The Data Industry Is a Pandemic

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i was more of a centurist, i when i first got reporting. And then being in this space is like transformed me into a full blooded anarchist. I'm like, how can you be anything else? This is the free market at work and it's making a lot of money. But at what cost were goin? Have to cut thatot for all the right wingers who are going to come on and say, a look, evidence of te the presses, the left wing bias. It's not oin to left on. Listen, i love i i love caf, but i'm a business reporter. So instead, we have kind of this impossible choice where you

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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