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Do Not Track

A personalized documentary series about privacy and the web economy.

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S01E03 : Like Mining

A couple of likes on Facebook, that can’t say much about you, right? Wrong.
The German blogger and TV-presenter Richard Gutjahr welcomes you to the unbelievable world of online-profiling.

Read comments on episode 3!

E3 - Social Networks Must Read

Screwing with your emotions is Facebook’s entire business

You’ve probably heard about the controversial Facebook study. But manipulating the News Feed is Facebook’s entire business.

The conventional wisdom is that if you’re not paying for anything, then you are the product being sold. But that line of thinking is pretty superficial — it ignores both the value people do get out of Facebook and the actual way Facebook makes money.

On Facebook, advertisers can pay to make sure their targeted stuff shows up in your News Feed. There’s just a few sponsored entries mixed into the usual endless scroll of stuff your friends have shared. Ads are designed to change our emotions and advertisers are paying Facebook to manipulate your emotions by changing the News Feed.

What we’re mad about is the idea of Facebook having so much power we don’t understand — a power that feels completely unchecked when it’s described as “manipulating our emotions.”

— Read on vox.com
E3 - Social Networks Must Read

Why Facebook is beating the FBI at facial recognition

The FBI is getting set to deploy its own system of computerized facial recognition, called NGI. It will bring together millions of photos in a central federal database, reaching all 50 states by the end of the year.

But compared with Facebook’s DeepFace system it isn’t very good. Give Facebook two pictures, and it can tell you with 97 percent accuracy whether they’re the same person, roughly the same accuracy as a human being in the same spot. To be fair, Facebook has a whole network’s worth of data on its side.

The nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency is getting outgunned by a social network.

— Read on theverge.com
E3 - Social Networks Must Read

Facebook Could Decide an Election—Without You Ever Finding Out

“Digital gerrymandering” represents a frightening future. Here’s how to prevent it.

On November 2, 2010, Facebook’s American users were subject to an ambitious experiment in civic-engineering: Could a social network get otherwise-indolent people to cast a ballot in that day’s congressional midterm elections?

The answer was yes.

— Read on newrepublic.com
E3 - Social Networks Must Read

What You Look Like to a Social Network

This infographic presents the categories of information that social networks can make available to other applications. You authorize these applications by, say, logging in to a Web site with your Twitter account, or by playing Farmville on Facebook. The applications, in turn, often give data about your activities back to the social network. These exchanges of information take place through what’s known as an application programming interface, or an A.P.I..

— Read on The New Yorker
E1 - Tracking E3 - Social Networks E7 - Future of Tracking Must Read

How to Erase Yourself From the Internet

If your growing weariness of being constantly tethered to the internet has become overwhelming, it might be time to scrub yourself from the social media sphere altogether. Here’s how you can become a ghost on the Internet, by tracking down and eliminating your digital past.

— Read on Comparitech.com

— Read on gizmodo.com
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