Chief correspondent covering the people, power, and politics of tech @protocol. former @WIRED. she/her. Send tips to ilapowsky@protocol.com. DM for Signal.
Jul 13, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
NEW: A deep dive into the privacy war raging within the World Wide Web Consortium, where some of the most secretive companies in the world are wrangling over the future of your data — and their own power — in plain sight. #longread
protocol.com/policy/w3c-pri…
As companies like Apple and Google have announced plans to kill off web tracking techniques, the W3C saw an influx of new members from the ad and data industry, who argue these changes are just power grabs by tech giants that are already too powerful protocol.com/policy/w3c-pri…
May 6, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Holy Moly. NY AG report finds out of the 22 million net neutrality comments the FCC received in 2017, 18 million were fake.
Report alleges a "secret campaign" by the broadband industry, which offered consumers rewards for male enhancement drugs ‼️
This will get overlooked, but Michael McConnell of the Oversight Board is making a point that's much broader than Trump and gets into concerns about Facebook jail: "Users and their audiences, must not be left in a state of uncertainty as to time or reasons for restoration."
"In the future, if a head of state of government, or high government official repeatedly post messages that pose a risk of harm, Facebook should either suspend the account for definitive period of time, or delete the account." - @HelleThorning_S of the Oversight Board
Apr 27, 2021 • 32 tweets • 5 min read
Sen. Coons begins hearing on algorithms by saying he and Sasse don't have a specific legislative agenda: "Ranking member Sasse and I plan to use this hearing as an opportunity to learn."
Sasse also strikes a conciliatory tone. "It's too easy in DC for us to take any complicated issue and reduce it immediately to heroes and villains and whatever the regulatory or legislative pre-determined tool was to then slam it down on the newly to be defined problem."
Mar 19, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I'm creating a new thread to talk about this issue, because I think it's an important one.
Facebook told me multiple times that Ad Observer collects and publishes data on users who hadn't consented.
It was such a damning allegation, I wanted to know whose data they meant. 1/x
I pushed until they confirmed they were talking about advertisers' public Pages, not private users' accounts.
Had I published their statement outright, it would have been misleading or at least incomplete and damaging to the NYU researchers. protocol.com/nyu-facebook-r…
Mar 19, 2021 • 5 tweets • 4 min read
NEW: Facebook’s attempt to shutter research at NYU on political ads is just the most extreme example of the increasingly fraught relationship between platforms and academics.
If Senators actually do their jobs during this hearing, we could get answers to critical questions about the efficacy of Facebook and Twitters' election defenses.
But I don't have high hopes. protocol.com/post-election-…
And we're off. In opening remarks, Graham asks: "If you're not a newspaper at Twitter or Facebook, then why do you have editorial control over the New York Post?"
Note: Not republishing something from the NY Post is not the same as having editorial control over the NY Post.
Nov 27, 2018 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
Lawmakers from 9 countries are questioning Facebook's Richard Allan right now in London. First up is Canada's Charlie Angus, who's going in on the fact that Zuckerberg didn't show up like they wanted him to. He condemns the "frat boy billionaires" in CA upending global democracy.
"You have lost the trust of the international community to self-police." - Angus of Canada
May 12, 2018 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
NEW: The House Democrats' trove of Russia-linked Facebook ads contained ads targeting suspicious Chrome extensions at teenage girls. The extensions gained wide access to users' browsing behavior and Facebook accounts. h/t @d1gi for spotting wired.com/story/russia-f…
The landing page for the ads where users could install the extension was registered in April 2016 in St. Petersburg, Russia. The ads went live in May. By June, people were already complaining about how the extension had spammed all their Facebook friends wired.com/story/russia-f…
Apr 16, 2018 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
A researcher with lots of foresight scraped 5 million political ads on Facebook during 6 weeks before the 2016 election. She found that half of the advertisers had absolutely no federal records or online footprint. Of that half, 1 in 6 were Russian trolls. wired.com/story/russian-…
These "suspicious" advertisers predominantly targeted voters in swing states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. She also found that white voters received 87 percent of all immigration ads. wired.com/story/russian-…
Apr 4, 2018 • 16 tweets • 2 min read
Facebook call with Mark Zuckerberg is starting now. They say it'll be 45 minutes (!).
“We're an idealistic and optimistic company and for the first decade we really focused on all the good connecting people brings” - Zuck
But in the past, "We didn't take a broad enough view of what our responsibility is...It was my mistake."
Jan 4, 2018 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Funny you should mention. I just happen to have written a little something about how researchers are developing algorithms that give the courts hard proof of voter ID laws' racially discriminatory impact. wired.com/story/voter-id…
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The most promising among them can accurately match people in the voter roll to voter ID databases with the same accuracy as a Social Security Number. wired.com/story/voter-id…
Nov 1, 2017 • 44 tweets • 5 min read
Both FB and Twitter say they saw no evidence of Russian accounts uploading voter data to target specific lists.
By now, given Russian posts senators have shared, it's clear what the their motive was: to pit the American electorate against itself.
