The human toll of the tech revolution

No one can really top Ryanair's social media stream, but Duolingo has been stealing the spotlight recently.

Duolingo’s decision to become an AI-first company comes with various sacrifices and seems to be a blow for many of its contractors. But unlike many others who suffer in silence or complain in closed circles, the Duolingo team made quite a statement online.

Not only did Duolingo’s very vocal social team delete all of its videos on TikTok, signalling it was unhappy with the decision, but it also posted an Anonymous-style video, saying, “Duolingo was never funny. We were.”

If only there were more people who’d speak up. I don’t often see it happening outside of journalists’ quarters. AI will render so many companies obsolete – as per this terrifying report, 25-40% of mid-tier publishers will soon be gone. We desperately need to start calling things for what they are.

How about the recent Facebook data leak? A threat actor claims to have records of 1.2 billion Facebook users. Cybernews researchers checked the data sample of 100,000 Facebook users and confirmed that it was legitimate. Meta, on the other hand, referred us to its post from 2021, saying it is working on preventing scraping but “will never be able to fully prevent all scraping without harming people’s ability to use our apps.”

There’s absolutely no harm in not using Facebook or other Meta apps. None at all.

What’s the trade-off when you sign up for yet another “free” app or online service? Sharing personal information is the obvious answer. However, in many cases, it’s much more. And you can’t really know beforehand.

People who signed up for personalized DNA testing with San Francisco-based 23andMe probably never anticipated their data being in peril, did they? The company filed for bankruptcy just two months after revealing that malicious hackers had obtained access to seven million customers’ private genetic data during the five-month-long 2023 breach.

Now, following the bankruptcy, their data is changing hands and will be used by the US drug maker Regeneron for drug research.

Is that what you signed up for?

The problem is that we mostly don’t read what we sign up for. Craving seamless solutions to sign in and watch or buy something, we use single sign-ons and accept the terms of service without actually reading them. And in many cases, our digital security is out of our hands.

And Cybernews has plenty more terrifying stories of how our poor digital habits come back to bite us.

Apparently, the T-Mobile app tracks users by default. By tracking, I mean recording their screens.

O2, another major telecommunications company, has been leaking user location data for at least a few months.

A threat that starts online can quickly become a physical one. This last story I want to draw your attention to comes from New Orleans, where police spent years scanning live feeds of city streets and secretly using facial recognition technology to identify suspects in real time. This played a role in a dozen arrests but was never disclosed in police reports.

Below, in our podcast, we talk about the Russian criminal underground, disturbing AI, and TikTok trends. Our podcast team is also saying goodbye for the time being as we are going on a creative break.