Category «E-Commerce»

404 Media has obtained a list of 200+ sites monitored by a contractor for ICE

404 Media [unpaywalled] – “A contractor for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and many other U.S. government agencies has developed a tool that lets analysts more easily pull a target individual’s publicly available data from a wide array of sites, social networks, apps, and services across the web at once, including Amazon, Apple Music, BabyCenter, …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Cybercrime, E-Commerce, E-Records, Legal Research, Privacy, Social Media

How to spot AI slop on Pinterest and why it’s such a big problem

ZDNet: “For years, Pinterest has been dubbed the go-to social media site for inspirational mood boards, tracking lifestyle, fashion, and beauty trends, and finding niche and popular consumer-based products. Recently, however, the site has been plagued with an onslaught of AI slop, making it difficult for users to decipher what’s real, human-made content or fake. …

Subjects: AI, E-Commerce, Search Engines, Social Media

How Do America’s Largest Corporations Score on Democracy? 

The American Democracy Scorecard is a living, interactive resource that grades the country’s biggest corporations on their support for democracy. The project evaluates corporations’ statements and efforts in support of our democracy, alongside their political spending and actions around January 6th, state and federal voting legislation, election integrity, and other democracy-related issues.  The goal is …

Subjects: E-Commerce, Economy, Financial System

Ron Wyden asks for rules about whether you own your digital purchases

Follow up on previous post – Amazon removing the ability to download your purchased books – The Verge: “Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair Andrew Ferguson urging the FTC to require that companies admit when you’re not really buying an ebook or video game. Wyden’s letter, shared with …

Subjects: E-Commerce, Internet, Legal Research

Trump expected to take control of USPS, fire postal board, officials say

Washington Post [unpaywalled]: “This is something that does not belong to the president or the White House. It belongs to the American people. That goes for everything else they’re trying to steal too.” The move threatens to upend trillions of dollars in e-commerce business and the 250-year-old Postal Service. President Donald Trump is preparing to …

Subjects: E-Commerce, Economy, Financial System, Government Documents, Legal Research

Google’s new policy tracks all your devices with no opt-out

digitaltrends: “Google has begun enforcing new tracking rules across connected devices, such as smartphones, consoles, and smart TVs, as BBC reports. The tech giant once called the fingerprint tracking technique “wrong” in 2019, but has since reintroduced it.Google has commented that other companies broadly use the data, and it started using it on February 16, …

Subjects: E-Commerce, E-Records, Internet, Search Engines

Musk associates access confidential info about X’s competitors via CFPB takeover

Musk Watch and Bloomberg – “Just nine days before his DOGE team visited CFPB, Musk’s X — the former Twitter — announced that it had struck a deal with Visa to process peer-to-peer payments. Musk has publicly mused about expanding into payment-services since he first took control of X in 2022. Entering that business could …

Subjects: Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, E-Commerce, Economy, Financial System, Government Documents, Intellectual Property, Legal Research, Marketing, Social Media

As Internet enshittification marches on, here are some of the worst offenders

Ars Technica: “Two years ago, a Canadian writer named Cory Doctorow coined the phrase “enshittification” to describe the decay of online platforms. The word immediately set the Internet ablaze, as it captured the growing malaise regarding how almost everything about the web seemed to be getting worse. “It’s my theory explaining how the Internet was …

Subjects: E-Commerce, Internet, Microsoft, Privacy

As Internet enshittification marches on, here are some of the worst offenders

Ars Technica: “Two years ago, a Canadian writer named Cory Doctorow coined the phrase “enshittification” to describe the decay of online platforms. The word immediately set the Internet ablaze, as it captured the growing malaise regarding how almost everything about the web seemed to be getting worse. “It’s my theory explaining how the Internet was …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, E-Commerce, E-Records, Economy, Internet, Privacy