5 ms·
I don’t know how these folks sleep at night, lying to the public, their users, and their customers in the same breath. > The monitoring seems at odds with clai
by aspenmayer 6y ago
I don’t know how these folks sleep at night, lying to the public, their users, and their customers in the same breath.
> The monitoring seems at odds with claims from both Twitter and Dataminr that neither company would engage in or facilitate domestic surveillance following a string of 2016 controversies. Twitter, up until recently a longtime investor in Dataminr alongside the CIA, provides the company with full access to a content stream known as the “firehose” — a rare privilege among tech firms and one that lets Dataminr, recently valued at over $1.8 billion, scan every public tweet as soon as its author hits send. Both companies denied that the protest monitoring meets the definition of surveillance.
- kohtatsu 6y agoWho needs a panopticon when the prisoners post evidence themselves?
- prophesi 6y agoSocial media flips the classic panopticon on its head; instead of instilling fear of perpetual surveillance to keep others disciplined, it instills a fear that others can't see you until you self-discipline according to the algorithm's desire.
- poooooooop 6y agoThe irony of this being downvoted...
- radicalidiot 6y agoso the leftists sold out the leftists? classic.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoA lot of people, frankly, don't have any principled understanding of what it means to oppose surveillance. Dataminr says it's not doing "surveillance" but "newsgathering", based on some ad-hoc distinction they have no idea how to flesh out. And the article author doesn't seem to know either; he says Dataminr's defense was a "linguistic distinction" and a "euphemism", but none of his sources really explain what the correct distinction is between surveillance and newsgathering. Personally, I think any principled opposition to surveillance is going to end up including some practices which have traditionally been considered news. The reason that Dataminr's activity is surveillance is that "look at these random tweets!" news articles are also surveillance.
- colordrops 6y agoWhy is this comment downvoted?
- aspenmayer 6y agoI’ll admit I was a bit too emotional with my take. I don’t mean to imply that those who violate the Constitution deserve to suffer from their conscience or from any health or psychological issues as a result of such constitutional violation. I simply don’t know how those employees avoid the cognitive dissonance. I suppose there is ample scientific evidence showing that the more money you make, the less ethical you may act[1], but this is really raising the bar, or lowering it, depending on your perspective. [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/109/11/4086 https://www.pnas.org/content/109/11/4086
- dx87 6y agoProbably because they're just posting something that is already in the article, and adding nothing to the discussion.
- ciarannolan 6y agoMaybe because HN is full of people that work for similar privacy-destroying tech companies. I find that people on this board get a bit touchy when you talk about FAANG companies doing immoral things. (I know this isn't a FAANG company but its affect is in the same vein).
- jakear 6y agoDoes “FAANG companies” really mean literally those 5 companies? That’s not very usefully of a term. I think it’s more the concept, which I’d say Twitter is included in.
- unreal37 6y agoTwitter is not even trading at the stock price it was 2 years ago. It's not a FAANG. It's not a growth stock. It just barely escaped being a Yahoo.
- 6y ago