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The Search for Anti-Conservative Bias on Google
From ACM Opinion

The Search for Anti-Conservative Bias on Google

Last Wednesday, a day after Google's C.E.O., Sundar Pichai, sat before the House Judiciary Committee to answer questions about the company's search engine,Donald...

Why Did the European Commission Fine Google Five Billion Dollars?
From ACM Opinion

Why Did the European Commission Fine Google Five Billion Dollars?

Acording to some estimates, about eighty-five per cent of the world's smartphones run on Google's Android operating system.

Why Do We Care So Much About Privacy?
From ACM Opinion

Why Do We Care So Much About Privacy?

The reason you've been receiving a steady stream of privacy-policy updates from online services, some of which you may have forgotten you ever subscribed to, is...

The G.D.P.R., Europe's New Privacy Law, and the Future of the Global Data Economy
From ACM Opinion

The G.D.P.R., Europe's New Privacy Law, and the Future of the Global Data Economy

They're curious messengers, these ants in your in-box.

The Fake-News Fallacy
From ACM Opinion

The Fake-News Fallacy

On the evening of October 30, 1938, a seventy-six-year-old millworker in Grover's Mill, New Jersey, named Bill Dock heard something terrifying on the radio.

Teddy Roosevelt Wouldn't ­nderstand the E.u.'s Antitrust Fine Against Google
From ACM Opinion

Teddy Roosevelt Wouldn't ­nderstand the E.u.'s Antitrust Fine Against Google

Back in 1980, Milton Friedman, the University of Chicago economist, starred in a public-television series called "Free to Choose," in which he presented his free...

Before the Internet
From ACM Opinion

Before the Internet

Before the Internet, you would just sit in an armchair with a book open on your lap, staring into space or staring at a decorative broom on the wall—kind of shifting...

How to Call B.s. on Big Data: A Practical Guide
From ACM Opinion

How to Call B.s. on Big Data: A Practical Guide

"Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you," the Oxford philosophy professor John Alexander Smith told...

Why Facebook Is Really Blocking the Ad Blockers
From ACM Opinion

Why Facebook Is Really Blocking the Ad Blockers

Ads can seem like the bane of the Internet.

Google's New Autoreply Sounds Great!!!!
From ACM Opinion

Google's New Autoreply Sounds Great!!!!

On April 1, 2009, Google unveiled Gmail Autopilot, a plug-in that promised to read and generate contextually relevant replies to the messages piling up in users'...

Why Larry Page Is Stepping Away
From ACM Opinion

Why Larry Page Is Stepping Away

In the ten years that I’ve been watching him, Larry Page has always wanted to play by his own rules.

The World Cracks Down on the Internet
From ACM Opinion

The World Cracks Down on the Internet

In September of last year, Chinese authorities announced an unorthodox standard to help them decide whether to punish people for posting online comments that are...

What Your Cell Phone Can't Tell the Police
From ACM Opinion

What Your Cell Phone Can't Tell the Police

On May 28th, Lisa Marie Roberts, of Portland, Oregon, was released from prison after serving nine and a half years for a murder she didn't commit.

How a Raccoon Became an Aardvark
From ACM Opinion

How a Raccoon Became an Aardvark

In July of 2008, Dylan Breves, then a seventeen-year-old student from New York City, made a mundane edit to a Wikipedia entry on the coati.

Putin's Fear of the Internet
From ACM Opinion

Putin's Fear of the Internet

In the mid-nineteen-sixties, Brezhnev's Soviet Union introduced a law aimed at stifling ideological dissent.

Death Googles Himself
From ACM Opinion

Death Googles Himself

Hey!

Through a Face Scanner Darkly
From ACM Opinion

Through a Face Scanner Darkly

Anonymity forms a protective casing.

How Facebook Makes ­s ­nhappy
From ACM Opinion

How Facebook Makes ­s ­nhappy

No one joins Facebook to be sad and lonely.

The Prism
From ACM Opinion

The Prism

An extraordinary fuss about eavesdropping started in the spring of 1844, when Giuseppe Mazzini, an Italian exile in London, became convinced that the British government...

How the Internet Gets Inside ­s
From ACM Opinion

How the Internet Gets Inside ­s

When the first Harry Potter book appeared, in 1997, it was just a year before the universal search engine Google was launched. And so Hermione Granger, that charming...
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