1. Monthly archive
  2. November 2018

November 2018

Why robocalls have taken over your phone

Washington (DC) has tried several tactics to stem the tide of automated calls, from passing the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) in 1991 to establishing the Do Not Call Registry in 2003. The Federal Communications Commission regularly hands down multimillion-dollar penalties against individual robocallers. But the calls keep coming, and the problem has only gotten worse. The issue is the ease of becoming a robocaller. Anyone with a minor amount of technical ability can run their own system by downloading the relevant software. 

How the 'propaganda feedback loop' of right-wing media keeps more than a quarter of Americans siloed

Why is there so often no overlap, no resemblance whatsoever between the news events reported in mainstream print and broadcast coverage, and even on liberal outlets like MSNBC, and the topics that get broadcast as news on the Fox network and its fellows on the right?

Google Workers Reject Silicon Valley Individualism in Walkout

The most remarkable aspect of the walkout at Google may not have been that an estimated 20,000 people participated or that it had global reach, or even that it came together in less than a week. It was the way the organizers identified their action with a broader worker struggle, using language almost unheard-of among affluent tech employees. For decades, Silicon Valley has been ground zero for a vaguely utopian form of individualism — the idea that a single engineer with a laptop and an internet connection could change the world, or at least a long-established industry.

UK's Information Commissioner’s Office Finds Cambridge Analytica and Brexit Financier Misused Private Data

Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office, which has been investigating the misuse of personal data by political campaigns, found that defunct political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica violated British law when it used improperly harvested Facebook data to aid Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and would face a significant fine if it were not already in bankruptcy.

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