Digital Ethics

Facebook's ability to figure out the "people we might know" is sometimes eerie. Many a Facebook user has been creeped out when a one-time Tinder date or an ex-boss from 10 years ago suddenly pops up as a friend recommendation. How does the big blue giant know?

The bill has raised questions about speech protections

Twitter has said it used phone numbers and email addresses, provided by users to set up two-factor authentication on their accounts, to serve targeted ads. In a disclosure Tuesday, the social media giant said it did not know how many users were impacted. The issue stemmed from the company’s tailored audiences program, which allows companies […]

In 2014, Christopher Wylie resigned from his position as Cambridge Analytica's research director. He later exposed the company's role in the Trump presidential campaign and the Brexit referendum.

But there’s an ethical catch to it, a new study finds.

If Big Tech becomes synonymous with the internet, we could lose free choice, democracy, and even the ability to imagine a different world

Shannon Vallor is worried about killer robots. But not for the reasons you might think.

Advertisers would collect the bulk of the money after alleging Facebook inflated the average time users viewed video on the platform.

Facebook has been asked to roll back plans to bring end-to-end encryption to its platforms.

Cryptocurrency mining uses significant amounts of energy as part of the proof-of-work time-stamping scheme to add new blocks to the chain. Expanding u…

Algorithms decide who gets a loan, who gets a job interview, who gets insurance and much more -- but they don't automatically make things fair. Mathematician and data scientist Cathy O'Neil coined a term for algorithms that are secret, important and harmful: "weapons of math destruction." Learn more about the hidden agendas behind the formulas.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib suggested that the Detroit police department should only employ African Americans to identify black suspects from the city's facial recognition technology, according to video captured by The Detroit News -- a comment that the city's police chief called "racist" and "insulting."

Big technological shifts have always empowered reformers. They have also empowered bigots, hucksters, and propagandists.

A new incognito mode on Google Maps may make it easier to obscure your search history. But that doesn't mean the app won't be tracking your whereabouts.

For a nominally private network, Facebook's new app Threads asks for a surprising amount of user data.

It appears that Apple has rejected an app that warns Hong Kongers about police activity. The Hong Kong police force shot a high schooler in the chest yesterday and put seventy people, from 11 to 75, in the hospital. That app saves lives in Hong Kong. Let me tweet about it a bit https://t.co/APsQK6XRsP— Pinboard (@Pinboard) October 2, 2019

They need facial scans of people with darker skin

This is the online version of the Popular Information newsletter. You can get independent accountability journalism in your inbox every week. Sign up here: Last week, Facebook quietly changed the language of its advertising policies to make it easier for politicians to lie in ads.

We've gathered together some of the best digital ethics codes to guide charities' in building their own ethical frameworks.

Motorola Solutions is among the tech firms racing to deliver new ways of monitoring the public.

We love being on our phones. A lot. Now a cottage industry around "digital detox" wants to help you quit.

After two officers came to a Pacific Northwest community, longtime residents began to disappear — a testament to the agency’s quiet embrace of big data.

Travel companies are using facial recognition and other sophisticated tech to better predict how and why their customers shop the way they do.

Some social media companies have had a newsworthiness exemption for years, but they clarified this week that most political content is "news."

Nearly two decades ago, a company called Interpeak created a network protocol that became an industry standard. It also had severe bugs that are only now coming to light.

A.I. research is becoming increasingly expensive, leaving few people with easy access to the computing firepower necessary to develop the technology.

Headlines are full of the ways in which our use of data and automated decision-making algorithms have run amok, from blindly optimizing…

But does it matter that they are not real?

A statement on the necessity of surveillance resistant systems.https://t.co/eOdTOBZK0q pic.twitter.com/icb0OTWXtg— Sarah Jamie Lewis (@SarahJamieLewis) November 8, 2018