Better @better@mastodon.ind.ie

‘Social Media Censorship Is Hurting Those on the Margins’

“A lot of people think there’s an easy solution, and that the [solution is] for the platforms to ‘do something.’ Social media companies do not have a good history in this arena, and there are so many reasons not to trust these giant companies, why should we trust them to decide what speech is acceptable?”

https://gizmodo.com/social-media-censorship-is-hurting-those-on-the-margins-1834900815

‘The Doorbell Company That’s Selling Fear’

“News organizations have multiple and sometimes conflicting incentives that might affect how they present the local police blotter. A company that sells security-optimized doorbells has only  *one*  incentive: emphasizing that  *the world is a scary place, and you need to buy our products to protect you*.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/amazon-owned-ring-wants-report-crime-news/588394/

‘Millions of people uploaded photos to the Ever app. Then the company used them to develop facial recognition tools.’

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/millions-people-uploaded-photos-ever-app-then-company-used-them-n1003371

“Ever AI promises prospective military clients that it can ‘enhance surveillance capabilities’ and ‘identify and act on threats.’ It offers law enforcement the ability to identify faces in body-cam recordings or live video feeds.”

‘These Ads Think They Know You’

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/30/opinion/privacy-targeted-advertising.html

“Today’s data providers can receive information from almost every imaginable part of your life: your activity on the internet, the places you visit, the stores you walk through, the things you buy, the things you like, who your friends are, the places your friends go, the things your friends do, and on and on.”

Slavery 2.0 and how to avoid it: a practical guide for cyborgs

https://ar.al/2019/05/02/slavery-2.0-and-how-to-avoid-it-a-practical-guide-for-cyborgs/

(This is the original English version of an article that I wrote for Issue 32 of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes – The German Federal Cultural Foundation – magazine.)

Indie Web Server v9.0.0 release

* Mostly housekeeping
* Breaking change: proxy syntax
* Drops Windows support (use Windows Subsystem for Linux)

https://ar.al/2019/04/29/indie-web-server-9.0.0-housekeeping/

#IndieWebServer #Hypha

‘Facebook while black: Users call it getting ‘Zucked,’ say talking about racism is censored as hate speech’

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/2019/04/24/facebook-while-black-zucked-users-say-they-get-blocked-racism-discussion/2859593002/

“Facebook is not looking to protect me or any other person of color or any other marginalized citizen who are being attacked by hate speech…They are just looking to protect their bottom line.”

‘How Big Tech’s cozy relationship with Ireland threatens data privacy around the world’

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/24/ireland-data-privacy-1270123

“Ireland’s failure to safeguard huge stores of personal information looms larger now that the country is the primary regulator responsible for protecting the health information, email addresses, financial records, relationship status, search histories and friend lists for hundreds of millions of Americans, Europeans and other users around the globe.”

‘That mental health app might share your data without telling you

https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/20/18508382/apps-mental-health-smoking-cessation-data-sharing-privacy-facebook-google-advertising

“Potentially advertisers could use this to compromise someone’s privacy and sway their treatment decisions…”

‘Why You Can No Longer Get Lost in the Crowd’

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/opinion/data-privacy.html

“Obscurity bridges this privacy gap with the idea that the parts of our lives that are hard or unlikely to be found or understood are relatively safe… And until lawmakers, corporate leaders and citizens embrace obscurity and move to protect it, your freedom and opportunities to flourish will be in jeopardy.”

Just released Indie Web Server 8.1.1: introduces a development-time reverse proxy feature

https://ar.al/2019/04/18/indie-web-server-8.1.1-reverse-proxy-local-mode/

The post has an example of using it with Hugo to test over https://localhost with functional live reload.

‘Communities at risk: How security fails are endangering the LBGTIQ+ community’

https://privacyinternational.org/blog/2782/communities-risk-how-security-fails-are-endangering-lbgtiq-community

“This enables governments and companies to construct profiles of them, using these highly sensitive details to make inferences or predictions that may or may not be accurate. Increasingly, profiles are being used to make or inform consequential decisions, from credit scoring, to hiring, to policing.”

This site now runs on Indie Web Server

https://ar.al/2019/04/17/this-site-now-runs-on-indie-web-server/

🐹🥜

#IndieWebServer

Also, as Indie Web Server natively supports the 404→302 method for an evergreen web, all I had to do was create a file called 4042302 with the domain the previous version of the site is on (https://2018.ar.al) and all old links still work. e.g., ar.al/notes/the-nature-of-the-self-in-the-digital-age/

Just switched my personal web site https://ar.al from nginx to Indie Web Server.

Took a few seconds.

What’s Indie Web Server? Check out a two-minute introductory video here: https://ar.al/2019/04/16/set-up-a-live-static-personal-web-site-in-seconds-with-indie-web-server-8.0.0/

#IndieWebServer

‘Tracking Phones, Google Is a Dragnet for the Police’

“Technology companies have for years responded to court orders for specific users’ information. The new warrants go further, suggesting possible suspects and witnesses in the absence of other clues. Often, Google employees said, the company responds to a single warrant with location information on dozens or hundreds of devices.”

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/13/us/google-location-tracking-police.html