feed info
7 articles from Technology Review Feed - Tech Review Top Stories
Facebook and YouTube are rushing to delete “Plandemic,” a conspiracy-laden video
The news: A 25-minute clip of an upcoming documentary featuring a well-known anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist was viewed millions of times this week on social media, before Facebook and YouTube pledged to remove copies of it from their platforms. On Thursday, Facebook told reporters that the documentary violated its policies by promoting the potentially harmful claim that wearing a mask can make...
India is forcing people to use its covid app, unlike any other democracy
The world has never seen anything quite like Aarogya Setu. Two months ago, India’s app for coronavirus contact tracing didn’t exist; now it has nearly 100 million users. Prime Minister Narendra Modi boosted it on release by urging every one of the country’s 1.3 billion people to download it, and the result was that within two weeks of launch it became the fastest app ever to reach 50 million...
A flood of coronavirus apps are tracking us. Now it’s time to keep track of them.
As the covid-19 pandemic rages, technologists everywhere have been rushing to build apps, services, and systems for contact tracing: identifying and notifying all those who come in contact with a carrier. Some are lightweight and temporary, while others are pervasive and invasive: China’s system, for example, sucks up data including citizens’ identity, location, and even online payment...
How to submit a change to the Covid Tracing Tracker project
For our Covid Tracing Tracker project, we are sifting files, documents, and interviewing sources to monitor the status of automated contact tracing apps all around the world. But we’re also asking for your help to make the database better and more accurate. There are many countries worldwide, documentation and information in many languages, and a wide variation in the apps and services to...
How covid-19 conspiracy theorists are exploiting YouTube culture
When the notorious conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was kicked off YouTube and Facebook in 2018, the lesson was supposed to be that deplatforming works. Without access to his millions of followers on mainstream social media, Jones became an online ghost, diminished and shouting his dangerous unfinished business to a much smaller audience. But some people…
We have no idea how to manage all the testing data we’re collecting
Imagine you’re an epidemiologist or public health expert in the US during the current crisis. Senior elected officials have just contacted you to ask your advice on whether it’s safe to ease some lockdown restrictions. To prepare your answer, you will need to take a closer look at what the covid-19 testing data says.
Getting this data means going to the health department website of...
Is getting pregnant “medically necessary” right now?
On Friday, March 13, the management of the large hospital in Sacramento, California, where Kate works as a nurse anesthetist announced the cancellation of all elective surgeries. Kate and her husband had been pursuing fertility treatments for nearly a year. She had an appointment the following Monday at a private clinic to prepare for her…