Gläsern by Design (mit Martin Fehrensen)
Summary
In this episode, c't journalists Gavin and Martin Fehrensen investigate a data leak on the European social network WSocial, where 9,500 users' legal names and birth years were publicly accessible. WSocial claims this is "public by design," sparking debate about GDPR compliance and the tension between open protocols and data minimization. The hosts also discuss Blue Sky's new .bsky top-level domain, Meta's suppression of a queer bar's content, and how Meta's AI agent Muse stores detailed social graph data on users' personal relationships.
Topics discussed
Intro and guest introduction
Skepticism towards WSocial platform
WSocial ID verification and data storage claims
Discovery of public list with legal names and birth years
WSocial 'Public by Design' statement and user consent
Legal conflict: GDPR vs. decentralized protocol philosophy
User awareness and the 'Club Bouncer' analogy
BlueSky domain news and domain trading anecdotes
Meta throttling queer bar accounts in Texas
Meta AI tools for ad fraud and content moderation
Small business case: Mushroom farm ad restrictions
Meta Muse app: Social graph and memory data collection
Casey Newton returns to X: Motivation and impact
Debate on leaving X as a political statement
Grokpedia and political influence on AI models
German government draft law against digital violence
YouTube restricting AI-generated short clips
Outro and upcoming live event announcement
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