qz.com
analyse
Uber asked Trump to protect drivers as part of coronavirus response plans — Quartz - 25 mars 2020
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi sent a letter to US president Donald Trump today, asking him to ensure that Uber’s drivers are included in the economic stimulus plans in response to coronavirus.
“My goal in writing to you is not to ask for a bailout for Uber,” wrote Khosrowshahi, “but rather for support for the (...)
analyse
Is TikTok a Chinese Cambridge Analytica data bomb waiting to explode ? - 5 décembre 2019
Between 2013 and 2016, 87 million people had their data harvested by Cambridge Analytica. The psychometric profiles gleaned from the personality quiz they created were used without their owners’ consents for political purposes and likely influenced the results of the 2016 US presidential election—and potentially (...)
analyse
China launches mandatory face scans for mobile users - 2 décembre 2019
A new rule requiring face scans of customers signing up for new mobile plans in China came into effect Sunday (Dec. 1), amid widespread adoption of facial-recognition technology across the country.
In September, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the change (link in Chinese) in a (...)
analyse
DNA test kits threaten kids’ privacy in ways we can’t understand yet - 24 novembre 2019
In the modern world it’s easy to take the rapid pace of change for granted.
The steady stream of highly specialized, expensive technologies that are scaled and brought to market as direct-to-consumer products are more than enough to elicit soul-searching among the general population.
And maybe they should. (...)
information
Facebook won’t use facial recognition on you unless you tell it to - 4 septembre 2019
Facebook has been using facial recognition to suggest tagging you in photos that a friend had uploaded, unless you told it not to"”until today. Now, users will have to opt into allow Facebook to use facial recognition on them and their photos, rather than opt out.
For users who have already turned off the feature, (...)
analyse
Your digital identity has three layers, and you can only protect one of them - 30 janvier 2019
Your online profile is less a reflection of you than a caricature.
Whether you like it or not, commercial and public actors tend to trust the string of 1s and 0s that represent you more than the story you tell them. When filing a credit application at a bank or being recruited for a job, your social network, (...)
analyse
China is exporting its digital surveillance methods to African governments - 2 novembre 2018
China has consistently been ranked by digital advocates as the world’s worst abuser of internet freedom. The country, however, isn’t just tightening online controls at home but is becoming more brazen in exporting some of those techniques abroad including in Africa, says a new report from the US-based think tank (...)
analyse
They were sold a fantasy of middle-class life. Now Ola and Uber drivers face a brutal reality - 23 mars 2018
Tanveer Pasha, a 33-year-old taxi driver in Bengaluru, is in a dilemma. As president of the OTU (Ola, Taxiforsure, and Uber) Drivers and Owners Association, he’s keen on joining his colleagues in Mumbai and New Delhi in their March 19 strike against mobile app-based cab aggregators over dwindling earnings. Yet, he (...)
analyse
Google’s true origin partly lies in CIA and NSA research grants for mass surveillance - 11 décembre 2017
Two decades ago, the US intelligence community worked closely with Silicon Valley in an effort to track citizens in cyberspace. And Google is at the heart of that origin story. Some of the research that led to Google’s ambitious creation was funded and coordinated by a research group established by the intelligence (...)
analyse
Google’s true origin partly lies in CIA and NSA research grants for mass surveillance - 8 décembre 2017
Two decades ago, the US intelligence community worked closely with Silicon Valley in an effort to track citizens in cyberspace. And Google is at the heart of that origin story. Some of the research that led to Google’s ambitious creation was funded and coordinated by a research group established by the intelligence (...)
analyse
Google collects Android users’ locations even when location services are disabled - 23 novembre 2017
Many people realize that smartphones track their locations. But what if you actively turn off location services, haven’t used any apps, and haven’t even inserted a carrier SIM card ?
Even if you take all of those precautions, phones running Android software gather data about your location and send it back to Google (...)
analyse
Ending fake news means changing how Wall Street values Facebook and Twitter - 2 novembre 2017
Wall Street has a very simple way of pricing social media giants : the number of users that see its ads. That metric has sent the valuations of Facebook and Twitter spiraling into the stratosphere (and, from Twitter at least, back down to Earth), but it may no longer add up.
Millions of fake accounts on Facebook (...)
analyse
Facebook is re-sculpting our memory - 16 juillet 2017
For much of history, the only way to chronicle life was to write about it. Now, many of us take selfies on our smartphones to share on Facebook, and create picturesque albums of our daily meals on Instagram. And as the mediums we use to recall and review the past change, so do our very memories.
Daniel Schacter, (...)
analyse
China’s censors are making sure the country doesn’t remember human rights activist Liu Xiaobo - 14 juillet 2017
Liu Xiaobo will be remembered by the world as the Chinese human rights activist awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. He’ll be remembered by many in China, if at all, as a man jailed for subversion of state power. China’s censors are making sure of it.
Liu died from organ failure after a battle with liver cancer (...)
analyse
China is creating a massive "Orwellian" DNA database - 17 mai 2017
In the name of safeguarding its 1.4 billion people, China has been collecting biometric information from millions of people whom it deems potential threats"”among them, Uyghurs, migrant workers, and college students"”as part of national DNA database.
China’s Ministry of Public Security, which oversees the database, (...)
analyse
Facebook is trying to get rid of bias in Trending news by getting rid of humans - 29 août 2016
Facebook will no longer employ humans to write descriptions for items in its Trending section, which attracted controversy over allegations of political bias in May. Topics appearing in the Trending section will now appear solely as a short phrase or single word, with an indication of the number of people (...)
analyse
Google’s chairman wants algorithms to censor the internet for hate speech - 9 décembre 2015
In an op-ed for The New York Times (paywall), Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, inserted himself directly into the middle of a heated debate about the line between fighting terrorism’s online reach and internet censorship.
"It’s our responsibility to demonstrate that stability and free expression go (...)
analyse
Millions of Facebook users have no idea they’re using the internet - 9 février 2015
It was in Indonesia three years ago that Helani Galpaya first noticed the anomaly.
Indonesians surveyed by Galpaya told her that they didn’t use the internet. But in focus groups, they would talk enthusiastically about how much time they spent on Facebook. Galpaya, a researcher (and now CEO) with LIRNEasia, a think (...)
analyse
Meet the man who built the awesome online attendance system for India’s government officials - 13 octobre 2014
Ram Sewak Sharma is a silver-haired, straight-talking bureaucrat who spent much of the last five years working out of an office near New Delhi’s Connaught Place. Next door to him sat Nandan Nilekani, the former Infosys CEO.
Together, the two men built the world’s largest biometric identification programme, Aadhaar. (...)
information
The Times of India just instituted a bizarre Twitter and Facebook policy - 27 août 2014
Hundreds of journalists working at the Times of India and its sister publications have received a peculiar request from their employer : hand over your Twitter and Facebook passwords and let us post for you.
Even after you leave the company.
Under a contract unveiled to employees last week, Bennett, Coleman and (...)
