Laura’s Lens

“Today’s EU copyright vote went about as badly as could be feared: MEPs approved articles 11 and 13, meaning that unless member states push back (and good luck with that), it will likely become illegal to link to an article using the headline for that article, and all but the smallest websites will need to install upload filters to weed out copyright-protected content.”

Read ‘How to fix the Copyright Directive lobbying disaster’.

“She should lower expectations and declare that there is nothing Facebook can do to exterminate all the pests. With 2.2 billion profiles in more than 100 languages, even a small error rate can wreak havoc. With algorithms amplifying content that generates passionate responses, the crazy conspiratorial stuff will always rocket around Facebook faster and farther than the thoughtful condolence or the cute pictures of golden retrievers. And with that powerful advertising system, Facebook will always be the platform of choice for dishonest or hateful parties.”

Read ‘Why Facebook Will Never Be Free of Fakes’.

“Civil liberties advocates say they are alarmed by the NYPD’s secrecy in helping to develop a program with the potential capacity for mass racial profiling.”

“Civil liberties advocates contend that New Yorkers should have been made aware of the potential use of their physical data for a private company’s development of surveillance technology.”

Read ‘IBM Used NYPD Surveillance Footage to Develop Technology That Lets Police Search By Skin Color’.

“While the rhetoric is sharp, the specifics are vague.”

“Creating so-called backdoors in applications and services to enable communications interception capabilities for law enforcement has persistently been criticised by cryptography and security experts as dangerous for decades now.”

“Despite the criticism and concerns that backdoors in Western equipment and services could be exploited and abused by totalitarian regimes elsewhere in the world, the Five-Eyes countries have pursued interception capabilities, saying not having these would undermine the rule of law.”

As it has been said before, a backdoor is just another door. You either have encryption or you don’t. There is no halfway.

Read ‘Five-Eyes nations to force encryption backdoors’.

“Granted anonymity, affiliates were happy to detail their tricks. They told me that Facebook had revolutionized scamming. The company built tools with its trove of user data that made it the go-to platform for big brands. Affiliates hijacked them. Facebook’s targeting algorithm is so powerful, they said, they don’t need to identify suckers themselves—Facebook does it automatically. And they boasted that Russia’s dezinformatsiya agents were using tactics their community had pioneered.”

A long and very quotable read.

“Affiliates say Facebook has sent mixed signals over the years. Their accounts would get banned, but company salespeople would also come to their meetups and parties and encourage them to buy more ads. Two former Facebook employees who worked in the Toronto sales office said it was common knowledge there that some of their best clients were affiliates who used deception.”

“In a sense, affiliate scammers are much like Cambridge Analytica. Because Facebook is so effective at vacuuming up people and information about them, anyone who lacks scruples and knows how to access the system can begin to wreak havoc or earn money at astonishing scale.”

“But affiliates, he continued, aren’t really to blame. They’re just taking advantage of opportunities created by large corporations in a capitalistic system built around persuading people to buy things they don’t need.”

Read ‘How Facebook Helps Shady Advertisers Pollute the Internet’.

“the deal, which has not been previously reported, could raise broader privacy concerns about how much consumer data technology companies like Google quietly absorb.”

Read ‘Google and Mastercard Cut a Secret Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales’.

“According to the complaint, Facebook permitted advertisers to discriminate based on disability by blocking ads to users the company categorized as having interests in “mobility scooter” or “deaf culture.” It similarly discriminates based on familial status by not showing ads to users that were labeled as being interested in “child care” or “parenting,” according to the complaint.”

When someone from Trump’s government tells you you’re being discriminatory against people on grounds of race, religion, sex, and disability, it must be extreme.

Read ‘US Department of Housing and Urban Development Hits Facebook For Allowing Housing Discrimination’.

“Alongside having the best security and privacy technologies, smart sex toy makers should have the most robust privacy policies. The less that’s collected, the less that can be abused, after all.”

Read ‘The looming deluge of connected dildos is a security nightmare’.

“This does not prove that GDPR caused the decline, but it may have prompted websites to look at the cookies they were using, and for which they now had to obtain consent… However, American technology companies generally evaded the cull. Most sites retained cookies from Google (96 percent), Facebook (70 percent), and Amazon (57 percent).

This is pretty good news.

Read ‘GDPR Cuts Tracking Cookies in Europe’.

“The actions of a handful of individuals are unlikely to steer corporate policy, but the trend could signal a looming recruiting pipeline problem if the companies don’t change tack.”

Read ‘Clashes Over Ethics at Major Tech Companies Are Causing Problems for Recruiters’.