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Scroll more, sleep less. A Black Mirror-inspired truck in Warsaw advertises a disturbing social network… that doesn’t exist
Panoptykon’s campaign is being launched after the DSA has become fully effective with regard to VLOPs on 25 August. To comply with the new regulation, cybergiants must, among other things, introduce changes concerning their additive algorithms which they use to personalise users’ feeds. They must now explain how those algorithms work and offer at least one recommender system not based on tracking users’ personal data.
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Meta pledges to ask EU users for consent before showing behavioural ads
In a surprise announcement last Tuesday, Meta made the long overdue promise to finally ask its users for their consent before showing them behavioral ads – at least if they live in the European Union, EEA or Switzerland.
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Bits of Freedom monthly update on human rights & tech: April 2023
Read through the most interesting developments at the intersection of human rights and technology from the Netherlands. This is the fourth update in this series.
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Government bans TikTok (sort of), Facebook has a bad day in court, and civil society organisations mobilise against Big Tech
Read through the most interesting developments at the intersection of human rights and technology from the Netherlands. This is the third update in this series.
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What you need to know about the Facebook Papers
Facebook is now undergoing what may be the tech giant’s biggest crisis in its 17-year history. In October, The Washington Post reported that a second Facebook whistleblower came forward to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, alleging that the company prioritises growth over combating hate speech, disinformation, and other threats to the public. The whistleblower’s testimony follows that of former Facebook employee Frances Haugen, whose legal counsel released what’s known as the Facebook Papers — a 10,000-page collection of internal reports, memos, and chat logs leaked to more than a dozen major news outlets.
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Platform Regulation: Key takeways from Haugen’s hearing
On 8 November 2021, Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, participated in a hearing of the European Parliament’s Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO). While her testimony brought extremely important insights into Facebook’s opaque operations, it also showed that Haugen’s thinking of what the digital world in Europe should look like is influenced by her expertise in data science rather than public policy, as well as by her professional experience working with Silicon Valley’s centralised mega-platforms.
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Facebook deleting facial recognition: Five reasons to take it with a pinch of salt
Voluntary self-regulation from tech giants is superficial and no replacement for actual legislation
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noyb publishes the draft decision by the DPC in the case against Facebook
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has sent a draft decision to EDRi's member noyb - European Center for Digital Rights and informed noyb that the draft decision would be shared with the other European Data Protection Authorities for consultation. The case concerns Facebook's reliance on contracts for serving advertising to its users - the legal trick Facebook applied in May 2018 to bypass the GDPR.
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Facebook Files: How a ban on surveillance advertising can fix Facebook
Facebook is engulfed in the biggest crisis to hit the company since the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The explosive revelations by whistle-blower Frances Haugen, is that Facebook’s leadership refused to make changes that would make their platforms safer because they “put their immense profits before people”.
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Why you shouldn’t buy Facebook Ray-Ban smart glasses
Imagine that you are strolling along a tranquil beach in your swimsuit. Suddenly, a stranger walking toward you takes out their phone and starts recording you. You might work up the courage to ask how they dared to invade your privacy, and demand they delete the footage.
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Algorithms of trauma: New case study shows that Facebook doesn’t give users real control over disturbing surveillance ads
A case study examined by Panoptykon Foundation, EDRi’s member in Poland, and showcased by the Financial Times, demonstrates how Facebook uses algorithms to deliver personalised ads that may exploit users’ mental vulnerabilities.
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Facebook’s dominance makes it difficult to question the truth
What we as a society understand as true is changeable, and questioning the truth can only be done with a healthy public debate. But the dominance of the platforms that facilitate our public debate makes difficult.
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