Profile picture
, 3 tweets, 2 min read
My Authors
Read all threads
When a company that has your personal data reneges on promises about what it will/won't do with the data, it should be required to prominently disclose this by *rebranding*, not just adding words to a privacy policy. minnesotalawreview.org/wp-content/upl…
A provocative 2013 paper by @paulohm.
@paulohm Perhaps we can start with something far less ambitious: the branding of apps and products should disclose which company owns them. If a seemingly hip privacy-friendly product is made, owned, or bought by a creepy surveillance capitalist, we want to know.
@paulohm Facebook announced it is adding the Facebook brand to WhatsApp & Instagram — "WhatsApp from Facebook" / "Instagram from Facebook". In principle, this is good. It will make it harder to isolate those brands from the impact of FB's privacy scandals. Except… can you even spot it?
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh.

Enjoying this thread?

Keep Current with Arvind Narayanan

Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime, convert it as a PDF, save and print for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video

1) Follow Thread Reader App on Twitter so you can easily mention us!

2) Go to a Twitter thread (series of Tweets by the same owner) and mention us with a keyword "unroll" @threadreaderapp unroll

You can practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @random_walker see all

Profile picture
Arvind Narayanan
@random_walker
I’m often told I’m "brave" for putting my papers on arXiv before they are accepted for publication. How silly! It’s 100x more likely for academic papers to languish in obscurity than for the ideas in them to be so good that someone would want to steal them.
When I ask those paranoid researchers if they’ve ever had an idea stolen, it always turns out to be something that happened to a friend of a friend of a friend, much like the urban legend of waking up in a bathtub full of ice with your kidney harvested.
The reason why ideas don’t get stolen is not that academia is a paragon of virtue. It’s more that someone plagiarizing from arXiv has a high risk of getting caught. Besides, ideas are a dime a dozen and everyone else is too obsessed with their own ideas to pay attention to yours.
Read 7 tweets
Profile picture
Arvind Narayanan
@random_walker
GDPR requires active consent for tracking. Most websites have pre-selected boxes, which is not allowed. What % of users would actively accept tracking to get the supposed benefits of personalization? 50%? 25%?
A new study found it's about ONE FIFTH OF 1%. arxiv.org/pdf/1909.02638…
The tracking industry is acutely aware that the affirmative consent requirement is an existential threat. That's why cookie consent dialogs are loaded with dark patterns. The study confirms that even simple design changes are highly effective. arxiv.org/pdf/1909.02638…
Of course, why stop at basic tricks like pre-selecting boxes when you can get creative?
Read 4 tweets
Profile picture
Arvind Narayanan
@random_walker
The platform company playbook: ignore abuses of the platform; leave it to customers/users, journalists, and 3rd parties to police harmful activities; wait until there's an outcry take stuff down. In other words, externalize the costs and keep the profits. cnbc.com/2019/10/20/ama…
Amazon has defended against lawsuits by arguing that it isn't the seller. But this is disingenuous:
–Amazon advertises itself to customers as a 1-stop shop
–It makes its own brand way more prominent than the seller's
–Amazon doesn't even know the seller's identity in many cases!
Does the practice of burdening users and journalists with the responsibility of policing platforms sound familiar? It should, because many other companies operate that way.
Read 3 tweets

Related threads

Profile picture
Blayne Haggart
@bhaggart
Since July I've written 47 posts analyzing Sidewalk Labs' plans for Toronto, with my final post (barring some new twist) coming on Friday. So it's an appropriate time for some reflections.
#ONpoli #TOpoli #smartcities #cdnpoli

blaynehaggart.wordpress.com/2019/08/26/liv…
I'm not sure that Torontonians realize the extent to which other countries are following, often in disbelief, the ongoing #Quayside debacle (which is what it is by any objective measure).
Over the past yr I've made several presentations in Europe to smart-city and internet scholars re Quayside. To a person they expressed disbelief that any of this, from the shoddy RFP to the Potemkin consultations to playing fast and loose with data definitions, is even happening.
Read 23 tweets
Profile picture
Malavika Jayaram
@MalJayaram
For those who asked, here's a quick recap of my comments from the plenary on 'A #Data Driven World – Can we Ensure #Privacy?' at @OECD #GoingDigital. 1. Innovation is not in opposition to privacy: innovation *in* privacy is a huge opportunity, and a competitive advantage. 1/n
2. Framing and narratives matter. Seeing #data only as an asset (oil, gold, currency, etc) ignores implicit risks. Also seeing it as radioactive (with a half-life), an externality, a ticking time bomb, a liability, etc helps to locate it in a larger ecosystem. 2/n #GoingDigital
3. To a tech hammer, every socioeconomic problem looks like a tech nail. Informational asymmetries and power imbalances require attention to complex structural issues, not just on deployment of one size fits all tech solutions in a box. 3/n #GoingDigital
Read 9 tweets
Profile picture
Bristol News #FBPE
@RealBristolNews
"What Yandex gets from the deal is ”full access to the social network’s ‘firehose’ of public data” from Facebook users in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and other former Soviet countries, according to a press release." qz.com/166653/why-fac… @peterjukes @PeterKGeoghegan
Russia's Yandex, confirmed it passed confidential data to FSB. Yandex's online payment service gave FSB personal information about users who donated money to an anti-corruption website launched by campaigner Alexey Navalny. bbc.co.uk/news/business-… @peterjukes @PeterKGeoghegan
Ukraine's Security Service Searches Yandex Offices-The (SBU) said searches of Kyiv/Odesa offices of Russian Yandex are part of a treason investigation as company management "illegally collected" personal data on local citizens.
rferl.org/a/ukraine-yand… @peterJukes @PeterKGeoghegan
Read 12 tweets
Profile picture
Chris Allison
@ToferC
Next up: Katie Malone @multiarmbandit From Presidential campaign trail to Enterprise - Building a #DataScience team @CivisAnalytics
Effective #data-driven teams: different in existing organizations than start-ups. Need to find the best places to build in data value without overturning everything else. Challenges: personal-level analytics, resource allocation, security, privacy. #ODSCWest
Business & data teams will see problems differently. Data teams need to be comfortable with trade-offs in business. Metrics can be ill-defined. Speed can be better than perfection. Important to understand adequate accuracy of models. #ODSCWest Oh yeah, and security.
Read 9 tweets
Profile picture
UCCat20
@UCC_Official
UCC had opportunity to comment on the #Data.Protection & Privacy Bill. The enactment of this law is long overdue. A comprehensive law on the collection & processing personal information gives effect to the right to Privacy envisaged under Article 27(2) of the Constitution
UCC welcome the protections offered by the Bill in terms of export of data, breach notification requirements, data subjects access rights, automated decision making, compensation and the right to be forgotten and provision for financial and penal sanctions for breach of the law.
Distinction between Data collectors & data controllers.
The Bill should however clarify & distinguish Data Collectors, from Data Processors & Data Controllers. Clause 2 is inconsistent with international good practice which provides for two broad categories of Data Controllers
Read 17 tweets
Profile picture
CIS
@cis_india
Today, @NITIAayog released a Discussion Paper titled ‘National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence”. #AIforAll
niti.gov.in/writereaddata/…
We provide our initial thoughts on the paper here. 1/n
We welcome this initiative by @NITIAayog, but a call for comments would have been a welcome addition. The paper takes important steps forward from the #AI Task Force report released earlier this year by the DIPP, Ministry of Commerce and Industry (dipp.nic.in/sites/default/…). 2/n
This paper attempts a more holistic look at a broader range of issues concerning AI including #regulation, #ethics, #fairness, #transparency and #accountability. However, a number of issues still remain with this paper. 3/n
Read 41 tweets

Trending hashtags

#Office365 #humanrights #profit #NSpoli #SDGs #DataProtection #law #inspired #Baltic #DPIA #CIMS #manofthepaypal #IEEE #human #lawyering #customer #ONpoli #OntarioPCParty #Vetting #public #Assange #Indian #dataprotectionKE #incumbent #LAWS
Follow Us on Twitter!

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just three indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3.00/month or $30.00/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!