Ian Bogost writes that these recent scandals involving Google and Facebook mistreating is just the tip of the iceberg. Data collection, along with data brokers, has been happening for decades.

But none of this is new, nor is it unique to big tech. Online services are only accelerating the reach and impact of data-intelligence practices that stretch back decades. They have collected your personal data, with and without your permission, from employers, public records, purchases, banking activity, educational history, and hundreds more sources. They have connected it, recombined it, bought it, and sold it. Processed foods look wholesome compared to your processed data, scattered to the winds of a thousand databases.

I hope that the U.S. adopts its own federal privacy law like GDPR. Talks have been underway, so there’s a glimmer of hope.

Certain smartphone apps help you to report sexual assault, and many who have used them say it’s less traumatizing than reporting face-to-face:

One student who says she was sexually harassed on campus by another student says she was too full of fear, and shame to take her complaint to campus administrators. Even as, she says, the harassment started to cause depression and anxiety, she couldn’t bring herself to walk into the school’s Title IX office to tell a stranger her story. Fighting back tears, she recalls being «afraid of being blamed,» and afraid that she wouldn’t be believed. She also worried it would have been too embarrassing to recount the explicit, vulgar language that was involved.

These apps encrypt a person’s report, and you can either send it directly to authorities or use it as a time-stamped record to hold on to until you’re ready to submit it.

Rebecca Dolan writes about various reasons why people wear AirPods besides listening to music. Some people are wearing AirPods because they don’t want other people to talk to them in certain settings.

Zach Miles learned a valuable lesson shortly before graduating this year from Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma. Walking across campus while wearing his AirPods earphones kept people at a distance. “If you’re not in the mood to talk to somebody, or if you’re in a hurry, it gives someone a visual signal,” he said.

Mr. Miles brought that knowledge to his working life in Colorado Springs, Colo., where his AirPods remain a shield against awkward small talk. “It’s a crutch,” admitted the 22-year-old app developer.

Beware of rich people wanting to change the world. Changing the world is something we hear quite often in Silicon Valley, but it usually rings hollow.

At first, you think: Rich people making a difference — so generous! Until you consider that America might not be in the fix it’s in had we not fallen for the kind of change these winners have been selling: fake change.

Of course, world-changing initiatives funded by the winners of market capitalism do heal the sick, enrich the poor and save lives. But even as they give back, American elites generally seek to maintain the system that causes many of the problems they try to fix — and their helpfulness is part of how they pull it off. Thus their do-gooding is an accomplice to greater, if more invisible, harm.

A good example of this is Elon Musk. If he can’t turn it into a publicity stunt, it doesn’t matter to him. Whatever happened to his «fixing» of the Flint water crisis?