Tech Transparency Project
The Tech Transparency Project is a research initiative of Campaign for Accountability that investigates the power, influence, & impact of Big Tech. https://www.techtransparencyproject.org
- Update: After TTP informed Apple and Google of the dozens of “nudify” apps in their stores, both companies removed many of them. Apple took down 27, Google 31. But the swift takedown—and tacit admission the apps broke store rules—raises serious questions about their approval processes.
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- NEW: Apple and Google ban apps that create sexualized images. But a new TTP report found dozens of “nudify” apps in the companies’ stores that can digitally remove the clothes from women, rendering them naked or in scant clothing.
- As Meta touts a new policy today to keep Teen Accounts safe, let’s not forget that even with its purported tight controls, harmful content still finds its way through. A TTP report last year found that this even included extremely violent fight content.
- On Apple and Google’s failure to police their own app store rules, @lopatto.bsky.social notes that Apple’s promise to “protect” users is its basis for justifying its monopolistic control of the store. Yet Apple still fails, as TTP's recent report on apps for sanctioned entities demonstrated.
- A judge rejected the appeal of an anti-government extremist who argued that his "boogaloo boi" Facebook activity shouldn't have been used to convict him in the 2020 killing of a federal officer. As TTP research showed, the boogaloo movement is inextricably linked to such activity.
- NEW: Apple’s App Store hosts dozens of apps for U.S.-sanctioned entities, including Russian banks propping up Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, and a Chinese paramilitary group linked to human rights abuses. TTP also found a smaller number in the Google Play Store (18 vs Apple’s 52).
- In a new podcast, @thestar.com reporters Ben Mussett and Omar Mosleh talk about their report into Meta drug ads that led to them receiving cocaine and oxycodone in the mail. TTP’s research has shown the frequency of these ads, and their reporting paints a shocking picture of the real-world harm.
- New court filings show that when a former Instagram exec joined the company in 2020, she was shocked at the company’s lax approach to sex trafficking activity and child safety. That same year, a TTP report documented how Facebook was widely used by predators to target children.
