarkUp – A huge but little-known industry has cropped up around monetizing people’s movements – “Companies that you likely have never heard of are hawking access to the location history on your mobile phone. An estimated $12 billion market, the location data industry has many players: collectors, aggregators, marketplaces, and location intelligence firms, all… Continue Reading
Our Favorite Ad Blockers and Browser Extensions to Protect Privacy
Wirecutter: “Everything you do online—from browsing to shopping to using social networks—is tracked, typically as behavioral or advertising data. But browser extensions are simple, generally free add-ons that you can use to slow down or break this type of data collection, without completely ruining your experience of using the internet. Privacy almost always comes at… Continue Reading
Can You Delete Yourself From the Internet? Yes – Here’s How
Make Use Of: “One of the major tradeoffs for access to the digital world is privacy. Unfortunately, you can never completely delete yourself from the internet, simply because you’d have to find every photo, video, tweet, mention, comment, shopping order, to name a few, and delete them. However, there are ways to minimize your online… Continue Reading
Publishers hope fact-checking can become a revenue stream. Right now, it’s mostly Big Tech who is buying.
Washington Post: “…The fact-checking operations at the German Press Agency (dpa) and Agence France-Presse (AFP) count some of the world’s biggest tech companies as clients — er, partners — but said that for their departments to become contributing revenue streams for their news agencies, they’d have to find more people and organizations willing to compensate them for… Continue Reading
Americans Have No Idea What the Supply Chain Really Is
The Atlantic: “Behind shipping delays and soaring prices are workers still at mortal risk of COVID-19…Overseas shipping is currently slow and expensive for lots of very complicated reasons and one big, important, relatively uncomplicated one: The countries trying to meet the huge demands of wealthy markets such as the United States are also trying to… Continue Reading
Harms of AI
NBER – Harms of AI, Daron Acemoglu, Working Paper 29247 DOI 10.3386/w29247 Issue Date September 2021. “This essay discusses several potential economic, political and social costs of the current path of AI technologies. I argue that if AI continues to be deployed along its current trajectory and remains unregulated, it may produce various social, economic… Continue Reading
The Battle for Digital Privacy Is Reshaping the Internet
The New York Times – “Apple introduced a pop-up window for iPhones in April that asks people for their permission to be tracked by different apps. Google recently outlined plans to disable a tracking technology in its Chrome web browser. And Facebook said last month that hundreds of its engineers were working on a new… Continue Reading
