Ethical Tech

Google’s wielded location data goes to Geofence warrants

As a prologue to the search engine’s plans to conjointly work with the government, Google announced on Thursday that it received around 20,000 geofence warrants from U.S. authorities, portraying a conceptualization on how these warrants are wielded into the system. Geofence warrants, or as alternatively referred to as reverse-location warrants, are a controversial modern concept. […]

Prominent fact-checker Snopes apologizes for plagiarism

The co-founder and CEO of the fact-checking site Snopes.com has acknowledged plagiarizing from dozens of articles done by mainstream news outlets over several years, calling the appropriations “serious lapses in judgment.” From 2015 to 2019 — and possibly even earlier — David Mikkelson included material lifted from the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian and others […]

Apple to scan U.S. iPhones for images of child sexual abuse

Apple unveiled plans to scan U.S. iPhones for images of child sexual abuse, drawing applause from child protection groups but raising concern among some security researchers that the system could be misused, including by governments looking to surveil their citizens. The tool designed to detected known images of child sexual abuse, called “neuralMatch,” will scan […]

PayPal, ADL announce initiative against criminal funding

In PayPal’s most recent efforts to fight racism and extremism across the industry, the financial gateway partners up with the Anti-Defamation League to investigate how extremists adopt financial platforms to fund their activity.   PayPal and Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) atypical collaboration initiates the first step to divert focus towards the importance of recognizing how extremists are leveraging financial platforms for criminal funding.  The initiative will be guided […]

Why the Anthony Bourdain voice cloning creeps people out

The revelation that a documentary filmmaker used voice-cloning software to make the late chef Anthony Bourdain say words he never spoke has drawn criticism amid ethical concerns about use of the powerful technology. The movie “Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain” appeared in cinemas Friday and mostly features real footage of the beloved celebrity chef […]

Online racial abuse targets England’s football players

England’s loss against Italy in the UEFA Euro 2020 final on Sunday night did not only crush the dream of millions who believed the championship was coming home, but it also unleashed a wave of deeply rooted racism that remains embedded in today’s modern world.  Social media, including Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, were flooded with racial abuse and slurs targeted towards England’s Black football players.   As anger boiled […]

What's in a tag? Twitter revamps misinformation labels

Last May, as Twitter was testing warning labels for false and misleading tweets, it tried out the word “disputed” with a small focus group. It didn’t go over well. “People were like, well, who’s disputing it?” said Anita Butler, a San Francisco-based design director at Twitter who has been working on the labels since December […]

Break them up? 5 ways Congress is trying to rein in Big Tech

Groundbreaking legislation is advancing in Congress that would curb the market power of tech giants Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple and could force them to untie their dominant platforms from their other lines of business. Hostility toward Big Tech has grown in recent years with the belief that its size and swagger have stifled competition, […]