Digital Ethics

“There’s something fundamental at stake, which is: What does human agency look like?”

Zuckerberg said the company welcomes regulation, but that's not the message on Capitol Hill.

When Elizabeth Warren criticised Facebook over their decision to let Trump run false ads, Facebook compared itself to a broadcaster. That was a big mistake

Social media platforms based in the U.S. including Facebook and WhatsApp will be forced to share users’ encrypted messages with British police under a new treaty between the two countries, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Records reviewed by The Washington Post show that at least 44 public and private universities in the United States work with outside consulting companies to collect and analyze data on prospective students, either by tracking their Web activity or formulating predictive scores to measure each student’s likelihood of enrolling. The vast majority of universities reviewed by The Post do not tell students the schools are collecting their information.

I was beginning to think Foucault’s writings on the “disciplinary society” were becoming irrelevant. But then my niece started the 5th grade. Her teachers add and subtract behavioral points in an app shared with her mom. Note that she lost a point for using the restroom today. pic.twitter.com/3nXJ9Mdbyo— Josh Seim (@JoshSeim) September 27, 2019

On Tuesday, a Google representative told Business Insider the company had made an "error."

Given recent events, it looks like it’s time in the grand evolutionary arc of technology to establish this as a pattern.

Discover the world’s best science and medicine | Nature.com

Google allegedly scanned volunteers with dark skin tones in order to perfect the Pixel phone’s face-unlock technology.

Rebecca Porter and I were strangers, as far as I knew. Facebook, however, thought we might be connected. Her name popped up this summer on my list of “People You May Know,” the social network’s roster of potential new online friends for me.

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.