“What Huxley teaches is that in the age of advanced technology, spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate. In the Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours. There is no…
The Creepy Line, a new documentary by director M.A. Taylor, is now streaming at Amazon Prime. It takes a disturbing look at how Google and Facebook influence their users’ view of the world, and how the companies have pioneered new ways of doing business. It’s a business model in which personal data harvested from users…
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…
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…
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…
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…
