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Category: Business

Having your cellphone with you near a crime can make you a prime suspect

Having your cellphone with you near a crime can make you a prime suspect

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Police routinely ask Google to provide information about all phones within a neighborhood of a crime. This has resulted, in at least one example, of an innocent man arrested for murder. While released a week later, he was fired from his job – even though he was 100% innocent. Further, from the linked news article, Google retrains location information for potentially forever – we already know that Google collects location data even when you disable Location services.

Fake reviews now being written by bad AI software

Fake reviews now being written by bad AI software

Fake news, fake reviews – its all the same after a while. Any web service relying on user contributed content has devolved into the noise of fake posts. Now, AI is being applied to writing fake reviews, in an attempt to get around the AI code that seeks to detect fake reviews.

The end of #Youtube user generated content and comments?

The end of #Youtube user generated content and comments?

Youtube just axed comments from tens of millions of videos featuring children – such as, you know, actual family friendly videos – and says they will not run ads on videos that may have “inappropriate comments”. In effect, to make Youtube family friendly, Youtube has just killed off family friendly channels.

Apple revokes Facebook’s “enterprise certificate”; Facebook staff can no longer use any internal company iOS apps

Apple revokes Facebook’s “enterprise certificate”; Facebook staff can no longer use any internal company iOS apps

Facebook loses all access to its own internal iOS apps after Apple revokes Facebook’s developer enterprise certificate for having violated Apple’s terms of service, using the certificate to install a market research (in this case, spying/privacy violating) app on research participants’ devices.

How online news manipulates your perspectives on events by running the same story each day

How online news manipulates your perspectives on events by running the same story each day

Have you noticed that many online news web sites – both newspapers and TV stations – will run a news story and then leave it prominently on their web page for days – even weeks? The stories are typically ones that inflame reader or viewer emotions – and the effect of turning them into semi-permanent stories is to distort the perception of the importance of the story. The primary purpose is likely “click-bait” to drive advertising clicks, but they may also distort the public’s perception on important policy issues.