Google Suppresses Memo and Inquiries About Controversial Search Engine for China
Last month, we wrote about Google’s newest project in China: a censored search engine, known in the company as “Project Dragonfly”. As with any Google movement in China, there was (and still is) a lot of opposition to the move; human rights activists and several hundred Google employees have spoken out against the “urgent moral […]
California Passes Strongest Net Neutrality Law in the United States of America
A few months ago, we were super excited about California’s net neutrality bill successfully moving through the state’s Senate. A few days ago, we got even better news: the bill passed with approval through the State Assembly. The bill changed a bit between the Senate and Assembly, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation calls the final version […]
Facebook and Instagram Now Let You See How Many Minutes You Use Them
Facebook and Instagram are giving users an idea of how much time they’re spending on the platform. The data shown details how many minutes users spend per day on the apps and gives a weekly average as well. But, while this is a noble quest to help us become more aware of how we spend […]
A Whistleblower Has Revealed Google Plans to Censor Search in China
Google’s plans to expand its offering in China has historically been difficult between the country’s strict censorship laws and competitors already in the space. It shut down its search engine in 2010 because of China’s “limit [on] free speech on the web.” But recent news from a whistleblower indicates that Google plans to relaunch its […]
Academics Investigate the Age-Old Question: Is Your Phone Secretly Spying on You?
It’s a common belief, especially after the National Security Administration’s scandal with Edward Snowden, that the U.S. Government is spying on its citizens. Tech companies don’t do much to help this case, either. For example, many people have claimed that Facebook showed them ads for dog kennels when they have no dogs — but they […]
Has China Taken It Too Far With Surveillance Tech?
Facial recognition has come a long way in the past few years. But there’s still progress to be made in terms of eliminating biases and other flaws. Regardless of this fact, China is already employing the technology to track its own citizens. This police-state type of surveillance has managed to cook up quite a bit […]
Facebook Opens Up Data for Election Research
Facebook’s recent involvement with London-based analytics firm Cambridge Analytica revolved around the 2016 Presidential election in the U.S. The controversy surfaced after it came to light that a developer sold data from his Facebook quiz app to Cambridge Analytica. Instead of plugging the data leak and fixing the problem at its root, Facebook recently opted […]
Are You Leaving a Digital Trail for FinTech Lenders to Follow?
We’ve written about China’s “credit rating” policy, which takes information from many public (and private) datasets, like your smartphone, social media, online shopping, search engine queries, payment schedules, and much more. The country’s government uses this information to create a creditworthiness profile of each citizen. If a citizen is found to be leaving the country […]
Apple Restricts Developers from Selling User Contact Data
Apple’s trying to avoid a data abuse probe, similar to what happened with Facebook’s recent data scandal. Facebook’s data abuse scandal happened because the company was too lax in what permissions and information it allowed developers to access. Consequently, when a Facebook app developer sold the data he’d mined from a quiz he’d built, Facebook […]
Dogtown Media Supports the ENCRYPT Act
Last week, a group of U.S. Representatives led by Congressman Ted W. Lieu (D-Los Angeles County) reintroduced the Ensuring National Constitutional Rights for Your Private Telecommunications (ENCRYPT) Act. This bipartisan legislation could make way for a more uniform national policy on encryption technology by standardizing both state and local government laws. Dogtown Media couldn’t be prouder of Lieu […]