This Week in Tech (Audio) TWiT 1071: Image Pickles - Are Social Platforms Addictive or Just Too Good?
28 snips
Feb 16, 2026 
Wesley Faulkner, founder of Works Not Working, talks tech and work culture. Thomas Germain, BBC technology correspondent, breaks down tracking and privacy reporting. Stacey Higginbotham, Consumer Reports journalist, focuses on privacy, IoT, and policy. They debate whether social platforms are engineered to be addictive, algorithm transparency, surveillance creep from devices and ads, TikTok tracking, and age verification risks.
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Surveillance Becomes A Market
- Ring and other home-surveillance features create a growing surveillance marketplace that aggregates camera, plate, and location data.
- Those networks shift incentives toward commercializing who is where and when, eroding bystander privacy.
Prefer Local Cameras And Limited Views
- Prefer locally-hosted cameras and limit field-of-view to your property to reduce cloud exposure.
- If your cameras use local servers you control, you avoid third-party cloud retention and surprise retrievals.
Harden Email Against Trackers
- Disable automatic image loading in email and use plain-text mail to stop pixel-based tracking.
- Use targeted ad/tracker blockers rather than generic ad-only blockers for stronger protection.
