In the wake of terrorism in your own country

Above: Flowers at the Islamic Centre in Kilbirnie, Wellington on Monday. On 9-11, I wrote an editorial in Lucire immediately. It was clear to me what I needed to write, and the editorial got quite a few readers at the time.    Today is March 20, five days after a terrorist attack on our country, […]

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Google censors at every level—it’s just what they do

As my final post on Google Plus, I posted the Murdoch Press article on how the company exposed user data between 2015 and 2018, choosing not to disclose it publicly for fear of regulatory scrutiny and damage to its reputation.    How interesting to note that it has now been removed twice by the powers […]

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Google exposed private user data between 2015 and 2018

Big Tech isn’t afraid of the law, but it is afraid of bad press that could affect its stock price. The Murdoch Press has, refreshingly, stayed on Google’s case, revealing that there had been another exposure of user data, allowing developers access to private information between 2015 and March 2018.    The company sent a […]

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The EU lands Google with another fine—but will Google change?

Zain Ali   The EU gets it when it comes to fines. Rather than the paltry US$17 million certain US states’ attorneys-general stung Google with some years ago for hacking Iphones, they’ve now fined the search engine giant €4,340 million, on top of its earlier fine of €2,420 million over anticompetitive behaviour.    That US$17 […]

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People are waking up to Wikipedia’s abuses

Tristan Schmurr/Creative Commons Welcome to another of my “I told you they were dodgy” posts. This time, it’s not about Facebook or Google (which, finally, are receiving the coverage that should have been metered out years ago), but Wikipedia.    The latest is on a Wikipedia editor called ‘Philip Cross’, a story which Craig Murray […]

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UK picks on independent Tweeters, falsely calls them Russian bots and trolls

If you were one of the people caught up with ‘The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!’ and a selection of Cold War paranoia resurrected by politicians and the media, then surely recent news would make you start to think that this was a fake-news narrative?    Ian56 on Twitter was recently named by […]

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Facebook and Cambridge Analytica: the signs were there for years, if one only looked

Facebook’s woes over Cambridge Analytica have only prompted one reaction from me: I told you so. While I never seized upon this example, bravely revealed to us by whistleblower Christopher Wylie and reported by Carole Cadwalladr and Emma Graham-Harrison of The Guardian, Facebook has shown itself to be callous about private data, mining preferences even […]

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Twitter’s shadow-banning: not just in the US, as Kiwis get caught up, too

Anthony Quintano/Creative Commons We’ve had years of Google and Facebook acting like arses, but it’s disappointing to see Twitter give us more and more causes for concern.    In 2017, we saw them change their terms and conditions so speaking power to truth is no longer a requirement. You can’t help but think that the […]

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YouTube under fire for child exploitation videos—with ‘three unpaid volunteers’ monitoring reports

The Murdoch Press has rightly kept its pressure up on Google, with a cover story in The Times, ‘Adverts fund paedophile habits’ on November 24 (the online version, behind a paywall, is here).    Say what you will about its proprietor, but Murdochs have been happy to go after the misdeeds of Google: the earlier […]

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Why the love? Google tracks you when location services are off; Facebook allegedly listens in on conversations

Above: We boarded the Norwegian Jewel yesterday—then my other half got a cruise-themed video on YouTube. Hat tip to Punkscience for this one.    My other half and I noted that her YouTube gave her a cruise-themed video from 2013 after we boarded the Norwegian Jewel yesterday for a visit. Punkscience found this article in […]

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