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This is my "shitlist", or list of things you shouldn't like (- I like some of these things but probably shouldn't). This is a list of public figures and brands, nothing personal. If you're on this list you're probably famous enough to not have to care.
I would like to mention that the omission of a brand or figure on this list does not make them good. "Good brands", in my experience, are just brands about which less is known. I am also a human and therefore biased. Any company that currently employs me will not appear on this list, and if I am employed by a company, they'll be removed.
You're welcome to suggest additions to this list via a pull request on this website's git repository, information about this can be found on the site index. Or just email me.
I sourced many links from the personal page of Richard Stallman (who, ironically, is also on this list).
I'd also like to thank my friend Yarah for her contributions to this page.
Google AMP Can Go To Hell (Polemic Digital) (Archive link)
Google contractors reportedly targeted homeless people for Pixel 4 facial recognition (The Verge; Hollister, Sean) (Archive link)
Google's Play Store is giving an age-rating finger to Fleksy, a Gboard rival (TechCrunch; Lomas, Natasha) (Archive link)
Less than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click (SparkToro; Fishkin, Rand) (Archive link)
Alphabet CEO: Plan to target EU commissioner was not "sanctioned" by me (Ars Technica; Espinosa, Javier) (Archive link)
Google illegally spied on workers before firing them, US labor board alleges (The Verge; Schiffer, Zoe)
New lawsuit: Why do Android phones mysteriously exchange 260MB a month with Google via cellular data when they're not even in use? (The Register; Claburn, Thomas) (Archive link)
The Google Cemetery (WPKube) (Archive link)
Amazon Fire TV Update Bricks Hacked Devices (Hackaday; Osgood, Rick) (Archive link)
Once Again, GDPR Is A Potential Privacy Nightmare: Amazon Sends 1,700 Voice Recordings To The Wrong User In GDPR Request (Techdirt; Masnick, Mike)
Amazon: Cops Can Get Recordings From Ring, Keep Them Forever, And Share Them With Whoever They Want (Techdirt; Cushing, Tim) (Archive link)
Amazon Told Police It Has Partnered With 200 Law Enforcement Agencies (Vice; Haskins, Caroline)
Amazon Argues Users Don't Actually Own Purchased Prime Video Content (The Hollywood Reporter; Cullins, Ashley) (Archive link)
Amazon Reportedly Has Pinkerton Agents Surveil Workers Who Try To Form Unions (NPR)
NSA Chief Who Oversaw Sweeping Domestic Phone Surveillance Joins Amazon Board As Director (ZeroHedge; Pseudonymous ("Durden, Tyler"))
See: Alphabet, Inc.
See: Alphabet, Inc.
Apple apps on macOS Big Sur bypass firewall and VPN connections (Apple Terminal; Sami)
Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained (Reuters; Menn, Joseph)
Developer ID certificate revocation (Johnson, Jeff)
Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look (Jannone, Jacopo)
Falling out of Love with Apple, Part 1 (Herbert, Zach)
Falling out of Love with Apple, Part 1.5 (Herbert, Zach)
Falling out of Love with Apple, Part 2 (Herbert, Zach)
Falling out of Love with Apple, Part 3 (Herbert, Zach)
iOS, The Future Of macOS, Freedom, Security And Privacy In An Increasingly Hostile Global Environment (GitHub; Anonymous)
"On Big Sur, trustd is in Apple's 'ContentFilterExclusionList' ....meaning firewalls can't block it!" (Twitter; Wardle, Patrick)
Your Computer Isn't Yours (Paul, Jeffrey)
CDPR's new game Cyberpunk 2077 is pretty trans-phobic but it seems to me that a lot of outlets are writing about it just to have a story on a page and not to actually deliver information. Lots of these articles are full of fluff but their critiques are still interesting.
Cyberpunk 2077 is dad rock, not new wave (Polygon; Petit, Carolyn)
Cyberpunk's transphobic tweet is part of a much larger issue with game marketing (Polygon; Antonelli, William)
It sucks that Cyberpunk 2077's edgelord marketing worked so well (Polygon; Henley, Stacey)
"Words Like Violence": Cyberpunk 2077's Voice Options Are A Trans Nightmare Made Virtual (TheGamer; Blondeau, Bella)
Comcast to impose home internet data cap of 1.2TB in more than a dozen US states next year (The Verge; Lyons, Kim) (Archive link)
See: Facebook
Let's Reverse Engineer Discord (Medium; Wells, David) (Archive link)
As Facebook blocks the names of trans users and drag queens, this burlesque performer is fighting back (The Guardian; Levin, Sam) (Archive link)
Facebook accused of censorship after hundreds of US political pages purged (The Guardian; Tynan, Dan) (Archive link)
Facebook's Ad Algorithm Is a Race and Gender Stereotyping Machine, New Study Suggests (The Intercept; Biddle, Sam) (Archive link)
Facebook allowed violent posts by man charged with Ilhan Omar death threat (The Guardian; Swaine, Jon) (Archive link)
Facebook Apparently Won't Let Users Talk About Facebook's Lawsuit With Power.com (Techdirt; Masnick, Mike) (Archive link)
Facebook Blocking Stories About Richard O'Dwyer's Fight Against Extradition To The US (Techdirt; Masnick, Mike) (Archive link)
Facebook Censored and Deleted March Against Monsanto Event (March Against Monsanto; Derricks, Kelly) (Archive link)
Facebook censors political satire after complaint from JobCentre Plus (Pride's Purge; Pride, Tom) (Archive link)
Facebook declines to take action against Trump statements (The Guardian; Wong, Julia) (Archive link)
Facebook Has Added You As An Informant (OWNI.eu; Vatteble, Maxime) (Archive link)
Facebook is chipping away at privacy - and my profile has been exposed (The Guardian; Hern, Alex) (Archive link)
Facebook is secretly using your iPhone's camera as you scroll your feed (The Next Web; Mihov, Dimitar)
Facebook is using your phone's location to suggest new friends - which could be a privacy disaster (Splinter; Hill, Kashmir) (Archive link)
Facebook Overreacts: Decides All Of The Pirate Bay Is Illegal (Techdirt; Masnick, Mike) (Archive link)
Facebook Pitched New Tool Allowing Employers to Suppress Words Like "Unionize" in Workplace Chat Product (The Intercept; Fang, Lee) (Archive link)
Facebook's "Privacy Trainwreck": Exposure, Invasion, and Drama (Boyd, Danah) (Archive link)
Facebook's real name policy is a drag, and not just for the performers it outs (The Guardian; Zimmerman, Jess) (Archive link)
Facebook's recent logo drama is a problem on multiple levels (Fast Company; Wilson, Mark)
Facebook Says It Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the U.S. and Israeli Governments (The Intercept; Greenwald, Glenn) (Archive link)
How does Facebook suggest potential friends? Not location data - not now (The Guardian; Hunt, Elle) (Archive link)
Facebook is quietly pressuring its independent fact-checkers to change their rulings (Fast Company; Pasternack, Alex) (Archive link)
Facebook Page Goes Dark, Angering Russia Dissidents (The New York Times; Roth, Andrew; Herszenhorn, David) (Archive link) (Onion link)
Identity crisis for Koko the Clown (Latrobe Valley Express; Darroch, Sam) (Archive link)
I now have an Oculus Paperweight (Reddit; u/mud_juggler) (Archive link)
Inside Facebook's Outsourced Anti-Porn and Gore Brigade, Where 'Camel Toes' are More Offensive Than 'Crushed Heads' (Gawker; Chen, Adrian) (Archive link)
Facebook Accused of Watching Instagram Users Through Cameras (Bloomberg; Burnson, Robert)
Instagram shuts down Iranian accounts after Soleimani's death (Coda; Cockerell, Isobel) (Archive link)
Instagram submits to Russia censor's demands (BBC) (Archive link)
"I have also...received an automated block..." (Hacker News discussion of "I now have an Oculus Paperweight"; dessant) (Archive link)
"I've just discovered that a Facebook employee reimplemented the app...and published it using the same name...so I can no longer publish my app without renaming the project." (Hacker News; dessant) (Archive link)
On Facebook, French Antiracists Fall Victim to Censorship (La Quadrature du Net) (Archive link)
Pulitzer prize winner blocked from Facebook after series of 'corruption facts' posts (Times of Malta; Borg, Jacob) (Archive link)
When Facebook's "Real Name" Policies Can Kill (Weinstein, Lauren)
Why Does Facebook Keep Suggesting You Friend Your Tinder Matches? (Vice; Paul, Kari) (Archive link)
Women, LGBT least safe on Facebook, despite 'real name' policy (Engadget; Blue, Violet) (Archive link)
Gaggle Knows Everything About Teens And Kids In School (Buzzfeed News; Haskins, Caroline) (Archive link)
See: Alphabet, Inc.
See: Apple Computer
See: Apple Computer
See: Apple Computer
"Esoteric metrics...built into MS 365" (Twitter; Christl, Wolfie) (Archive link)
Microsoft's Creepy New 'Productivity Score' Gamifies Workplace Surveillance (Gizmodo; Stanley, Alyse) (Archive link)
See also Microsoft apologises for feature criticised as workplace surveillance.
4 Shady Facts Netflix Doesn't Want Viewers To Know (Cracked; Wears, Adam)
At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks (The Wall Street Journal; Ramachandran, Shalini; Flint, Joe) (Archive link)
New York Times Suffers Redaction Failure, Exposes Name Of NSA Agent And Targeted Network In Uploaded PDF (Techdirt; Cushing, Tim)
See: Facebook
A College Student Behind A Massively Popular Paint-Mixing TikTok Page Was Fired From Sherwin-Williams (Buzzfeed News; Chen, Tanya) (Archive link)
Secret Code in Color Printers Lets Government Track You (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
Campus Staff Took Advantage of Weaknesses in Admissions Processes to Inappropriately Admit 64 Students as Favors to Donors, Family, and Friends (Auditor of the State of California)
Yelp is Screwing Over Restaurants By Quietly Replacing Their Phone Numbers (Vice; Jeffries, Adrianne) (Archive link)
"[Apple] has pushed a silent update to all Macs removing a ...web server installed by Zoom" (Twitter; Wardle, Patrick) (Archive link)
FBI Warns of Teleconferencing and Online Classroom Hijacking During COVID-19 Pandemic (Federal Bureau of Investigation Boston; Setera, Kristen)
Foreign intelligence operatives are reportedly using online platforms and video-conferencing apps like Zoom to spy on Americans (Business Insider; Sheth, Sonam)
Google Told Its Workers That They Can't Use Zoom On Their Laptops Anymore (BuzzFeed News; Dixit, Pranav)
The 'S' in Zoom, Stands for Security (Objective-See; Wardle, Patrick)
Two more macOS Zoom flaws surface, as lawsuit & government probe loom (AppleInsider; Peterson, Mike)
US Senate tells members not to use Zoom (Ars Technica; Stacey, Kiran; Murphy, Hannah)
Zoom admits some calls were routed through China by mistake (TechCrunch; Whittaker, Zach)
Zoom lied to users about end-to-end encryption for years, FTC says (Ars Technica; Brodkin, Jon)
Zoom macOS install 'shady,' plus video chats aren't end-to-end encrypted (AppleInsider; Gallagher, William)
Zoom Meetings Aren't End-to-End Encrypted, Despite Misleading Marketing (The Intercept; Lee, Micah; Yael, Grauer)
Zoom Zero Day: 4+ Million Webcams & maybe an RCE? Just get them to visit your website! (Medium; Leitschuh, Johnathan) (Archive link)
Zoom updates macOS installer to remove malware-like exploits (AppleInsider; Neely, Amber)
Zoom for iOS shares data with Facebook even if users don't have an account (AppleInsider; Peterson, Mike)
Biden Tells Elite Donors He Doesn't Want to 'Demonize' the Rich (Bloomberg; Epstein, Jennifer)
'Lock the S.O.B.s Up': Joe Biden and the Era of Mass Incarceration (The New York Times; Stolberg, Sheryl Gay; Herndon, Astead W.) (Archive link)
Biden's gun control plan is terrible for working class firearm owners (The Washington Post; Kelly, Kim) (Archive link)
The complete truth about Joe Biden's LGBT record (OUTspoken)
The Complete Truth is from a possibly untruthful source.
On The Record: A Former Biden Staffer's Sexual Assault Allegation (NPR; Khalid, Asma) (Archive link)
"I know we all grew up with the excitement of snow days, but this year is different." (Twitter; de Blasio, Bill)
User Clip: Hillary Clinton on Gay Marriage in 2004 (C-SPAN; User-created clip)
Hillary Clinton Says We Must Be 'Sensitive' to Transphobia (Out; Lang, Nico)
Crowds jam civil union debate (Honolulu Star-Bulletin Hawaii News; Antone, Rod)
Tulsi Gabbard's 'Evolution' On LGBTQ Rights Isn't Convincing (The Huffington Post; Signorile, Michelangelo)
Tulsi Gabbard introduces bill that ties Title IX protections for female athletes to 'biological sex' (USA Today; Cummings, William)
Unpacking Kamala Harris's Record on Trans and Sex Work Issues (them.; Sanders, Wren)
Commercial Felony Streaming Act Passes Senate Judiciary Committee: Website Owners May Face Harsher Punishments (The Huffington Post; Smith, Catharine)
Disclaimer: I am a fan of much of Stallman's work.
Remove Richard Stallman (Medium; G., Selam) (Archive link)
Remove Richard Stallman: Appendix A (Medium; G., Selam) (Archive link)
Remove Richard Stallman and its appendix have had bits of them debunked but Stallman's conduct is well-known within the open source community. He's a bit of a missing stair. To his credit, he's changed for the better over the years, but that does not undo the damage he's done.
Ad Check: Is Thom Tillis Really Bad For Women? (WFMY; Briscoe, Benjamin)
In North Carolina, Thom Tillis is the Last Holdout Against Gay Marriage (The New York Times; Firestone, David) (Archive link)
"Motorcycle Vagina" Bill One Year Later (Chapelboro.com; Northam, Ran)
NC Speaker Tillis vows to fight same-sex marriage ruling (WSOC)
Republican Senate candidates say they would not back net neutrality (WRAL; Binker, Mark)
Republican Senators Have Introduced a Bill That Would End Net Neutrality Forever (Vice; Gustin, Sam)
Tillis may have benefited from Facebook data breach (WRAL; Leslie, Laura)
Tillis and NC Republicans paid $345,000 to the data firm that’s now banned from Facebook (Raleigh News & Observer; Murphy, Brian; Bonner, Lynn)
How the local N.C. delegation to Congress voted recently (greensboro.com)
Internet Archive Defends Massive Online 'Emergency Library' (Bloomberg Law; Jahner, Kyle)
Tillis Pushes Prison Time for Online Streamers After Pre-Election Hollywood Cash Blitz (The American Prospect; Shaw, Donald)
Title (Platform/publisher; name of author) (Archive link if website is down, paywalled, or SNS)