We Don’t Need a New Twitter

In early July, Meta introduced Threads, a text-posting social-media application that was clearly designed to steal market share from Twitter, which continues to struggle under the leadership of Elon Musk. Adam Mosseri, the executive in charge of Threads, recently explained that the goal of the service is “to create a public square for communities on…

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T-Mobile’s New Program Opts You Into Targeted Ads

Heads up, fellow T-Mobile customers: You might want to take a look at your mobile carrier’s privacy policy. As by the Wall Street Journal, the company’s latest update to its privacy policy is set to automatically enroll paying phone subscribers into an ad-targeting program that will see their data shared with unnumbered advertisers starting next…

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That Game on Your Phone May Be Tracking What You’re Watching on TV – The New York Times

Android screenshots of the app Honey Quest, which uses technology that keeps tabs on the viewing habits of its users. At first glance, the gaming apps — with names like “Pool 3D,” “Beer Pong: Trickshot” and “Real Bowling Strike 10 Pin” — seem innocuous. One called “Honey Quest” features Jumbo, an animated bear. Yet these…

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Cops Don’t Need GPS Data to Track Your Phone at Protests

For the thousands of people and on George Floyd’s death at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department—or even for bystanders caught up in the demonstrations—arrests, injuries, and even are becoming commonplace in this moment. And just like protests we’ve experienced , confrontation with police comes coupled with risks to people’s lives through digital means,…

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Angry Birds, Candy Crush, and a history of mobile game data collection – Vox

  Angry Birds is so 2009, you might say. “I haven’t played Angry Birds since 2012, at the latest,” you might insist. It doesn’t matter. Angry Birds is still part of your life. As the first wildly successful mobile game, it’s an avatar for the way our understanding of what’s private and what’s personal has…

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The House We Live In — Real Life

At the Atlantic earlier this week, Sidney Fussell reported on Airbnb’s policies toward hosts installing cameras to observe their customers and the platform’s apparent ambivalence about enforcing them. As Fussell notes, Airbnb hosts are permitted to have cameras installed in living rooms, common areas, and outdoor spaces, but not bathrooms and sleeping areas. They are…

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