One of the starkest displays of political polarization in the U.S. is on the subject of climate change. But it wasn’t always this way. Gallup’s tracking on the issue reveals periods in the 1990s when Democrats’ and Republicans’ views on the topic were not so different. So, how did the […] Read more »
Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?
… Amazon and Google, the leading sellers of such devices, say the assistants record and process audio only after users trigger them by pushing a button or uttering a phrase like “Hey, Alexa” or “O.K., Google.” But each company has filed patent applications, many of them still under consideration, that […] Read more »
How people feel about what companies do with their data is just as important as what they know about it
It’s been an exciting week for those of us interested in what companies do with people’s data. The revelation that Cambridge Analytica got its hands on 50 million people’s Facebook data and that Facebook, at least until 2015, made this possible, enabling apps to access not only user data but […] Read more »
What The Cambridge Analytica Story Is Really About
In a special episode of FiveThirtyEight’s politics podcast, Jody Avirgan and Clare Malone are joined by Daniel Kreiss of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Kreiss studies how political campaigns use data, and he was the lead guest on our 2016 series on the history of political data. The three […] Read more »
Americans Want Government to Do More on Environment
The majority of Americans say protection of the environment should be a priority, even at the risk of curbing economic growth, and believe the U.S. government is not doing enough to protect the environment. About three-quarters support spending more government money on solar and wind power, and support higher emissions […] Read more »
How Facebook Helps Shady Advertisers Pollute the Internet
They’d come to mingle with thousands of affiliate marketers—middlemen who buy online ad space in bulk, run their campaigns, and earn commissions for each sale they generate. … The Berlin conference was hosted by an online forum called Stack That Money, but a newcomer could be forgiven for wondering if […] Read more »