Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #Privacywashing
Most recents (4)
The city of Stockholm commissioned Skolplattform, an omnibus app to deliver timely information to students, teachers and parents. It was a mess: a late, SEK 1B (USD 117M) "IT disaster" boondoggle with a 1.2 star rating.
play.google.com/store/apps/det… 1/
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If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2021/11/09/skr… 2/
pluralistic.net/2021/11/09/skr… 2/
Among the groups that were poorly served by the app were parents, and among those parents was Christian @Landgren, a software developer. Landgren created a streamlined version of the app just for parents that he dubbed Öppna (open) Skolplattformen. 3/
Dashers aren't stupid. They know that the difference between a profitable @Doordash delivery and one where they earn less than they spend on gas is the size of the tip they get at the end of the job.
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Of course, Doordash knows this too. The company - a corporate predator with a history of wage theft and worker misclassification - knows that its only hope of sustainability is to make real, profitable businesses like restaurants dependent on it.
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If Doordash can impose a toll-booth between businesses and customers, it can siphon off the restaurants' profits (and if it kills the restaurants in the process, it can replace them with ghost kitchens - fake restaurants in shipping containers).
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Facebook just redoubled its attacks on transparency, terminating the accounts of the NYU researchers behind #AdObserver, an independent project that monitors paid disinformation on the platform.
pluralistic.net/2021/08/05/com…
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If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
pluralistic.net/2021/08/06/get…
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pluralistic.net/2021/08/06/get…
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This is inexcusable, but that doesn't stop Facebook from trying to excuse it. That defense has two prongs. The first is a false claim that Ad Observer compromises Facebook user privacy.
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Facebook just escalated its war on NYU's #AdObserver project, a project that monitors and discloses Facebook's failure to live up to its promise to block paid disinformation.
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Here's how that works. Facebook users volunteer to download and install Ad Observer, a browser plugin. This plugin scrapes the ads Facebook shows that user. They are cleaned of any personally identifying information and uploaded to the #AdObservatory.
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The Observatory is an archive that accountability journalists and researchers can mine to see whether FB is keeping its promises to label political ads and block paid disinformation. It's proof that FB does NOT live up to these promises.
pluralistic.net/2020/11/20/sov…
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