must read
Why you can no longer expect that the news will find you
The power that corporations like Google and Facebook have to influence the digital content you consume means that you shouldn’t necessarily depend on them to surface the things you need to know.
Notes on the Celebrity Data Theft
What we see in the public with these hacking incidents seems to only be scratching the surface. There are entire communities and trading networks where the data that is stolen remains private and is rarely shared with the public.
The Internet’s Original Sin
It’s not too late to ditch the ad-based business model and build a better web.
The real 10 algorithms that dominate our world
The other day, while I was navigating Reddit I found an interesting post that was called The 10 Algorithms That Dominate Our World by the author George Dvorsky which was trying to explain the importance that algorithms have in our world today and which ones are the most important for our civilization.
Meet the Online Tracking Device That is Virtually Impossible to Block – ProPublica
A new kind of tracking tool, canvas fingerprinting, is being used to follow visitors to thousands of top websites, from WhiteHouse.gov to YouPorn.
Almost everyone involved in developing Tor was (or is) funded by the US government | PandoDaily
NSA? DoD? U.S. Navy? Police surveillance? What the hell is going on? How is it possible that a privacy tool was created by the same military and intelligence agencies that it’s supposed to guard us against? Is it a ruse? A sham? A honeytrap? Maybe I’m just being too paranoid…
Unfortunately, this is not a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory. It is cold hard fact.
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.”
The Web Cookie Is Dying. Here’s The Creepier Technology That Comes Next
Many Internet advertisers rely on cookies. The problem for marketers is that some users set their browsers to reject cookies or quickly extinguish them. And mobile phones, which are taking an increasing chunk of the Web usage, do not use cookies.
Advertisers and publishers are increasingly turning to something called fingerprinting. It allows a web site to look at the characteristics of a computer such as what plugins and software you have installed, the size of the screen, the time zone, fonts and other features of any particular machine. These form a unique signature just like random skin patterns on a finger.
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