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On the Possibility of Preserved Privacy: The Case of Google Photos

On the Possibility of Preserved Privacy: The Case of Google Photos

Today we live in a hyper-connected world with constant online activity. This lends itself to the accumulation of unprecedented data of and about people, dubbed “Big Data”. Google is a key part of this ecosystem and Google Photos is...
The CoronaCheck app and the datafication of healthcare

The CoronaCheck app and the datafication of healthcare

The covid-19 pandemic introduced a new wave of how we use and perceive Big Data connected to healthcare (Poom et al. 2020). As the number of covid-19 cases are monitored and open to access, we have now reached the...
Big Data And AI: Fake Fake News or Fight Fake News

Big Data And AI: Fake Fake News or Fight Fake News

In nowadays, the booming of information technology allows individuals to become content creators and publishers, a great number of data quickly spreads globally on the Internet. Meanwhile, new dimensions for Fake News are born in the rising of social...
The Health Code System: or the Reinforcement of New Digital Mass Surveillance Practices

The Health Code System: or the Reinforcement of New Digital Mass Surveillance Practices

The rapid acceleration in the adoption of new technologies during infectious disease surveillance is not new, nor is it only applicable to the contexts of Covid-19. However, the outbreak of the coronavirus has brought a reality that demanded a...
Cut the Cookie: Dark Patterns in BIG DATA

Cut the Cookie: Dark Patterns in BIG DATA

Cookies, introduced as a promise of choice, developed into an institutional nuisance one encounters daily. Formerly an attempt to provide Europeans with a consent infrastructure for or against participation in Big Data practices turned into an exercise in ethical...
Virtual Reality and the future of Big Data

Virtual Reality and the future of Big Data

Abstract As we sift through endless amounts of big data from social media, a new form of media is creeping up on us: virtual reality (VR). One of the biggest players in the industry is Oculus, who is owned...
Big data behind China’s “Health Code” system

Big data behind China’s “Health Code” system

As a common application of digital epidemic prevention, China's "Health Code" system has played an important role in epidemic prevention and control and has become one of the highlights of China's digital epidemic response to the COVID -19 outbreak....
“Hey Siri, are you sharing my private data”: A commentary on the impact virtual personal assistants have on surveillance capitalism and user information consumption

“Hey Siri, are you sharing my private data”: A commentary on the impact virtual personal assistants have on surveillance capitalism and user information consumption

For a digitally immersed society driven by technological developments and innovations, personal voice-controlled virtual assistants such as Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, or Apple Siri have become a crucial component to task completion, user interaction, and information consumption. Virtual personal...
The Greedy Algorithm: An investigation into Facebook’s mismanagement of Big Data

The Greedy Algorithm: An investigation into Facebook’s mismanagement of Big Data

In 2018, Facebook was issued a lawsuit by the developers of a now-defunct organisation called Six4Three. In this, they stated that Facebook had grossly mistreated access to users’ private data, while also collecting huge amounts of information on their...

Algorithmic Culture and Big Data: Spotify’s recommendation algorithm

Have you ever listened to music on Spotify and wondered how it is possible that the recommended music perfectly suits your personal taste and sometimes even introduces you to music you didn’t even know you enjoy? Most people don’t...
Signal – Speaking with no one listening

Signal – Speaking with no one listening

Signal is a messaging app that has been around since 2013. It is said to be one of the most secure messaging apps on the market. Whistleblower Edward Snowden uses it daily and describes Signal as the safest messaging...
Health Code, a tool to tackle COVID-19 or automatize social control?

Health Code, a tool to tackle COVID-19 or automatize social control?

“Please show your Health Code.” A few months since the COVID-19 pandemic started, almost all public places in China have posted such requests at the entrances. Health Code, a color-based application, is rolled out to control people’s movements and...
Fawkes: “Cloaking” Your Photos to Elude Facial Recognition Systems

Fawkes: “Cloaking” Your Photos to Elude Facial Recognition Systems

For too long we have lived under the fear brought by the deepfake. In that case, it’s time for us to meet the photo-editing tool, Fawkes. Since the deepfake is generally based on images, Fawkes can fool the AI...
Media Minimalism: Big Twitter and the Small Data Revolution

Media Minimalism: Big Twitter and the Small Data Revolution

Our mediascape has a value problem. "The methods of social science are dear in time and money," writes Su Golder, "and getting dearer every day." Enter media minimalism: a new school of thought, spearheaded by a gang of logistically-minded...
Health QR code (system): reasonable data collection or tracking surveillance under the fantasy of Big Data?

Health QR code (system): reasonable data collection or tracking surveillance under the fantasy of Big Data?

Health Code, a personal QR code created by the government of Hangzhou in cooperation with mobile giant Alipay and designed for collecting and controlling the covid-19 cases, was initially launched in Hangzhou on February 11th, 2020 and was widely...
Discerning Familiarity in the Rise of Facial Recognition

Discerning Familiarity in the Rise of Facial Recognition

Facial recognition is ‘hot’: it has been in science fiction since the 1960’s, but nowadays biometric technologies – the technologies that recognize individuals based on biological aspects – are advancing and are increasingly being adapted by tech giants and...
ImageNet Roulette: This mean Sorting Hat is not magic, it’s how AI works

ImageNet Roulette: This mean Sorting Hat is not magic, it’s how AI works

ImageNet Roulette is not just another selfie app. It shows us why it is deeply problematic to classify people through “AI” systems. The debate around ImageNet Roulette is urgently needed: Around the globe, machine learning systems are popping up...
Sherlock Holmes of the Data-Driven world: ‘Big Data Policing’

Sherlock Holmes of the Data-Driven world: ‘Big Data Policing’

The emergence and rise of ‘Data Policing’, all around the world, is noticeable. And it is not a traditional use of technology by police, For instance, surveillance cameras in some public places. Nowadays we are encountering a completely novel...
Smart Home Technologies and the Transformation Of Domestic Space

Smart Home Technologies and the Transformation Of Domestic Space

Since Gordon Moore’s prophetic law in 1965, in which he claimed that microchips would develop so that the speed would double while size would decrease every year, has allowed for the evolution of ubiquitous computing and its introduction into...
The contradictory internet user

The contradictory internet user

  Abstract  In this paper I want to state that the contemporary media user is acting in two distinct ways. In order to illustrate this I analyzed two different apps ExpressVPN and Cammeleon that both focuses   on securing...
Qutoutiao: Make Digital Reading More “Valuable”

Qutoutiao: Make Digital Reading More “Valuable”

With 48.8 million “employees”,Qutoutiao Inc. (means “fun headlines”), a two-year old mobile-news company becomes one of the biggest news and video aggregator in China. Being available at application stores since Jun. 2016, the number of Qutoutiao’s users has witnessed...
Online to Offline, Customers Have Nowhere to Hide —A New Targeting Technology via Wifi on Mobile Devices

Online to Offline, Customers Have Nowhere to Hide —A New Targeting Technology via Wifi on Mobile Devices

Have you ever received the promotion advertisements from some brands? The answer for most of us probably is: yes. Based on customers’ preferences, retailers offer the information of their upcoming products by the eye-catching advertisements. However, have you ever...
Are we compromising our privacy and safety for comfort and ease?

Are we compromising our privacy and safety for comfort and ease?

    We are becoming more and more used to the idea of new technology being embedded, into our everyday lives and activities. Marshall McLuhan believes that we treat “technologies as extended bodily organs.” (Durham Peters) We are continuously experimenting...
How Can Art Be Subversive in a Platform System?         The Case of Benjamin Grosser

How Can Art Be Subversive in a Platform System? The Case of Benjamin Grosser

    What would happen if one morning, a morning like many others, after you got up, you discovered that your Facebook home page is completely empty, without any type of content? I’m not talking about a crash or...