News
2021
January
Tim Cook criticizes Facebook, saying If a business is built on misleading users on data exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all, then it does not deserve our praise. It deserves reform.
This is how law enforcement gets around your phone’s encryption - Wired
New Public publishes two years’ worth of research on the digital commons
An Absurdly Basic Bug Let Anyone Grab All of Parler's Data
2020
December
More on the Digital Services Act
EU Advances Groundbreaking Law for Online Platforms – the Digital Services Act - U.S. Lawmakers Should Pay Attention: R Street Opinion
Privacy is the new competitive battleground: Tech Crunch
FTC kicks off sweeping privacy probe of nine major social media firms
Facebook is a Doomsday Machine: The Atlantic
Everything we Know about Facebook’s Secret Mood Manipulation Experiment: The Atlantic
New documentary: Amazon Empire. It’s about the data.
Mark Zuckerberg releases Four Ideas to Regulate the Internet.
November
Nir Eyal was interviewed for The Social Dilemma, but his interview was not included. Here is his review of the film.
Nir Eyal shares the data and the misconceptions behind the fear of screen time for teens and the association (or lack thereof) with depression.
State and federal investigators are preparing to bring antitrust charges against Facebook.
Marissa Mayer launches an AI-driven address book that isn’t quite as smart as what we want to do, but it’s close. It’s a platform for managing a limited set of personal data that will expand over time.
Edward Snowden: How your phone spies on you
Does screentime cause addiction? No, says Nir Eyal, a data scientist and attention researcher.
Proposition 24 - data privacy - passes in California
I’ve been watching the Netflix series Connected. It’s fascinating. One episode showed how dating and social apps are all connected, sharing data on their users, compiling huge data sets that know far more about you than you think. Another episode shows how researchers can tell London’s drug use by looking at the waste stream - they can see different recreational drugs being used on different days at different times in all the various areas of the city.
October
Sacha Baron Cohen calls for Facebook to fact-check ads before running them, saying “Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach.”
Justice Department to file landmark anti-trust case against Google
Podium network launches to try to fix social media bias
Two former Apple executives raise $30 million to start Hu.Ma.Ne, a new kind of phone experience
The US DOJ may sue Google over search, advertising dominance
Gadgets360 review of The Social Dilemma
September
Switzerland updates consumer privacy laws
How the EU is using blockchain to build a citizen-centric European Internet