Kashmir Hill
Slate
San Francisco, CA, United States
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Past articles by Kashmir:
How Many Cows Are Saved by Fake Meat?
The CEO of Impossible Foods says it’s over 10,000. → Read More
This Simple Tool Will Reveal the Secret Life of Your Smart Home
We live in the glorious future that technophiles have long dreamed of. Almost everything can now connect to the internet: cameras, coffee pots, televisions, vacuums, toilets, children’s toys, sex toys. If you build it, a wireless connection will come for it. These smart devices are always on, always connected, and often up to more than you realize. → Read More
Airbnb Doesn't Want Extremists On Its Platform—But How Hard Is It Looking for Them?
Every summer nearly 300 white nationalists convene in Burns, Tennessee for the American Renaissance Conference—and they always need a place to stay. → Read More
Facebook Ruins Woman's Attempt to Pin Crime on her Sister
Last week, a sheriff’s office in South Carolina posted a pretty crazy story to its Facebook page about how Facebook’s “People You May Know” feature had foiled a woman’s attempt to hide her identity from the police. → Read More
More Internal Facebook Documents Leak Online, Revealing How Facebook Planned to Sell User Data
At the end of 2018, in a dramatic series of events, lawmakers in England had a sergeant-at-arms storm to an American tech executive’s hotel room and insisted on the release of confidential documents from his company’s ongoing lawsuit against Facebook. Then, in the style of vigilante hackers, the lawmakers posted many of those court-sealed records, exposing hundreds of pages of internal Facebook… → Read More
Amazon and Chase Are Still Confusingly Opaque About What They Do With Your Credit Card Data
Last month, I tried to find out what Amazon learns about people who have an Amazon Rewards Visa Signature Card from Chase. Neither Chase nor Amazon would give me a straight answer. In fact, Chase’s spokesperson, Mary Jane Rogers, gave me a wrong answer in telling me that Amazon fell into a category that it didn’t. → Read More
I Cut the 'Big Five' Tech Giants From My Life. It Was Hell
Week 6: Blocking them all A couple of months ago, I set out to answer the question of whether it’s possible to avoid the tech giants. Over the course of five weeks, I blocked Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple one at a time, to find out how to live in the modern age without each one. To end my experiment, I’m going to see if I can survive blocking all five at once. Not only am I… → Read More
Apple Is Removing 'Do Not Track' From Safari
Do Not Track is apparently dead, and Apple is now taking steps to shed itself of the failed privacy project. → Read More
I Cut Apple Out of My Life. It Was Devastating
Week 5: Apple When I first conceived of this experiment—cutting the tech giants out of my life one-by-one—I hadn’t thought to include Microsoft (because I use very few of their products) or Apple (because I use so many of theirs). I have two Macbook Airs, one for personal use and one supplied by my work. I have an iPhone that I nicknamed “tech appendage.” My husband and I have a shared iPad2… → Read More
I Cut Microsoft Out of My Life—or So I Thought
Week 4: Microsoft When I initially planned to block all the tech giants from my life, I hadn’t thought to include Microsoft, mostly because Microsoft is—these days, at least—rarely on the receiving end of criticism for destroying civilization as we know it. Microsoft’s days as a tech supervillain are a distant memory, dating back to the 1990s when 20 states, along with the U.S. Department of… → Read More
I Cut Google Out Of My Life. It Screwed Up Everything
Week 3: Google Long ago, Google made the mistake of adopting the motto, “Don’t be evil,” in a jab at competitors who exploited their users. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has since demoted the phrase in its corporate code of conduct presumably because of how hard it is to live up to it. Google is no stranger to scandals, but 2018 was a banner year. It covered up the potential data exposure… → Read More
I Cut Facebook Out of My Life. Surprisingly, I Missed It
I never thought I’d miss the social network. But here I am, staring at my screen, feeling strangely alone. → Read More
Amazon and Chase Will Not Give Me a Straight Answer About What They Do With My Credit Card Data
Whenever I go out to dinner with a bunch of friends, and we split the check, multiple people wind up throwing in those heavy, slate-grey credit cards bearing Amazon’s smiley arrow. → Read More
Life Without the Tech Giants
Goodbye, big five. → Read More
I Tried to Block Amazon From My Life. It Was Impossible.
Not even a custom-built VPN could stop Jeff Bezos's behemoth from slipping through the digital cracks. → Read More
How Cartographers for the U.S. Military Inadvertently Created a House of Horrors in South Africa
The visitors started coming in 2013. The first one who came and refused to leave until he was let inside was a private investigator named Roderick. He was looking for an abducted girl, and he was convinced she was in the house. → Read More
Amazon and Facebook Reportedly Had a Secret Data-Sharing Agreement, and It Explains So Much
Back in 2015, a woman named Imy Santiago wrote an Amazon review of a novel that she had read and liked. Amazon immediately took the review down and told Santiago she had “violated its policies.” Santiago re-read her review, didn’t see anything objectionable about it, so she tried to post it again. “You’re not eligible to review this product,” an Amazon prompt informed her. → Read More
Turning Off Facebook Location Tracking Doesn't Stop It From Tracking Your Location
Aleksandra Korolova has turned off Facebook’s access to her location in every way that she can. She has turned off location history in the Facebook app and told her iPhone that she “Never” wants the app to get her location. She doesn’t “check-in” to places and doesn’t list her current city on her profile. → Read More
How Facebook Schemed Against Its Users
Last year, I was trying to solve a mystery. Facebook’s “People You May Know” tool was outing sex workers’ real identities to their clients, and vice versa, and I was trying to figure out how. A sex worker using the pseudonym Leila told me she had gone to great lengths to hide her identity from clients by using an alternate name, alternate email address, and burner phone number—contact… → Read More
Facebook Was Fully Aware That Tracking Who People Call and Text You Is Creepy But Did It Anyway
Facebook strikes again. → Read More