Source: Privacy Tools | Julia Angwin
In the course of writing my book, Dragnet Nation, I tried various strategies to protect my privacy. In this series of book excerpts and adaptations, I distill the lessons from my privacy experiments into tips for readers.
Social Cooling describes how big data and a lack of privacy is greatly increasing pressure to conform … describes the long-term negative side effects of living in a reputation economy
Source: Social Cooling
Their ‘derived data’, which is protected as corporate free speech, is more valuable than ‘your data’.
If they say they don’t sell your data, ask if they are selling theirs.
When algorithms judge everything we do, we need to protect the right to make mistakes.
When everything is remembered as big data, we need the right to have our mistakes forgotten.
“Privacy is the right to be imperfect.”
— Tijmen Schep
“we have close to four or five thousand data points on every adult in the United States.”
— Alexander Nix
Source: Oil changes, safety recalls, and software patches
security patches should be treated in the same vein as safety recalls — unless you’re certain that you’re not affected, take care of them as a matter of urgency — but it seems that far more users instead treat security patches more like oil changes: something to be taken care of when convenient… or not at all, if not convenient. It’s easy to say that such users are wrong; but as an industry it’s time that we think about why they are wrong rather than merely blaming them for their problems.
The problems of the large volume of patches and their reputation for breaking things is made worse by the fact that many systems use the same mechanism for distributing both security fixes and other changes — bug fixes and new features. … presenting updates through the same channel tends to conflate them in the minds of users, with the result that critical security updates instead end up being given the lesser attention more appropriately due to a new feature update.
Extreme libertarians built blockchain to decentralize government and corporate power. It could consolidate their control instead. … The anti-authoritarian left has profoundly misunderstood the corner into which such an ambitious aspiration paints society.
Source: Cryptocurrency Might be a Path to Authoritarianism – The Atlantic, by Ian Bogost
More: Radical Technologies, by Adam Greenfield
Share Lab uses flow charts and data analysis to map one of the greatest forces shaping our world – Facebook.
Individually, these are powerful tools; combined they amount to a data collection engine that, Mr Joler argues, is ripe for exploitation.
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The data will remain in the hands of one company. Even if its current leaders are responsible and trustworthy, what about those in charge in 20 years?
“What is most striking is the sense of resignation, the impotence of regulation, the lack of options, the public apathy,” says Dr Powles. “What an extraordinary situation for an entity that has power over information – there is no greater power really.”
Source: How Facebook’s tentacles reach further than you think – BBC News
about Share Lab
The following map is one of the final results of our investigation
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Within those invisible walls, in every moment algorithms are deciding which information will appear in our infosphere, how many and which of your friends will see your posts, what kind of content will become part of your reality and what will be censored or deleted.