Facebook in Privacy Breach (Wall Street Journal) At this moment, the must-read stories in technology are scattered across hundreds of news sites and blogs. That's far too much for any reader to follow. Fortunately, Techmeme arranges all of these links into a single, easy-to-scan page. Story selection is accomplished via computer algorithm extended with direct human editorial input. Phreesia - The Patient Check-in Company Everything We Know About What Data Brokers Know About You June 13, 2014: This story has been updated. It was originally published on March 7, 2013. We've spent a lot of time this past year trying to understand how the National Security Agency gathers and stores information about ordinary people. But there's also a thriving public marketfor data on individual Americans—especially data about the things we buy and might want to buy. Consumer data companies are scooping up huge amounts of consumer information about people around the world and selling it, providing marketers details about whether you're pregnant or divorced or trying to lose weight, about how rich you are and what kinds of cars you drive. The Federal Trade Commission is pushing the companies to give consumers more information and control over what happens to their data. It's very hard to tell who is collecting or sharing your data—or what kinds of information companies are collecting. Here's a look at what we know—and what we don't—about the consumer data industry. Actually, they do.
Software for Visualizing and Managing Information Fear And Loathing At The Wall Street Journal Ahhhhhhhhhahhhaha! The inmates are now running the asylum. All anyone is talking about today is the series of articles that the Wall Street Journal has written about a “Privacy Breach” at Facebook. Front page above the fold stuff, all the fruit of a “Wall Street Journal investigation.” We’ll put aside the fact that no mention was made of the Wall Street Journal’s sister company and Facebook competitor MySpace. So what’s the big deal? Many of the most popular applications, or “apps,” on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information—in effect, providing access to people’s names and, in some cases, their friends’ names—to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found. Yes, that’s what this is all about. The way this is being done is via referrer URLs (99% of the general population just got lost on what those are), which can contain profile IDs. And then…well, nothing. Is this a real problem?
Amazon Sales Rank Tracking & Analysis Adam Curtis: “We don't read newspapers because the journalism is so boring” Adam Curtis remains at the forefront of documentary filmmaking. He began in the early 80s, but his first major breakthrough came in 1992 with Pandora’s Box, a film which warned of the dangers technocratic politics and saw him pick up his first of six career BAFTAs. Holed up in a BBC basement, Curtis brings together disparate subjects and uses archival footage to chart political history. His love of music is playfully interwoven into the narrative, whilst his unique, deadpan voice discusses the failures of political systems and ideologies. In his 2004 film, Power of Nightmares, his most remarkable piece of work to date, Curtis debunked the myth that al-Qaeda was an organised global network posing an apocalyptic threat to the West, which, In a post-911 context that saw governments and mass media exaggerating al-Qaeda’s size and influence, was a bold message. All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011) So, let's start with this idea of “static culture”. What could Savages do? Yeah.
PocketMod: The Free Disposable Personal Organizer Wall Street Journal Investigation Into MySpace Was Quietly Killed A few days ago the Wall Street Journal published a series of articles about a supposed Facebook privacy breach. We and others noted that the article was complete rubbish. We also noted that the Wall Street Journal’s sister company, MySpace, wasn’t mentioned in the article – either as a disclosure of a conflict of interest or a discussion of whether MySpace was doing the same thing. The WSJ was actually investigating MySpace, says a source close to the company, and were planning on publishing the information the investigation uncovered. MySpace has had three different CEOs in the last two years, as well as a period where they were led by co-presidents. But the story was shelved. Why? Press is being briefed now on the new MySpace, and having a big privacy blowup during the relaunch was exactly not what MySpace management wanted to happen. MySpace’s transgressions appear to go much deeper, so why weren’t they included? Update: Oh look, just a few hours after this post.
asymco | Curated Market Intelligence How He Used Facebook to Win | by Sue Halpern Prototype Politics: Technology-Intensive Campaigning and the Data of Democracy by Daniel Kreiss Oxford University Press, 291 pp., $99.00; $27.95 (paper) Hacking the Electorate: How Campaigns Perceive Voters by Eitan D. Cambridge University Press, 261 pp., $80.00; $30.99 (paper) Not long after Donald Trump’s surprising presidential victory, an article published in the Swiss weekly Das Magazin, and reprinted online in English by Vice, began churning through the Internet. According to Grassegger and Krogerus, Cambridge Analytica had used psychological data culled from Facebook, paired with vast amounts of consumer information purchased from data-mining companies, to develop algorithms that were supposedly able to identify the psychological makeup of every voter in the American electorate. Even more troubling was the underhanded way in which Cambridge Analytica appeared to have obtained its information. And this was just Facebook. There were other digital innovations as well. In Detroit, Mrs.