Tag: big tech

Your Phone Is Spying On You: Companies Are Generating Secret “Surveillance Scores” Based On That Data

Nothing that you do on your phone is private.  In this day and age, most of us have become extremely dependent on our phones, and most Americans never even realize that these extremely sophisticated little devices are gathering mountains of information on each one of us. 

Your phone knows what you look like, it knows the sound of your voice, it knows where you have been, it knows where you have shopped, it knows your Internet searches and it knows what you like to do in your free time.  In fact, your phone literally knows thousands of things about you, and all of that information is bought and sold every single day without you knowing. 

And as you will see below, there are lots of companies out there that use information collected from our phones to create secret “surveillance scores” that are used for a whole host of alarming purposes.

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Tech Giants Eye Lucrative Rent Market as End to Eviction Moratorium Could Leave Millions Homeless

Parallel to this and largely under the radar, however, the private tech sector is moving into position to swoop in and take advantage of the impending housing crisis. Just as news of a mysterious virus was breaking late last year, Facebook invested $1 billion for the construction of 20,000 new affordable housing units in California, following Google’s lead which had made the exact same commitment a few months earlier. Apple more than doubled Google’s and Facebook’s investment, combined, when it put down $2.5 billion for the same cause.

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Arizona GOP chair had Twitter account ‘temporarily limited’ for spreading COVID misinformation: report

The medical doctor who runs the Arizona Republican Party had her Twitter account “temporarily limited” for spreading misinformation during the coronavirus pandemic.

“Twitter has ‘temporarily limited’ the account features of Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward after determining she violated its policy on spreading misleading and ‘potentially harmful’ information about the COVID-19 pandemic,” the Arizona Republic reported Tuesday. “Ward, a physician, has downplayed the severity of the virus’s spread in Arizona, even as caseloads skyrocketed and the state spiraled into a national hot spot.

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China, QAnon Censorship, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

QAnon is one of the most annoying things on Twitter and its followers are morons. And, also, it is dangerous and unacceptable that monopolistic Silicon Valley tech plutocrats are exerting more and more control over human communication.

I criticize QAnon constantly and find its acolytes intensely irritating. And, also, I don’t want monopolistic tech billionaires paternalistically protecting my fragile little mind from them.

Twitter shouldn’t be censoring this.

In a corporatist system of government, where few meaningful distinctions exist between corporate power and state power, corporate censorship is state censorship. Permitting such a thing, to any extent, is extremely hazardous for the future of human development.

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Twitter Blocks Tweets On China Human Rights Abuses Story As AG Barr Decries Silicon Valley ‘Collaboration’ With CCP

As the Trump Administration weighs a travel ban on CCP officials, AG Bill Barr delivered a speech warning about the complicity of Silicon Valley and Hollywood in helping to perpetuate the CCP’s growing influence over American culture.

Criticizing China for resisting political liberalization that Americans once believed would eventually follow along with the economic liberalization agenda, Beijing is now embarking on a mission to elevate itself as a locus of geopolitical power to rival the US.

Barr complained that Hollywood has become too willing to kowtow to Beijing, censoring not just versions of movies that are shown in China, but also those that are released in the US.

Many Hollywood films have been “altered one way or another to please the CCP” and many other scripts never see the light of day due to self-censorship. Barr added that it’s tantamount to a “massive propaganda coup”.

He also invoked the memory of Walt Disney, saying the found would be “ashamed” of what happened to his company.

I suspect Walt Disney would be disheartened to see how the company he founded deals with the foreign dictatorships of our day,” Barr said in a speech at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum.

As an example, Barr cited “World War Z”, which reportedly contained a scene where the protagonists speculated that the virus originated in China. Examples of this type of censorship have grown increasingly common Barr said.

He also accused the American tech behemoths from Google to Facebook and Twitter of doing the CCP’s bidding.

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