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FTC orders Mastercard to answer questions about its data collection & monetization practices
Credit card data is extremely valuable for companies aiming to predict how people will spend money in the future. Knowing how much people spend, where and on what day says a lot about consumers’ financial situations.
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Who’s working for Facebook?
There are plenty of reasons to be interested in—and, even more, concerned about—Facebook. Many of them are raised in the recent review of Facebook-related books by John Lanchester [ht: db]: the fragmentation of the polity (via the targeting of posts), the dissemination of “fake news” (which played an important role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election), the undermining of other livelihoods (such as journalism and music), the level of surveillance of users (much more than any national government), the violation of anti-monopoly rules (via individualized pricing), and so on.