TechCrunch – Hundreds of subreddits plan to go dark indefinitely after Reddit CEO’s internal memo

Jun 142023
 

More than 300 subreddits, including popular ones like r/aww, r/music r/videos, and r/futurology, plan to go dark indefinitely after a large protest against Reddit’s API changes ends on June 14. This means users won’t be able to access these communities during this blackout.
This step was announced after The Verge reported that in an internal memo, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said “Like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well”. Huffman said in the memo that the blackout hasn’t caused any significant impact on the company’s revenue.
Over the last few days, (June 12-14) thousands of subreddits have gone dark to protest API changes by the platform that will potentially shut down many third-party apps. Because…

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Jacobin – Banks Are Using High Interest Rates to Rip Off Depositors

Jun 142023
 

The spread between loan interest rates and deposit rates is at a record high, allowing big banks to make out like bandits while consumers miss out on hundreds of billions of dollars in potential savings.
The JPMorgan Chase logo is seen at its headquarters building on May 26, 2023 in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images) It is easier to rob by setting up a bank than by holding up a bank clerk.
-Bertolt Brecht
The last time you checked your bank statement, did you take a moment to look at the fine print that shows the interest rate you are being paid on your deposits? If you did, you…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://jacobin.com/2023/06/big-banks-federal-reserve-interest-rates-depositor-yield-net-interest-income/

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Ars Technica – An anti-porn app put him in jail and his family under surveillance

Jun 142023
 

Enlarge (credit: Anjali Nair; Getty Images)
On a Wednesday morning in May, Hannah got a call from her lawyer—there was a warrant out for her husband’s arrest. Her thoughts went straight to her kids. They were going to come home from school and their father would be gone. “It burned me,” Hannah says, her voice breaking. “He hasn’t done anything to get his bond revoked, and they couldn’t prove he had.”
Hannah’s husband is now awaiting trial in jail, in part because of an anti-pornography app called Covenant Eyes. The company explicitly says the app is not meant for use in criminal proceedings, but the probation department in Indiana’s Monroe County has been using…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1947404

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Biometric Update – New Yorkers sue Amazon, Starbucks over biometrics use in cashierless stores

Jun 142023
 

Amazon and coffee retailer Starbucks are being sued in U.S. federal district court for misusing customers’ biometric identifiers. The proposed class action (2:23-cv-00852) has been filed in the Western District Court of Washington. The named plaintiffs, Suzanne Mallouk, Alfredo Rodriguez Perez and Arjun Dhawan, claim their privacy rights were violated when visiting New York City stores that used Amazon’s One palm biometric scanners. (The trio had filed separate cases but joined their claims in the state of Washington, which is home to both defendants.) No specific sum is sought in the trial. Biometric authentication as a method of payment at Amazon’s Go stores was introduced in New York City in 2019. One scanners have since…

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TorrentFreak – Court: Comcast Must Identify Accused BitTorrent Pirate

Jun 142023
 

Strike 3 Holdings has been a familiar name in U.S. federal courts for a while now.
Last year, the adult entertainment company filed a record-breaking number of lawsuits against alleged BitTorrent pirates.
The company is keeping up this pace in 2023, averaging dozens of lawsuits per week. Most of these are never mentioned in the press and a large number are settled behind closed doors.
Every now and then, an accused Internet subscriber objects, but these cases rarely go to trial. According to some, the lawsuits’ main objective is to collect settlement payments and default judgments.
Motion to Quash
This line of reasoning was also brought up by a “John Doe” defendant whose IP address was targeted in…

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Techdirt. – ODNI Report Shows Uncle Sam Buys Huge Troves Of Consumer Data From Brokers To Avoid Warrants, Trample The Law

Jun 142023
 

Story after story after story has showcased how the intentionally convoluted adtech and data broker market sloppily traffics in all manner of sensitive consumer data, whether it’s your daily physical movements (say, the last time you visited an abortion clinic), your granular browsing habits, your medical history, your household energy use patterns, or even your mental health data.
This massive trove of data is then used to categorize and classify Americans on an increasingly complicated array of criteria in a bid to sling ads and sell products online. Companies collect way more consumer data than is needed, it’s simply not secured in any competent way, and while adtech brokers will happily claim they “anonymize” this data to protect consumer privacy, study after…

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