When WhatsApp sold its giant messaging platform to Facebook for $22 billion, “I sold my users’ privacy,” one of the company’s co-founders said. WhatsApp founder Mike Acton has opened up about some of the moral struggles he has faced since selling the encrypted messaging app to Facebook, a company that makes money by collecting information on its users and selling that …
Continue reading WhatsApp Founder Admits to Selling Users’ Privacy to Facebook
Over the past year, certain Google advertisers have been able to use a "potent new tool" which allows them to track whether ads they run online translated to sales at physical stores throughout the United States, thanks to a secret deal between the Silicon Valley tech giant and Mastercard, reports Bloomberg. Most of Mastercard's two billion …
Continue reading Google Tracking 70% of Retail Purchases Thanks to Secret Deal with Mastercard
Are you living life or are you just talking about it? One of the biggest problems with Facebook is the more time we spend updating our profile and following other people’s lives, the less time we actually spend living. Of course, there are other concerns with Facebook, and there has been considerable controversy surrounding the …
Continue reading How to permanently DELETE Your Facebook Account – 2018 Update
If you’ve ever had the sneaking suspicion that your phone might be watching you, new research suggests you’re not being paranoid. Research scientists at Northwestern University in Boston spent a year trying to determine whether or not smartphone applications are secretly recording our private conversations to send personal data to advertisers. Fortunately, the researchers did …
Continue reading It’s Not a Conspiracy Theory – Your Phone Really Is Watching You, Research Finds
Artificial intelligence (AI) is seen as both a boon and a threat. It uses our personal data to influence our lives without us realising it. It is used by social media to draw our attention to things we are interested in buying, and by our tablets and computers to predict what we want to type …
A couple years ago, something strange happened. A friend and I were sitting at a bar, iPhones in pockets, discussing our recent trips in Japan and how we’d like to go back. The very next day, we both received pop-up ads on Facebook about cheap return flights to Tokyo. It seemed like just a spooky …
Continue reading Your Phone Is Listening and it’s Not Paranoia
Independent German investigators Markus Fiedler and Dirk Pohlmann have told Sputnik Deutschland about some of the mysterious Wikipedia editors they say are responsible for 'safeguarding' mainstream viewpoints on the world's largest and most influential free online encyclopedia. With Germans' trust in the mass media on the decline, more and more people are turning to the internet for their news …
Continue reading Like Foxes Guarding the Henhouse: How Public Opinion is Manipulated on Wikipedia
Our eyes are hardening; we can barely see our phones anymore. We must learn to look at the wider world. The eyes are unwell. Their childhood suppleness is lost. The lenses, as we log hours on this earth, thicken, stiffen, even calcify. The eyes are no longer windows on souls. They’re closer to teeth. To …
Continue reading What Are Screens Doing to Our Eyes—and Our Ability to See?
In the reviews that rolled out recently for Google's new Clips smart camera, there were the rote things that you'd expect in all tech reviews: what was good, what was bad, and, inevitably, whether or not you should buy it. There was, however, a key idea conspicuously absent: whether or not the product should exist …
Continue reading The Disturbing Acceptance of Google’s New ‘Smart’ Camera
