Werd I/O

[Senator Ron Wyden at MSNBC]

Senator Wyden has long been a loud voice for surveillance reform and stronger data protections, so this op-ed isn't really a surprise - but it's still nice to see him weighing in here:

"Data brokers are selling the ability to track phones that visit abortion clinics and follow them back across state lines, all the way to their owners’ homes. All it takes for this kind of 24-hour surveillance is a credit card. Given the creepy enthusiasm with which MAGA government officials are inserting themselves into women’s health choices, these tracking tools present a pressing danger for women across the country."

As the Senator points out, data brokers are a clear danger to many peoples' safety, including women in a reproductive healthcare context. I think about this a lot in relation to journalists, whose personal information is often made available by these organizations and can be (let's be clear: absolutely is) used to threaten harm in retaliation for reporting on a story. And then, of course, brokers are often used as a way for law enforcement to bypass the need for a warrant: if someone's whereabouts or communications metadata are available to anyone with a credit card, civil rights protections can easily be bypassed.

Californians will have the ability to have their data removed from any broker - as long as that broker actually takes steps to comply with the law - from 2026. This isn't enough; these brokers shouldn't exist to begin with. But at least it's one step in the right direction. Everyone should enjoy the same protections.

#Technology

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[ProPublica]

"With just days to go before Election Day, political coverage is everywhere. At ProPublica, we avoid horse race reporting and focus on telling stories about deeper issues and trends affecting the country.

Here are some stories from the last year about issues that are important to voters."

Some selected stories from my colleagues at ProPublica.

#Democracy

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[Versha Sharma in Teen Vogue]

This is a remarkable kind-of-sort-of-endorsement from Teen Vogue.

"As the head of this publication, dedicated to young readers, I have been closely following younger generations’ collective disbelief at the Biden administration’s support of the Israeli government during its all-out assault on Gaza, following the brutal terror attack from Hamas last Oct. 7 — including the horrific killing of civilians in Gaza, the targeting of journalists and aid workers, and the reports of children being shot in the head.

The Democrats’ policy on Israel has been disastrous. What is also true: Trump would, somehow, be even worse."

I was once in a private meeting of journalism professionals where someone described Teen Vogue's leadership as "some very left-wing women". I'm not sure how, exactly, Teen Vogue came to be such a blazing voice for progressive values, but - contrary, I think, to what that person intended with their remarks - it's been incredibly impressive to see.

This magazine for teenagers makes point after point about our culpability as Americans in human suffering and how that might be affected by the two candidates in play. It's hardly a surprise how that nets out:

"We would be constrained in even expressing dissent in a Trump administration. He has talked about shooting protesters, jailing his opponents and critics, and taking action against media who dare to report honestly on him, including revoking licenses for broadcast news he disagrees with. Teen Vogue itself could be held liable under a Trump administration — there is a world where we could face punishment for publishing something like this."

Which is why, Sharma argues, everyone should vote. Only overwhelming numbers will shut this conversation down: in safe states and swing states and deeply red states.

"If you’ve got any anxiety or concern about this election, I urge you to channel that into action. There’s no more putting it off or tuning it out. This is it."

This magazine for people who are still in the early stages of figuring out who they are in the world doesn't pull any punches. If Teen Vogue is any indication, the kids are alright.

#Democracy

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[Craig Silverman at ProPublica and Priyanjana Bengani at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism]

"The network, which uses the name Patriot Democracy on many of its ad accounts, is one of eight deceptive Meta advertising operations identified by ProPublica and Tow. These networks have collectively controlled more than 340 Facebook pages, as well as associated Instagram and Messenger accounts. Most were created by the advertising networks, with some pages masquerading as government entities."

Despite Meta's claims that they were cracking down - which were likely backed up with real efforts - ProPublica ad Tow have discovered that there are plenty of ad networks out there spreading misleading election information.

The issue is likely not to do with Meta itself but the way these targeted ad networks work to begin with. The fact that a company as large as Meta, which is absolutely incentivized to stop these ads from spreading, effectively can't, is an indictment of the model. There's no way that they can proactively approve ads before they run at the scale their business operates, so some will always get through.

That said, there are some serious policy failures here, too:

"Meta removed some of the ads after initially approving them, the investigation found, but it failed to catch thousands of others with similar or even identical content. In many cases, even after removing the violating ads, it allowed the associated Facebook pages and accounts to continue operating, enabling the parent networks to spawn new pages and ads. [...] Our analysis showed that while Meta had removed some pages and ads, its enforcement often lagged or was haphazard. Prior to being contacted by ProPublica and Tow, Meta had taken action against roughly 140 pages affiliated with these eight networks, representing less than half of the total identified in the investigation."

Cracking down on these networks too forcefully could also create a chilling effect throughout the network of potential advertisers, making a real impact on Meta's bottom line. And, of course, that's not something that any product manager watching their progress towards their quarterly OKRs wants to do.

#Democracy

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[John O'Nolan]

This is a genuinely inspiring post from John O'Nolan about the foundation behind Ghost and how it operates. It feels like a blueprint for so many open source projects.

"The business model was simple: We would make a great open source product that people wanted to use. Those people would need a server to use the product, so we would also sell web hosting. The revenue from our hosting would fund further development of the open source product."

This sounds simpler than it is. I tried it and failed - but John, Hannah, and team have made it work well, growing a dedicated community around a high-quality, well-designed product that serves a specific set of needs really well.

This will be interesting to watch:

"So, as we reach our headcount limit of 50 people — which is likely to happen in the next couple of years — our intention is to expand the seats on Ghost's board of trustees beyond myself and Hannah."

John describes it as part of building "a more diverse and representative governance structure" for Ghost. There are lots of ways to cut that, but he paints a strong picture that includes bringing in the community and upholding transparency.

What also blew me away here was that Ghost was profitable eleven days after launching its hosted service, which in turn was released not long after the initial Kickstarter campaign was closed. I'd love to hear more about how much of the platform was already built and how they pulled that together.

#Technology

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[Cassandra Jaramillo and Kavitha Surana at ProPublica]

The deeply tragic stories of how abortion bans lead to preventable deaths continue.

"The fetus was on the verge of coming out, its head pressed against her dilated cervix; she was 17 weeks pregnant and a miscarriage was “in progress,” doctors noted in hospital records. At that point, they should have offered to speed up the delivery or empty her uterus to stave off a deadly infection, more than a dozen medical experts told ProPublica.

But when Barnica’s husband rushed to her side from his job on a construction site, she relayed what she said the medical team had told her: “They had to wait until there was no heartbeat,” he told ProPublica in Spanish. “It would be a crime to give her an abortion.”"

This is another look at how "pro life" policies are not necessarily pro life at all. As the piece notes, some Republican representatives have begun muting their anti-abortion stances after realizing how unpopular and damaging it actually is. Still, plenty more continue to fight for what amounts to a nationwide ban.

And then there's this:

"Abortion bans put doctors in an impossible position, she said, forcing them to decide whether to risk malpractice or a felony charge. After her state enacted one of the strictest bans in the country, she also waited to offer interventions in cases like Barnica’s until the fetal heartbeat stopped or patients showed signs of infection, praying every time that nothing would go wrong. It’s why she ultimately moved to Colorado."

If were of child-bearing age and you had the ability to move, why would you stay in a state that threatened your life like this? Why would you practice medicine in a place that put you in such a position? The knock-on effects of these policies will continue to be felt for a long time to come.

#Democracy

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[Nilay Patel at The Verge]

This is, uh, the opposite of this year's trend of a bunch of newspapers refusing to endorse anyone:

"Donald Trump is a dangerous maniac who can barely complete a sentence, and it is lunacy to believe he can even recognize the existentially threatening collective action problems facing our nation, let alone actually solve them."

It's odd that a tech publication like The Verge is coming out so strong here, but it's hard to disagree. I particularly like that the bulk of the piece is about the collective action problem - not just individual policies, but the actual difference in philosophy between a conservative and more progressive approach.

This is good:

"It is extremely frustrating that the Harris campaign keeps going on about Trump being a danger to democracy without explaining why his whole deal is so deeply incompatible with America, so here’s the short version: the radical founding principle of the United States of America is the idea that the government’s authority to make laws and solve collective action problems comes from the consent of the governed."

Right. Exactly. It was a (relatively) clean break from the divine right of kings and the tendrils of monarchy in favor of a more democratic approach. It has problems, it's messy, and it turns out not to be as independent from the influence of generational wealth (those pesky kings again) as we would like it to be, but it was something different.

The naked self-servingness of the Trump / Vance campaign is laid out here. It's a world where school shootings are "a fact of life" and vaccines, a medical technology that has saved the lives of hundreds of millions of people, are not to be trusted.

I agree with this too:

"The list of massive collective action problems facing our nation is almost overwhelming to consider, and they threaten to tear us apart: our population is getting older, with a looming healthcare crisis to come. Education. Housing. Income inequality. There are so many more."

The piece goes on to call out climate change as perhaps the biggest, alongside anti-trust and a host more. It's time to actually consider those problems as communities - democratic races like this one, where we're forced to talk about the dumbest possible stuff at the hands of a barely-coherent candidate, rob us of the ability to have those really substantive conversations. I'm excited for us to put this one to bed and go back to the business of actually dealing with the hard stuff.

#Democracy

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[Molly Redden and Andy Kroll, ProPublica, and Nick Surgey, Documented]

"A key ally to former President Donald Trump detailed plans to deploy the military in response to domestic unrest, defund the Environmental Protection Agency and put career civil servants “in trauma” in a series of previously unreported speeches that provide a sweeping vision for a second Trump term."

Russell Vought directed the Office of Management and Budget in the first Trump administration, and is likely to be back again for the next one. The rhetoric here dovetails with Trump's own and paints a bleak picture of what the future might hold.

As always, I'm grateful to my colleagues at ProPublica who have been bringing these topics to light.

#Democracy

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[Heather Bryant]

A characteristically sharp piece on the Washington Post's spiked Presidential endorsement and ensuing fallout from Heather Bryant:

"Good journalism is not unique to the Washington Post. Or the L.A. Times. Or the New York Times. Or any other specific organization. Their historical reach and influence is unique, but not necessarily the quality of their work. [...] If you venerate an institution to the point where you refrain from holding it accountable, what are you teaching it but that it can do what it wants without consequence?"

I strongly agree with this message. News is an industry in trouble, but we must not confuse ourselves: the thing we need to protect is speaking truth to power and an informed voting population - the act of journalism itself - and not necessarily the incumbent institutions themselves. The latter must be held accountable, and canceling subscriptions is one of the few levers we have.

I canceled my subscription. If you're still a subscriber, you should make your own mind up - but bear in mind that it is a way to take action and be noticed in the face of a pretty appalling publisher decision.

#Media

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[Ghost]

"Last week we officially started the ActivityPub private beta and sent invitations to our first 3 publishers to start testing things out. This was the first big milestone we've been working toward for months, and it felt great to get there! 🚀"

The Ghost team continues to build their ActivityPub integration in the open. It's really fun to see.

This update goes into the kinds of bugs you discover when you start showing your work to early adopters, and I love the joyul attitude here. I also particularly love the animated preview of the ActivityPub-aware profile viewer.

It's all coming together nicely - and it looks like it'll be one of the slickest Fediverse apps out there. I can't wait.

#Fediverse

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[Manuel Roig-Franzia and Laura Wagner at The Washington Post]

"An endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published, according to two people who were briefed on the sequence of events and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The decision to no longer publish presidential endorsements was made by The Post’s owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, according to four people who were briefed on the decision."

What an act of absolute cowardice.

Later that same day, Donald Trump met with executives from Bezos-owned Blue Origin. Perhaps it's a coincidence, but the twin events illustrate the danger of this kind of ownership of a paper that is supposed to publish independent journalism.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's joint statement is pertinent:

“We respect the traditional independence of the editorial page, but this decision 12 days out from the 2024 presidential election ignores the Washington Post’s own overwhelming reportorial evidence on the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy. Under Jeff Bezos’s ownership, the Washington Post’s news operation has used its abundant resources to rigorously investigate the danger and damage a second Trump presidency could cause to the future of American democracy and that makes this decision even more surprising and disappointing, especially this late in the electoral process.”

#Media

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[Jan Diehm and Michelle Pera-McGhee at The Pudding]

"To illustrate how difficult it is to get abortion care, we built a maze for each state where the difficulty is calculated by the state’s abortion policies."

What an incredible use of the web as a platform. These stories - even in more progressive, pro-human states like California - reveal that the process is harder and trap-filled than it should be. Of course, in anti-human states like Texas, it's significantly harder to the point of impossibility.

The Pudding is killing it. Just absolutely A-plus work for story after story. This one is a particular highlight.

#Democracy

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[Anne Helen Petersen]

"The best indication of the health of an industry like journalism isn’t who excels there, because the answer is obvious: work robots who come from some sort of family money. To understand just how broken media is, look at who leaves the field — or who dares not pursue it. Because this much I know is true: it’s not because they’re soft."

Anne Helen Petersen makes some welcome, sharp observations about newsroom attitudes to work. In many ways, journalism is behind even tech in terms of reckoning with its own culture and having empathy for the people who push for better working conditions. The idea that they're too soft is absurd: they simply can't make ends meet and deserve to be supported at work, as everyone does.

Fundamentally, this needs to seep in - not just in practice, but in spirit:

"These media executives understand unions as a coddling mechanism, when what they’re really trying to do is make the field sustainable. For the current generation of journalists, sure, but also for the journalists to come."

The advantages to producing a sustainable working environment are obvious and enormous. Inclusive, diverse environments with multiple perspectives that allow newsrooms to resonate with broader audiences aren't some kind of nice-to-have: doing this intentionally is good for business.

The system is broken. Younger entrants are showing how to fix it. Listen to them, for crying out loud. The goal is surely to speak truth to power and ensure everyone has the ability to make informed democratic decisions, not to preserve an industry as-is. Change isn't just inevitable: it's survival.

#Media

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[Bluesky Announces Series A to Grow Network of 13M+ Users]

An important announcement from Bluesky:

"We’re excited to announce that we’ve raised a $15 million Series A financing led by Blockchain Capital with participation from Alumni Ventures, True Ventures, SevenX, Amir Shevat of Darkmode, co-creator of Kubernetes Joe Beda, and others."

Bluesky is quick to point out that it will continue to not use blockchains or crypto, and that they will "not hyperfinancialize the social experience (through tokens, crypto trading, NFTs, etc.)".

Instead, this may be an indication that blockchain investors are interested in other forms of decentralization; Bluesky is talking about adding voluntary paths to revenue for creators, so there may be some way to make a return there. (I'd been wondering what the business model would be, in order to justify these funding rounds.)

Bluesky's CEO Jay Graber previously worked on ZCash, a cryptocurrency based on Bitcoin's codebase, so has some clout in that community, but this may have implications for other projects and companies that want to raise money. (Another investor is True Ventures, which previously heavily backed Automattic; those implications are also interesting.)

Another important note: Bluesky's had some flak in the past for not federating. But this announcement notes that there are over a thousand other personal data servers, which is a solid achievement.

#Technology

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[Jon Hicks]

I love this sort of thing:

"Usborne's The Detective’s Handbook and The Guide to the Supernatural captivated my imagination in equal measure. This site is an imagined combination of those books – an engaging thematic prompt for me to overcome the quandary of 'what to draw?'. The order and frequency of new chapters will be random - the intention is to have a bit of fun with it!"

The web needs more whimsy, and this is so incredibly well-executed. (Well, maybe not incredibly - Jon Hicks's work is reliably amazing.)

Absolutely I plugged this into my feed reader so I can follow along. I'm already delighted.

#Culture

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[Maggie Harrison Dupré at Futurism]

File this under "good, but I can't believe this wasn't already banned":

"Sweeping changes to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines aimed at cleaning up the polluted, confusing world of online product reviews went into effect on Monday, meaning the federal agency is now allowed to levy civil penalties against bad actors who knowingly post product reviews and testimonials deemed misleading to American consumers."

Regardless of the fact that they should obviously have never been allowed, fake reviews, including AI-generated reviews, are now definitively not. This also includes people who buy star ratings and followers (which, as a practice, is I think far more prevalent than we might realize).

Because this is a US law, and the internet is what it is, we can probably expect a lot of these activities to now take place overseas, on other platforms.

#Technology

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[Joseph Cox at 404 Media]

Without needing a warrant, police can track ordinary peoples' smartphone locations - including people who travel out of state to get abortion procedures. The implications are troubling:

"“Warrantless law enforcement access to digital information related to reproductive health care, including location data, threatens reproductive freedom,” Ashley Emery, senior policy analyst, reproductive health and rights at the non-profit the National Partnership for Women & Families, told 404 Media. “If law enforcement can bypass court approval needed to obtain sensitive data and instead use this new surveillance tool to track pregnant people and build cases against them, the implications for abortion and pregnancy criminalization are alarming. This risk is especially salient for Black women, brown women, and low-income women, who are already over-surveilled and over-policed.”"

The tracking crosses states and is made possible by the cellphone networks themselves as part of what are shockingly lenient data sharing policies overall. Because of the jurisdiction, and the complicated way this data becomes available, the only surefire way to solve this problem is with a federal privacy law that protects our data.

At the very least it should need a warrant - but really, this sort of tracking shouldn't be possible at all. Without strong technical and legal protections against sharing, all our cellphones (this problem is not limited to smartphones) can be used as tracking devices to understand our whereabouts, who we're gathering with, and potentially more. We're all highly-dependent on them at this stage, but it's worth questioning whether we should be.

#Democracy

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[Blake Ellis, Melanie Hicken, Yahya Abou-Ghazala, Audrey Ash, Kyung Lah, Anna-Maja Rappard, Casey Tolan, Lou Robinson and Byron Manley at CNN]

"More than 1,000 reports filed with government agencies and consumer advocacy groups reviewed by CNN, along with an analysis of campaign finance data and interviews with dozens of contributors and their family members, show how deceptive political fundraisers have victimized hundreds of elderly Americans and misled those battling dementia or other cognitive impairments into giving away millions of dollars — far more than they ever intended."

Some of these are for Democrats, but most are for Republicans, who use an array of dark patterns including pre-selected checkboxes and misleading UI elements to convince donors to pay far more than originally intended.

The problem is most acute for elderly donors, and particularly for those with dementia, but there are plenty of other people who have been misled. It's a giant problem that stems from something everyone who's worked in tech will be familiar with: a focus on pushing success metrics up and to the right above all else.

There needs to be stronger regulation here, but of course, politicians aren't necessarily incentivized to push it. The best option would likely be for dark patterns overall to be more highly-regulated - after all, these same techniques are often used by lenders, insurance providers, subscription services, and more.

There's an even sadder story lurking here, too, which is more to do with a lack of the support and infrastructure for elder-care that these politicians should be providing:

"Forensic geriatrician Kathryn Locatell said what Richard Benjamin felt each time he received a “thank you” message or made a donation is the same “dopamine hit” a lot of elderly Americans are seeking. And the solicitations are crafted in a way that intentionally suck elderly donors into their web, providing “a feeling of belonging to a thrilling, special club.”"

In other words, if these people weren't so lonely and isolated to begin with, they might be less susceptible to this and other scams. That feels like an important problem worth solving, too, and one that should be tackled universally, for every person who needs it, regardless of means. Instead, the people who claim to want to help them end up persuading them to part with sometimes tens of thousands of dollars they can't afford to spend. It's nothing short of an abuse of power.

#Democracy

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[Timothy Snyder]

Timothy Snyder on the seriousness of the Trump-Vance deportation plans and their implications:

"Such an enormous deportation will requires an army of informers. People who denounce their neighbors or coworkers will be presented as positive examples. Denunciation then becomes a culture. If you are Latino, expect to be denounced at some point, and expect special attention from a government that will demand your help to find people who are not documented. This is especially true if you are a local civic or business leader."

The proposal itself has echoes in some of the worst policies of the worst governments of the past. To see arenas of people giddily waving "mass deportations now" signs is genuinely chilling, and it's not reasonable to dismiss this as electioneering. (Even as electioneering, it establishes a despicable us-and-them division that is unabashedly fascist.)

But Timothy Snyder is right here to go a get step further and ask what the impact would be on communities. Some people will inevitably be willing collaborators; others will not want to make a scene or hurt their own community standing and will become de facto collaborators. And the effect will be to establish a new normal that will be incredibly difficult culturally to turn back from.

"The deep purpose of a mass deportation is to establish a new sort of politics, a politics of us-and-them, which means (at first) everyone else against the Latinos. In this new regime, the government just stokes the fears and encourages the denunciations, and we expect little more of it."

It's sickening to think that this is an America that some people actively, intentionally want. If they win, I genuinely don't know what happens next.

Personally, I can't wait for an election that's fought on tax policy or infrastructure or the nuances of government. Right now, here in 2024, it seems like a big ask.

#Democracy

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