Part of the Big Tech's War on Users series and the Insert Coin gaming arc — because this one started as a game and ended as a surveillance pipeline, so it earned both. Remember Pokémon GO? Summer of 2016. People were walking into traffic, trespassing in cemeteries, and wandering into strangers' backyards — all to catch...

Part of the ongoing Big Tech's War on Users series. WWDC gave us two things at once. Craig Federighi on stage talking about privacy, trust, and safety. The three-tier Siri routing confirmed. The whole carefully assembled message about how seriously Apple takes your data. And buried in the same keynote week: Apple...

Part of the Big Tech's War on Users series. This one got lost in the shuffle of other stories a couple weeks back, and I almost let it slide. That would have been a mistake. Because while the headlines have moved on, the case hasn't — and what's sitting inside it is worth paying attention to. The DOJ wants Apple,...

Part of the Big Tech's War on Users series Tracking people without meaningful consent is wrong. It was wrong when Meta did it to users. It's wrong now. The only difference is who's upset about it. Meta recently rolled out a tool called the Model Capability Initiative (MCI), part of a broader internal program branded the...

There's a thing that happens to me regularly that I suspect happens to you too. I'm trying to get to a site — reading an article, buying something, just clicking around — and suddenly I'm not going anywhere until I've proven my humanity to Google. Traffic lights. Buses. Motorcycles. And at least once, a traffic light...

The EU launched an age verification app to protect children online. A researcher broke it in two minutes. That's not actually the problem.correction: as of posting it hasn't launched yet...my bad. The European Commission launched its age verification app on April 15, 2026. President von der Leyen announced it herself....

Part of the Big Tech's War on Users series Proton. The name comes up every single time someone asks where to go after Google. After Gmail. After that moment you realize free email means you're the product. For years, the privacy community has had one reliable answer: Proton. Swiss company. Swiss servers. Swiss law....

Sam Altman just published a 13-page plan to save capitalism from AI. He's the one building the AI. His company won't be profitable until 2030. And this was somehow not the wildest thing that happened at OpenAI this week. Part of the ongoing Big Tech's War on Users series. If you haven't read They're Racing to Stay Ahead...