TRUST

Users switched off location-sharing, but Google kept on tracking

The debate about privacy is not over, just moving from one platform to another, in episodes.

Internal documents released in a lawsuit in Arizona reveal that some people at Google made it difficult for users to use privacy options. Even executives from other departments of Google were confused about those privacy settings.

Google is accused of collecting location data, even when users turned off such location sharing.

”Google continued collecting location data even when users turned off various location-sharing settings, made popular privacy settings harder to find, and even pressured LG and other phone makers into hiding settings precisely because users liked them, according to the documents.”

Source: Business Insider

Apple knows how to advertise – a spot about privacy

Apple has released a TV spot called “Tracked”. It’s advertising. But at the same time it is a strong visual reminder of the what is going on: The story shows a guy named Felix who is followed by everyone he interacts with.

The coffee barista, the taxi driver, all the people from the bank – and they all take the liberty to search trough his stuff.

The short film makes a point about the business belief that a company must follow all of it’s users, simply for a higher chance of getting the next buy.

LINK

Privacy and Apple: An entirely different situation in China

Apple is pushing for more privacy in western countries. The situation in China is entirely different. For example: Chinese authorities have full access Apple servers in the country. Of course the reason is pressure from the Chinese government. But what are the details here? An article from “Columbia Journalism Review” examines this strange side-by-side of two different privacy approaches by one company.

LINK

More debate about this: Is Apple strict enough in fending off “surveillance monitoring”?

Amazon Ring: US police departments have access to millions of videos recorded by smart doorbells

In residential neighbourhoods in the US, chances are that not just one, but multiple cameras are watching you.

The reason is the popularity of smart doorbells with online connections from Ring, a company owned by Amazon.

From a study: “These devices have grown into the largest civilian-surveillance network the US has ever seen”.

• Who can watch? Based on settings, the videos are available to US police departments. “One out of 10 US police departments can access videos from millions of home-security cameras without getting a warrant.” (The Guardian)

Link

CONTENT

The fascinating world of entirely rendered dream homes

If you see a beautiful home online, chances are it is not real. The New Yorker has a story about highly realistic backgrounds such as attractive houses and design flats used on Instagram. The catch: All of these are entirely digitally rendered. The realistic look is possible because of improved render software.

LINK

Surprising new learning from that article: IKEA uses digitally rendered furniture pictures for the catalogue, since 2004.

Digital Currency Initiative started by MIT

The MIT Media Lab has launched a “Digital Currency Initiative”.

• ”The goal of the DCI is to bring together the brightest minds at MIT and elsewhere to conduct the research necessary to support the development of digital currency and blockchain technology.”

One building block is a new academic journal called “Cryptoeconomic Systems”.

LINK

Would it be better to have no app store?

On Twitter, Benedict Evans shared a number of detailed slides from a presentation describing the situation in China. There is no central app store from Google, instead, there are numerous sites (“100 that matter and 20 that really matter”) – and they all compete with each other. The result is a constant fight over the attention of users and updates. The set-up sounds amazingly complex.

The slides became accessible as evidence in the recent trial of Apple vs. Epic over complaints that the 30% commission is too high.

Violence in Israel and Palestine: What was the role of extremists on WhatsApp?

A report from the New York Times says that extremists groups formed on WhatsApp organized mob violence.

”Extremists have formed more than 100 new groups on the Facebook-owned messaging app in recent days, according to the Times report, and they are using them to target attacks on Palestinians. This behaviour is difficult for the company to track because messages in WhatsApp are encrypted, so even Facebook can’t access the data in them.”

LINK($)

A case study in consumer trust: How WhatsApp blundered communicating new privacy settings

WhatsApp had announced changes to the privacy settings. What users understood was this: Either you consent to these changes or you have to stop using WhatsApp. Many decided that this update was a good time to do the latter. Downloads of competing services such as Signal grew to record numbers. The link below opens an analysis of the user privacy update debacle. To a large part is was bad communication.

LINK

BLOCKCHAIN

Digital money must one day be “smarter” than traditional money, says Yao Qian, a Chinese expert

”The former head of the digital currency initiative at the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) said central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are set to become more “smart” and could one day operate on blockchain networks like Ethereum. Yao Qian, now director of the Science and Technology Supervision Bureau of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, said over the weekend that CBDCs shouldn’t attempt to be just a digital form of physical cash, but should incorporate smart contract functionality, Sina Finance reported Monday. Smart contracts are automatically executing pieces of blockchain code that carry out functions when certain conditions are met, and can also be designed to complement or replace legal contracts.”

LINK

Financial service companies push US government for Crypto ETFs while CEOs advise consumers to be careful

When is the right time to allow broad investing into crypto assets? The current opinions about this are quite divided:

• On one side: In the US big financial companies are trying to push the government to allow the launch of ETFs (exchange-traded funds) specifically to invest in bitcoin. Investors could both win and lose their money, but with a higher unpredictability than in traditional stocks and assets.
• On the other side, leading executives are advising traditional investors to “stay away” from these investments.

”Despite the growing industry enthusiasm, Wall Street is also split on the future of cryptocurrency. Some executives are dismissing the push to expand access even as their firms try to satisfy customer demand. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said in House testimony Thursday that his company — the nation’s largest bank — was debating how to make it available in a safe way. But Dimon’s personal advice? “Stay away from it.” (Source: Politico)

LINK

In other news: The US Treasury aims to expand financial reporting to better fight tax evasion when assets are moved to crypto holdings.

How enabling anonymous payments contributed to the rise of ransomware attacks

This is a classic example of how a positive intent can turn into a negative outcome. Because it is possible to receive crypto funds anonymously, we are seeing a rise in ransomware attacks.

The IT of any organisation can be intruded and owners can be blocked this way. The hackers are using encryption of files and software. Only the payment of ransom enables g access again. Many victims just pay. Not being able to use the computer network effectively stops the entire organisation from being able to work. This has recently affected hospitals, infrastructure companies and – as experienced recently- a major fuel pipeline in the US.

A podcast on Coindesk asks: How is this feature of crypto money related to the rise of such attacks? What could be done about this? LINK

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TruBlo open call #2 will start early June 2021

TruBlo has finalized the selection of winners from open call #1. Winners are contacted directly.

Due to this selection process the TruBlo 2nd open call will be started not during May, but in early June 2021. Details will be communicated via our website and in this newsletter.

Updates this week:

TRUST

How timestamps enable trustable content

WordProof, a startup from Amsterdam, suggests using timestamps for content. This could solve a number of challenges. Content origin and ownership could be verified. Search engines could use timestamps to determine trustable content, this could be a big change in the future. This month WordProof announced the first partnership with a (small) search engine. Longer article with more background on TruBlo.eu: LINK

Plus: An interview with WordProof founder and CEO Sebastiaan van der Lans LINK

Conspiracy theories: How to better understand the rise of “divided realities”

Do you find it hard to understand why people start to believe in conspiracy theories and how this happens?

How could so many people believe things that are obviously untrue? Why don’t kids learn about this in school? Shouldn’t being able to navigate information and separate truth from lies be a standard part of education?

LINK

CONTENT

How national and regional governments try to extend control of social networks

This week officials in several countries and states moved forward to control content published on social networks.

The actions are not directly related. The direction is the same: Authorities want to control.

• In Florida Governor DeSantis (Republican) has signed a bill regulating social media companies. In the future, it would be forbidden to ban a political candidate from the platforms. The bill is described as a move against “censorship by tech elites”. LINK
• In Russia, authorities told Google that banned content must be deleted from search records in 24 hours. Before Twitter was notified with similar demands. Should the companies not comply, Russia will slow down traffic from those sites and impose fines. LINK
• In India, authorities visited two Twitter offices, because of labels classifying some tweets sent out by the ruling party as “manipulated media”. Link

Inside the nasty battle between journalists and Silicon Valley

There is a widening rift between (some) representatives of big tech and journalists. LINK

How journalists can avoid amplifying misinformation in their stories

When journalists point to false claims this might on some occasions do more harm than good. Re-using the content, like a screenshot or a link, could result in even more reach and damage.

To avoid these journalists should use clear labels, such as a visual overlay or other marks so that even the most casual reader does not mistake what is criticized as valid and true. Via Nieman Lab. LINK

How Netflix creates your personal top 10 list

Netflix looks different to different users. The recommended content differs based on the individual viewing habits. But what data goes into those recommendations? LINK

Apple claims to have stopped 1,5bn of potentially fraudulent activities in the App Store in 2020

Apple is currently in a trial brought forward by games company Epic. The core disagreement is whether Apple should be allowed to charge 30% of subscription revenue from any other company which wants to install an app on any iPhone.

Companies like Epic argue that the dominant market position of Apple hinders competition. Apple, in return, argues that the infrastructure provided is difficult to maintain and that there is much work to keep the platform clean from malicious content.

The numbers, published by Apple in a press release, are notable – because they are very high:

• 244 million customer accounts deactivated
• 424 million attempted account creations rejected
• 470,000 developer accounts terminated

LINK

Swap your face, for fun

Reface is the name of an app enabling “face swaps”. For example, a photo of your face can be projected on the Mona Lisa, even with realistic face movement. The idea is that this is fun.

Another view: This is problematic, because of many options to create fakes and violate content ownership of others. One thing is sure: It is getting harder and harder to tell reality from fiction. Reface shows mainly shows what is possible, at this moment. LINK

BLOCKCHAIN

Rollercoaster: Cryptocurrencies are taking us for a wild ride

Only 45 days ago Tesla announced it would accept Bitcoin as payment. Roughly six weeks later Elon Musk reconsidered and reversed this offer.

Summary here:

“The Technoking of Tesla, Elon Musk has taken an u-turn on Bitcoin after months of hyping it up. Earlier this year, Musk’s Tesla bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and even announced that it would be accepting Bitcoin as payment. Bitcoin peaked following this news. Musk became a messiah for the crypto community. His tweets moved markets in an unprecedented way and stumped the market gurus. But, Bitcoin is not without flaws. Mining BTC is considered to be worse for the environment, which collides with most of Musk’s zero-emission aspirations (think: Tesla, Solar City). On Thursday, Musk tweeted that Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin as payment citing environmental issues.“ LINK

The value of Bitcoin decreased by $365 billion in the following days.

Last, week, on May 19 investors saw another plunge of value, by as much as 30%.

More: LINK

Report says: Traditional banking and gold mining use double the amount of energy of cryptocurrencies

According to estimates in a study, traditional banking and mining for gold are using more than double the of Bitcoin mining.

“Galaxy Digital compared the Bitcoin network’s energy consumption with that of the banking system as well as the gold industry since the largest cryptocurrency is often compared with the two. The report found that banking and gold consume around 263.72 TWh per year and 240.61 TWh per year, respectively, while Bitcoin consumes much less energy — 113.89 TWh per year.”

There is more to this, of course. Some cryptocurrencies are using high amounts of energy, though the criticism might result in new approaches, which are less energy demanding. LINK

How a digital Yuan would change banking

China is experimenting with a digital currency. It will be called eCNY or “digital yuan”. Because of the size of the Chinese economy, any changes there would have effects everywhere. Consultancy Oliver Wyman expects that the introduction of digital, programmable money would “level the playing field between banks and big tech.”

• Digital money could be a way to overcome current barriers, specifically for transactions across country borders. In the long run, moving money could be simpler, faster and cheaper. LINK

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