Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Google’s yearslong effort to make online advertising less invasive has hit another snag. The U.K. privacy regulator says Google’s proposed replacements for cookies need to do more to protect consumer privacy, according to internal documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Google’s proposed technology, dubbed Privacy Sandbox, leaves gaps that can be exploited to undermine privacy and identify users…
When Maria Cantwell first ran for the U.S. Senate, she championed what was then an unconventional political cause: internet privacy. “What you do on your computer should be your business, and no one else’s,” Cantwell, the dot-com millionaire and former U.S. House member, said in a 2000 campaign video that showed her huddled around a…
Nine digital publishing execs that spoke with Digiday said they are investing in other social platforms like Instagram and TikTok to grow their reach. But the question remains if alternative platforms can actually make up the social referral deficit. As Digiday reported last year, those platforms do more for publishers trying to build up their…
Google Is Killing Retro Dodo & Other Independent Sites It honestly breaks my heart to write this article, but I want to be as transparent as possible with our readers because you are the ones that have quite literally kept our lights on over the past five years, and you deserve to know the truth…
Last week, the Wall Street Journal published a 10-minute-long interview with OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, with journalist Joanna Stern asking a series of thoughtful yet straightforward questions that Murati failed to satisfactorily answer. When asked about what data was used to train Sora, OpenAI’s app for generating video with AI, Murati claimed it used publicly…
A group of conservative Colorado Catholics has spent millions of dollars to buy mobile app tracking data that identified priests who used gay dating and hookup apps and then shared it with bishops around the country. The secretive effort was the work of a Denver nonprofit called Catholic Laity and Clergy for Renewal, whose trustees…
Last November, Michael Morell, a former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, hinted at a big change in how the agency now operates. “The information that is available commercially would kind of knock your socks off,” Morell said in an appearance on the NatSecTech podcast. “If we collected it using traditional intelligence methods, it…
There are now 700 million CCTV cameras in Communist China. Those electronic eyes are attached to the most complete state apparatus of surveillance yet imagined. It has the ability not only to recognise faces at a distance, but gait itself when facial features are hidden or obscured. Such capability can, and soon will, be augmented…
Almost a year after the industry outcry over made-for-advertising inventory and months since many ad-tech firms have devised solutions to address the problem, ads from large brands are still being served on spammy websites, new research from Adalytics has found. Adalytics found examples of hundreds of large brands advertising on made-for-advertising websites, facilitated by most…
Google regularly launches updates to its algorithm to continuously improve search results quality. Think of these updates as a refresh of the system where rankings change: some websites see an improvement while others see a decline. At HouseFresh, we keep an eye on Google’s news and documentation because these updates can literally make or break…