Five Links #20
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Absorbing
Five links for your inbox from this week.
1. Ads, privacy and confusion
This is a great piece by Ben Evans looking at various aspects of privacy, including 1st vs 3rd party, consent, competition and more. Well worth a read – plenty to mull over.
2. Facebook, Instagram and TikTok track user’s activity on external sites through their in-app browsers
In a horrendous-but-unsurprising revelation, it turns out that social media companies are spying on their user’s activity on external websites. When users click on external links in the iOS app (e.g. Facebook), these platforms are inserting analytics scripts in their own in-app browsers to track user activity.
TikTok even monitors all keyboard inputs and taps – yes, including passwords and credit card information – but according to TikTok they only use it for “debugging, troubleshooting and performance monitoring”.
No need to worry then…
3. Viral Post Generator
Go viral on LinkedIn in no time with this handy vomit-inducing inspirational quote generator.
4. Facebook fails to tackle election disinformation ads ahead of tense Brazilian election
Global Witness tested Meta’s policing of election disinformation ahead of the upcoming Brazilian election. 100% of their unverified ad account’s adverts featuring disinformation were approved.
5. Felt
After much anticipation, Felt is here to bring everyone a new way to generate maps.
Projects + other things
- Scruples: We’ve had a last-minute slot open for one project in September/October. This doesn’t happen often. If you – or a client – might like to work with us, we’d love to chat.
- What’s the deal with privacy-focused analytics? If you start looking at how to make a website more privacy-focused, analytics will come up almost immediately. Why is this such a hot topic?
- My Unoffice Hours are available every other Wednesday. Next slot: September 7th.
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Until next time,
Dave