Is the Internet a Mistake?

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i think we can see more and more recently, like, if we see kind of the libs of tiktok phenomeno. And these really prominent people on lines sharing the addresses and locations of libraries holding drag events because they hate gay people. It just seems like, really, its iseri it seems like the internet was a mistake. I do love buying shoes. But it kills me that we were born into a world where technological convenience was kind of promised to us without strings attached. We have this digid, old dragonat that we didn't have in the fifties.

Paris Marx is joined by Shoshana Wodinsky to discuss how the digital infrastructure that companies have built out over the past couple decades to track everything we do in order to serve us ads places us at risk, and how that’s come into focus since the overturning of abortion rights in Roe v Wade in the United States.

Shoshana Wodinsky is a privacy reporter at Gizmodo. Follow Shoshana on Twitter at @swodinsky.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Shoshana wrote about getting an abortion in the age of surveillance and why every company is becoming an ad network. With her colleagues at Gizmodo, she also wrote about how Facebook perpetuated climate denial and killed news feed changes that would anger conservatives.
Anti-abortion groups targeted ads at people who had visited abortion clinics.
Data brokers have been selling data on people who visit abortion clinics, including Planned Parenthood.

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