Surprise, you just signed a contract! How hidden contracts took over the internet; Planet Money, NPR, July 14, 2023

 Emma Peaslee, Jeff Guo, Jess Jiang, James Sneed, Planet Money, NPR; Surprise, you just signed a contract! How hidden contracts took over the internet

"When you make an account online or install an app, you are probably entering into a legally enforceable contract. Even if you never signed anything. These days, we enter into these contracts so often, it can feel like no big deal."

Yik Yak has returned — and so have reports of cyberbullying, students say; The Record by Recorded Future, February 18, 2022

Emma Vail , The Record by Recorded Future; Yik Yak has returned — and so have reports of cyberbullying, students say

"Yik Yak, an anonymous social media app that was shuttered in 2017 after coming under fire for facilitating cyberbullying, was resurrected last year with an emphasis on new protective measures including anti-bullying guardrails. But students and watchdog groups are already reporting instances of abuse, and say that the new safeguards aren’t enough to stop people from using the app for cyberbullying. 

The app’s targeted consumers are college and high school students, allowing users to post or ‘Yak’ anonymously to others within a 5-mile radius. First launched in 2013 by Furman University students Tyler Droll and Brooks Buffington, the app experienced a rollercoaster of initial success followed by sharp criticism that would lead to its demise in 2017. 

Advertised to be a safer and welcoming space, the app relaunched in August of 2021. New measures were put in place to ensure user safety including a downvote system. Posts that get 5 downvotes by other users are immediately removed from the platform. Yik Yak has implemented a one-strike-and-you’re-out policy that will ban the user from the app if the “violation is serious,” as stated on the website."

Google plans privacy change similar to Apple’s, which wiped $230 billion off Facebook’s market cap; CNBC, February 16, 2022

Jessica Bursztynsky , CNBC; Google plans privacy change similar to Apple’s, which wiped $230 billion off Facebook’s market cap

"Google on Wednesday announced it’s adopting new privacy restrictions that will cut tracking across apps on its Android devices, following a similar move made by Apple last year that upended several firms’ advertising practices."

Dysfunctional websites are making it harder for Americans to get vaccinated. Here’s how to fix that.; The Washington Post, March 31, 2021

Drew Altman , The Washington Post; Dysfunctional websites are making it harder for Americans to get vaccinated. Here’s how to fix that.

"Another useful supplement to more consumer-friendly websites would be an 800 number, staffed in multiple languages, with real people answering to help those who aren’t web savvy make appointments. In addition to friends and family helping each other, Facebook groups and apps are springing up to guide people through the website mazes. But a lot of Americans are not tech savvy. Many have sluggish Internet, have only a handheld device or are not online at all. People shouldn’t be penalized for not being plugged in. Many Americans need a human being to help them. A person answering an 800-number would be better than no real-time help, as is often the case today. The media could hold state officials’ feet to the fire if the number works poorly."

 

‘Zoombombing’: When Video Conferences Go Wrong; The New York Times, March 20, 2020

Taylor Lorenz, The New York Times; ‘Zoombombing’: When Video Conferences Go Wrong

As its user base rapidly expands, the videoconference app Zoom is seeing a rise in trolling and graphic content.

"Zoom has seen a sharp rise in use over the past few weeks. On Sunday nearly 600,000 people downloaded the app, its biggest day ever, according to Apptopia, which tracks mobile apps. The company is currently valued at $29 billion.

But the platform was built as an enterprise technology tool, not a consumer social tool. As such, the company was not prepared to moderate user behavior as other social networks do.

“With much broader adoption, abuse and misuse will follow, so Zoom should be getting ready to handle reports and complaints,” Jules Polonetsky, the chief executive of the Future of Privacy Forum, recently told The Times."

The biggest lie tech people tell themselves — and the rest of us; Vox, October 8, 2019

Rose Eveleth , Vox;

The biggest lie tech people tell themselves — and the rest of us

They see facial recognition, smart diapers, and surveillance devices as inevitable evolutions. They’re not.

"With great power comes great responsibility

Often consumers don’t have much power of selection at all. Those who run small businesses find it nearly impossible to walk away from Facebook, Instagram, Yelp, Etsy, even Amazon. Employers often mandate that their workers use certain apps or systems like Zoom, Slack, and Google Docs. “It is only the hyper-privileged who are now saying, ‘I’m not going to give my kids this,’ or, ‘I’m not on social media,’” says Rumman Chowdhury, a data scientist at Accenture. “You actually have to be so comfortable in your privilege that you can opt out of things.” 

And so we’re left with a tech world claiming to be driven by our desires when those decisions aren’t ones that most consumers feel good about. There’s a growing chasm between how everyday users feel about the technology around them and how companies decide what to make. And yet, these companies say they have our best interests in mind. We can’t go back, they say. We can’t stop the “natural evolution of technology.” But the “natural evolution of technology” was never a thing to begin with, and it’s time to question what “progress” actually means."

Google Maps Just Introduced a Controversial New Feature That Drivers Will Probably Love but Police Will Utterly Hate; Inc., October 20, 2019

Bill Murphy Jr., Inc.; Google Maps Just Introduced a Controversial New Feature That Drivers Will Probably Love but Police Will Utterly Hate

"This week, however, Google announced the next best thing: Starting immediately, drivers will be able to report hazards, slowdowns, and speed traps right on Google Maps...

But one group that will likely not be happy is the police. In recent years, police have asked -- or even demanded -- that Waze drop the police-locating feature."

Orwellabama? Crimson Tide Track Locations to Keep Students at Games; The New York Times, September 12, 2019

Billy Witz, The New York Times; Orwellabama? Crimson Tide Track Locations to Keep Students at Games

Coach Nick Saban gets peeved at students leaving routs early. An app ties sticking around to playoff tickets, but also prompts concern from students and privacy watchdogs.

"Greg Byrne, Alabama’s athletic director, said privacy concerns rarely came up when the program was being discussed with other departments and student groups. Students who download the Tide Loyalty Points app will be tracked only inside the stadium, he said, and they can close the app — or delete it — once they leave the stadium. “If anybody has a phone, unless you’re in airplane mode or have it off, the cellular companies know where you are,” he said.

 

But Adam Schwartz, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy watchdog, said it was “very alarming” that a public university — an arm of the government — was tracking its students’ whereabouts.

 

“Why should packing the stadium in the fourth quarter be the last time the government wants to know where students are?” Schwartz said, adding that it was “inappropriate” to offer an incentive for students to give up their privacy. “A public university is a teacher, telling students what is proper in a democratic society.”"

The Guardian view on privacy online: a human right; The Guardian, April 26, 2018

Editorial Board, The Guardian; The Guardian view on privacy online: a human right

"Encryption on the internet will be abused, but better that than a society where no one is allowed secrets from the government"

Sorry, Facebook was never ‘free’; The New York Post, March 21, 2018

John Podhoretz, The New York Post; Sorry, Facebook was never ‘free’

[Kip Currier: On today's MSNBC Morning Joe show, The New York Post's John Podhoretz pontificated on the same provocative assertions that he wrote about in his March 21, 2018 opinion piece, excerpted below. It’s a post-Cambridge Analytica “Open Letter polemic” directed at anyone (--or using Podhoretz’s term, any fool) who signed up for Facebook “back in the day” and who may now be concerned about how free social media sites like Facebook use—as well as how Facebook et al enable third parties to “harvest”, “scrape”, and leverage—people’s personal data.

Podhoretz’s argument is flawed on so many levels it’s challenging to know where to begin. (Full disclosure: As someone working in academia in a computing and information science school, who signed up for Facebook some years ago to see what all the “fuss” was about, I’ve never used my Facebook account because of ongoing privacy concerns about it. Much to the chagrin of some family and friends who have exhorted me, unsuccessfully, to use it.)

Certainly, there is some level of “ownership” that each of us needs to take when we sign up for a social media site or app by clicking on the Terms and Conditions and/or End User License Agreement (EULA). But it’s also common knowledge now (ridiculed by self-aware super-speed-talking advertisers in TV and radio ads!) that these agreements are written in legalese that don’t fully convey the scope and potential scope of the ramifications of these agreements’ terms and conditions. (Aside: For a clever satirical take on the purposeful impenetrability and abstruseness of these lawyer-crafted agreements, see R. Sikoryak’s 2017 graphic novel Terms and Conditions, which visually lampoons an Apple iTunes user contract.)

Over the course of decades, for example, in the wake of the Tuskegee Syphilis experiments and other medical research abuses and controversies, medical research practitioners were legally coerced to come to terms with the fact that laws, ethics, and policies about “informed consent” needed to evolve to better inform and protect “human subjects” (translation: you and me).

A similar argument can be made regarding Facebook and its social media kin: namely, that tech companies and app developers need to voluntarily adopt (or be required to adopt) HIPAA-esque protections and promote more “informed” consumer awareness.

We also need more computer science ethics training and education for undergraduates, as well as more widespread digital citizenship education in K-12 settings, to ensure a level playing field of digital life awareness. (Hint, hint, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos or First Lady Melania Trump…here’s a mission critical for your patronage.)

Podhoretz’s simplistic Facebook user-as-deplorable-fool rant puts all of the blame on users, while negating any responsibility for bait-and-switch tech companies like Facebook and data-sticky-fingered accomplices like Cambridge Analytica. “Free” doesn’t mean tech companies and app designers should be free from enhanced and reasonable informed consent responsibilities they owe to their users. Expecting or allowing anything less would be foolish.]

"The science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein said it best: “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” Everything has a cost. If you forgot that, or refused to see it in your relationship with Facebook, or believe any of these things, sorry, you are a fool. So the politicians and pundits who are working to soak your outrage for their own ideological purposes are gulling you. But of course you knew.

You just didn’t care . . . until you cared. Until, that is, you decided this was a convenient way of explaining away the victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 election.

You’re so invested in the idea that Trump stole the election, you are willing to believe anything other than that your candidate lost because she made a lousy argument and ran a lousy campaign and didn’t know how to run a race that would put her over the top in the Electoral College — which is how you prevail in a presidential election and has been for 220-plus years.

The rage and anger against Facebook over the past week provide just the latest examples of the self-infantilization and flight from responsibility on the part of the American people and the refusal of Trump haters and American liberals to accept the results of 2016.

Honestly, it’s time to stop being fools and start owning up to our role in all this."

The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak, the Anonymous Messaging App; New York Times, May 27, 2017

Valeriya Safronova, New York Times; The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak, the Anonymous Messaging App

"At the end of that year, Mr. Droll and Mr. Buffington laid off 60 percent of their employees, and last month, they shut down the operation, selling off intellectual property and employee contracts to Square Inc., a mobile payment company, for $1 million. A few months earlier, Hive, a college-based chat app with a similar color scheme to Yik Yak’s, popped up in the iTunes and Google Play stores, with Mr. Buffington in one of the screenshots. Whether it was an attempt at reinvention under the Yik Yak umbrella or a side project is unclear, but it is no longer available...

Morgan Hines, who will start her fourth year at Northeastern University in Boston this fall, never encountered nastiness on Yik Yak. “I thought it was funny,” she said. “It formed a lot of camaraderie between students. There would be random shout-outs to things happening on campus, like people who are attractive or being annoying in the library, or a fire alarm going off at 4 a.m.”

But Ms. Hines criticized Yik Yak’s hyper-localization. “Yik Yak was for pockets of people on campus,” she said. “If the fire alarm went off at 4 a.m., it only went off at your building, so no one else will give it a thumbs-up.”

That hyper-localization is also what made the cases of harassment particularly galling. Ms. Musick, one of the plaintiffs, said, “With Yik Yak, in the back of your mind, you know they’re not from around the world or other parts of the state, they’re right there in your classroom, in your dining hall. On a campus with 4,500 students, that’s a pretty small group of people. This isn’t some creepy guy in his mom’s basement in Indiana.”"

How to Protect Your Privacy as More Apps Harvest Your Data; New York Times, May 1, 2017

Brian X. Chen, New York Times; How to Protect Your Privacy as More Apps Harvest Your Data

"Opt out for good

Deleting your app from your phone or computer often isn’t enough. You’ll remove data from the device itself, but not from the company’s servers.

If you’ve lost trust in a company, make the cleanest break possible: Delete your account. In the case of an app like Uber, for example, you can submit a request on the company’s website to have your account deleted. Similarly, with Unroll.me, you can log in to the site and click through the settings to delete your account.

Even after doing that, you will have to reconcile with the idea that the company will probably hold on to the information you have already shared.

“Data you’ve provided to the service as part of using the service is data that they can store and continue to use,” Ms. Sandvik said. “It falls under the terms of service.”

Unroll.me head 'heartbroken' that users found out it sells their inbox data; Guardian, April 24, 2017

Alex Hern, Guardian; 

Unroll.me head 'heartbroken' that users found out it sells their inbox data

"Following the story, Unroll.me’s CEO and co-founder Jojo Hedaya wrote a corporate blogpost in which he expressed contrition. But while he said it was “heartbreaking”, he was not talking about the sale of customer data: instead, he said he felt bad “to see that some of our users were upset to learn about how we monetise our free service”.

He added: “the reality is most of us – myself included – don’t take the time to thoroughly review” terms of service agreements or privacy policies."

Trump Is President. Now Encrypt Your Email.; New York Times, March 31, 2017

Max Read, New York Times; Trump Is President. Now Encrypt Your Email.

"As lawyers and civil libertarians point out, federal criminal law is so vast and complicated that it is easy to unwittingly violate it, and even innocent conversation can later be used to build a criminal case. Encrypting your communication isn’t a matter of hiding criminal activity; it’s a matter of ensuring innocuous activity can’t be deemed suspicious by a zealous prosecutor or intelligence agent. Telling a friend that a party is really going to “blow up” when you arrive is less funny when it’s being entered into evidence against you."

Vibrator Maker To Pay Millions Over Claims It Secretly Tracked Use; NPR, March 14, 2017

Camila Domonoske, NPR; 

Vibrator Maker To Pay Millions Over Claims It Secretly Tracked Use

"The makers of the We-Vibe, a line of vibrators that can be paired with an app for remote-controlled use, have reached a $3.75 million class action settlement with users following allegations that the company was collecting data on when and how the sex toy was used...

The lawyers for the anonymous plaintiffs contended that the app, "incredibly," collected users' email addresses, allowing the company "to link the usage information to specific customer accounts."...

Standard Innovation also agreed to stop collecting users' email addresses and to update its privacy notice to be clearer about how data is collected."

US Daily Beast website takes down article discussing Grindr dates with Olympic athletes; Guardian, 8/11/16

Elle Hunt, Guardian; US Daily Beast website takes down article discussing Grindr dates with Olympic athletes:

"Tyler Oakley, a gay social media personality, said something similar, accusing Hines and the Daily Beast of treating same-sex-attracted people as “zoo animals”."

This Daily Beast Grindr Stunt Is Sleazy, Dangerous, and Wildly Unethical; Slate, 8/11/16

Mark Joseph Stern, Slate; This Daily Beast Grindr Stunt Is Sleazy, Dangerous, and Wildly Unethical:

"Anyone who has heard of Grindr has also heard of the Wayback Machine. Nothing on the internet can be reliably deleted.

Shortly after Hines’ article published, openly gay Olympian Gus Kenworthy tweeted that the author “basically just outed a bunch of athletes in his quest to write a shitty [Daily Beast] article where he admitted to entrapment.” That is correct, but it’s worth exploring why Hines embarked upon this weird, sleazy quest in the first place. I count two reasons. The first is that Hines simply enjoys tittering with condescension at all the gay athletes who take the bait and engage with him—a straight dude, as Hines emphatically reminds us. Why else zero in on Grindr? The second reason is more repulsive: Hines appears to take pleasure in luring in these Olympians then outing them to all the world.

But the offensive purpose of Hines’ article is really the least of its problems. Far worse is the actual damage it will likely cause to real, live human beings—inevitable consequences that Hines blithely ignored. Several athletes who are closeted at home (and possibly to their own teammates) will wake up on Thursday morning to the news that the Daily Beast has outed them. Their teammates could ostracize and alienate them; their families could disown them; their countries could imprison them. And for what? A homophobic article about how a straight guy conned gay Olympians from anti-gay countries into hitting on him through Grindr? Hines’ article is a dangerous disaster, a wildly unethical train wreck that should be taken down immediately for the sake of its duped subjects. Hines may view his Grindr-baiting as all fun and games. For the victims of his unprincipled journalism, however, his nasty little piece has the power to ruin lives."

Gay and Transgender Egyptians, Harassed and Entrapped, Are Driven Underground; New York Times, 8/10/16

Liam Stack, New York Times; Gay and Transgender Egyptians, Harassed and Entrapped, Are Driven Underground:

"Mr. Long said that online entrapment had become especially effective in the last two years, because the shutdown of gay-friendly spaces had left many with no place to go.

“There aren’t many queer places left in downtown or in the rest of the city, so people become more reliant on apps and social networks,” he said. “People are lonely and they meet someone who seems like they’re interested, and bang, they’re arrested.”

Ali agreed that despite the dangers, the internet was one of the few public spaces left for gay and transgender people.

“There is no other way,” Ali said. “It is Egypt.”"

Pearls Before Swine; GoComics.com, 12/20/15

GoComics.com; Stephan Pastis, Pearls Before Swine: [Never Read the Terms and Conditions]

Pennsylvania bills aim to protect students’ data; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/14/15

Rich Lord, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Pennsylvania bills aim to protect students’ data:

"The introduction follows by two months the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s series on student data privacy, which showed that most of the state’s largest districts did not control the flow of their kids’ information through education technology companies. Fewer than half of the districts’ vendors publicly outlined their policies for deleting student data or pledged to protect it in a merger or bankruptcy, and just 10 of 143 promised to report any breach.

The bills wouldn’t ban apps like the poster-making program Glogster, which markets to teachers and indicates in its privacy policy that it may share “personal information” with “consumer products, telecom, financial, military, market research, entertainment, and educational services companies and their third party service providers.” But the districts would first need to notify parents, who could say no."