The Unionization of Content Creators

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit - they're all driven by one thing - popular memes. And those that create them want to ensure they're fairly compensated. More specifically, they've been forming a union for some time now with the most unfortunate name - IG Meme Union Local 69-420.

The quick gist of the issue is that as the creators of the content that drive these platforms, the members of said union want to be better compensated for keeping these platforms relevant.

Full write-up here: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/04/instagram-memers-are-unionizing/587308/

Key Takeaway

Content is now a valued commodity, and whether this "union" will get its way or not, this movement may start pushing these platforms to find other ways of compensating creators instead of strictly through advertising.

US Customs is going all "Black Mirror" with facial recognition for all visitors to the US.

In an effort to curb prolonged stays by refugees or other visitors to the US - they'll be using facial recognition to better ID those that have overstayed their welcome.

See the full story here: https://www.phocuswire.com/U-S-airports-biometric-identification

Key Takeaway

Those of us who use NEXUS are accustomed to offering up our biometric data to US Customs, but this will create a forced opt-in system that nobody has agreed to. If it does in fact go through in the next four years (the projected date of implementation), it may set precedent for some serious violations of personal security in the west, making personal identity a globally open data set across all countries (think about how this is already happening in China).

We're just a few short years away from a highly visible security apparatus with very little room for personal secrecy.

Facebook experiences another security SNAFU as they are caught uploading millions of email addresses into their system

Facebook was caught with another data leak this week in which email addresses were made available to advertisers. That's not necessarily news, this has been happening in the past, but what IS news is how it happened.

Apparently this was caused by humans directly uploading the data, violating the way in which we assume the platform actually works. https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/04/18/facebook-illegally-harvested-data-from-1-5m-users-as-it-leveraged-its-data-machine/#652f84a66a2e

Key Takeaway

The systems that we use every day that we assume are governed entirely by software are largely still managed by humans behind the scenes. Or another way of putting it (similar to last week's post) - these systems are still completely fallible until we remove the humans.