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User-generated surveillance: Ring doorbells gets even creepier

In yet another update to the Amazon Ring doorbell series, Ars Technica reports that Amazon is now partnering with Flock Safety. Flock’s payoff is “Shaping the Future of Safety, Together” and touts itself as : At its core, Flock Safety is an American company — founded by American entrepreneurs, manufacturing U.S. products that help Americans stay safe and thrive. We believe that everyone has a right to feel safe in this country.  On the side: quite the feat to cram 4 ‘America first’ maga dogwhistles in one sentence. The basic idea is that users are harnessed to assist in investigations, […] Read More

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Spanish national government crackdown on vacation rental platforms

Dutch news channel NOS reports that the Spanish national government is taking down over 50.000 vacation rentals from online platforms. In Spain over the last few years there has been increasing discontent with the popular vacation rental platforms. People consider these platforms to drive up rent and housing prices, to corrode local social cohesion, and in general make popular cities unlivable and overcrowded with mass tourism. Airbnb, the largest of these vacation rental platforms, has said it will actively comply.

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Shedding light on ‘Dark Kitchen’ platform economy

Several Dutch news outlets, like local Amsterdam news channel AT5 and National news channel NOS, report on the terrible circumstances of Indian laborers in a so-called ‘dark kitchen’ in Weesp. A dark kitchen – like a dark store – is a restaurant without visitors, serving only online orders and home deliveries. A recent insurrection by the Arbeidsinspectie (Labor inspection) revealed three Indian workers without a permit who had to work 6 days a week for a very low wage paid in cash, and had to sleep in the restaurant itself, with one person even staying in a cramped storage cupboard. […] Read More

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The rise of super-apps and the erasure of friction?

A few years ago i had a talented student who did an internship for Amsterdam municipality, researching the rise of super-apps and their potentials for the city. At that time I had to admit that I hadn’t heard of the term super-apps. Right now it’s everywhere except ‘here’ (in my case the Netherlands). At least, if you have to believe Rest of World, reporting on a new platform named Careem that is popular on the Gulf States. Unlike Western markets, where Google, Apple, and Meta maintain separate app ecosystems with strict integration limits, in countries like the United Arab Emirates […] Read More

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GenAI video slop fueling urban fears

404 Media report on a phenomenon that appears to be on the rise: the use of GenAI videos on a variety of platforms about highly politicized situations in cities for political purposes. In this case, video materials were spread on TikTok using Google’s VEO AI video generator. This videos are suggesting that in Washington DC the issue of homeless people is running out of control, coinciding with recent Trump rants and his longer running agenda to accuse large (and mostly DEM voting) cities of gross mismanagement. AI generated representations of urban decline and lawlessness thus are mobilized for a ‘politics […] Read More

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Questioning the use of camera drones during protests in Utrecht

The Dutch city of Utrecht has used camera drones during demonstrations seven times out of 522 total in 2024, according to tech news website Tweakers. This is part of wider developments of using surveillance tech in urban contexts. Questions about privacy, facial recognition and face culture, the right to anonymity and political freedom are obvious, as are questions about potential bias in who may differ hands from these technologies. Not addressed in the article ( in Dutch) is the provenance of these drones. Dutch police are often using Chinese made drones from DJI, raising further issues around data souvereignty and […] Read More

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California ban on algorithmic rental pricing

(This one was in Drafts for a while) The Markup reports on a state ban on algorithmic pricing of rental homes. Easy to view this from a classical Marxist perspective as a question of ownership of capital. Below is an interesting observation from the article itself, about how current legislation is driven by the position of owners and how favors the interests of a few rather than the many: The recent ranks of California legislators, however, have included few renters: As of 2019, CalMatters could find only one state lawmaker who did not own a home — and found that more than […] Read More

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Dutch supermarket Jumbo ends AI surveillance

Meanwhile, more uplifting news from the Netherlands. National Dutch newspaper Telegraaf reports that the Netherlands’ 2nd biggest supermarket chain Jumbo terminates their experiment with AI powered in-store surveillance (about which I blogged earlier this year). The experiment started because of high instances of shoplifting, likely driven by the rise of the self-scan checkout taking over from the human cashier. One reason why i find this new interesting is that it can be read as signaling a decrease in the unbridled enthusiasm for all things ‘AI’. Perhaps the tide is turning on the unlimited business promises of AI driven smart technologies? […] Read More

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Algorithmic friendships-as-a-service in the postpandemic city

Allie Volpe for Vox had a very personal piece about using mobile friendship apps for making new friends. She used Bumble for Friends, Timeleft, and Hey! Vina. As has been observed, dating apps have not turned out to fulfill the promises of finding the perfect love “one swipe away”. So how does that work out for finding friendships? On the one hand this seems a slightly less charged activity, since it is less exclusive (having more than one friend being perceived as more common than having more than one romantic partner). But the awkwardness remains big, it appears. At 32, I find […] Read More

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Urban AI making algorithmic sorting part of everyday life

Google Maps is adding ‘AI-powered’ recommendations to its Maps, Earth and Waze products, according to a somewhat older article on Ars Technica. By including its in-house AI Gemini, Google wants to improve the experience and provide more relevant recommendations to the “2 billion people who use Google Maps every month”.  “A lot of those features that we’ve introduced over the years have been thanks to AI,” said Chris Phillips,VP and general manager of Geo at Google. “Think of features like Lens and maps. When you’re on a street corner, you can lift up your phone and look, and through your […] Read More

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Human labor mobilized in hybrid space

Human labor has been unwittingly harvested and exploited for some time in online spaces. Think training AI models through solving Captchas or on massive amounts of creative works. There has been relatively little attention to the same logic in hybrid urban/digital spaces and situations. 404 Media reports that Pokémon Go players have been contributing data to train a so-called AI “Large Geospatial Model”. This model should serve automated systems to navigate the real world and power movement of robots. Niantic explains that a Large Geospatial Model, or LGM, aims to do the same for the physical world, a technology it […] Read More

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Dutch holiday parks illegally used facial recognition

Via NOS The Netherlands Data Protection Authority (DPA, or Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, AP) have looked into the illegitimate use of facial recognition technologies by Dutch holiday parks. Eight out of the eight parks investigated have indeed used such technology to allow or deny individuals access to park swimming pools or playgrounds. The use of facial recognition technologies in the Netherlands is strictly regulated. In the cases of these holiday parks, there was a clear breech of those rules. Seven out of these eight have by now changed their ways, one still hasn’t by the time of the AP press release. Yet […] Read More

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How social media spread misinformation among city migrants

The Markup together with The Guardian features an interesting story about how TikTok helps to spread misleading narratives to Senegalese migrants about how to live a new life in New York City. Documented spoke with five Senegalese men who migrated to New York City in the past year who said that TikTok played a significant role in their decision to make the arduous journey to the U.S. Like thousands of other migrants who have made their way to the U.S. from China, Latin America and West Africa, these five men were inspired by testimonials from other migrants they saw on TikTok about […] Read More

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Yet another TikTok queue in Amsterdam

AT5 and other news outlets report on yet another queue somewhere in the city, spurred by Dutch TikTok influencer Monica Geuze. A fried rice sandwich for a meagre €9,50 makes kids wait en masse. I am interested in how the algorithmic (and AI?) driven recommendations of social media platforms shape people’s physical mobility and consumption patterns. A second interesting theme is the role of social influencers and fan cultures. No doubt these kids will turn their visits into mediated micro-stories about their experiences as well. Thirdly, with prices like these – especially high for secondary school kids – these TikTok […] Read More

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US schools uses AI to catch kids vaping in toilet

Futurism reports on the use of proprietary commercial AI facial recognition and air detection technologies inside schools for surveillance purposes: As the Denver Post reports, the Cheyenne Mountain School District in Colorado Springs already boasts a network of 400 AI-powered facial recognition cameras scattered throughout its school buildings. The school district argues they ensure school safety and facilitate responses to emergency situations. Critics, however, argue that spending district money to put kids under sci-fi-esque surveillance comes with a slew of practical and ethical concerns. According to the report, the company behind the facial recognition cameras has also installed smart air sensors, designed […] Read More

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Smart glasses: the end of street anonymity?

Two students have experimented with combining Meta smart glasses and facial recognition technology, allowing them to look up personal details of strangers on the streets. Both 404 Media and Ars Technica report the story. Two Harvard students recently revealed that it’s possible to combine Meta smart glasses with face image search technology to “reveal anyone’s personal details,” including their name, address, and phone number, “just from looking at them.” In a Google document, AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio explained how they linked a pair of Meta Ray Bans 2 to an invasive face search engine called PimEyes to help identify strangers by cross-searching their information […] Read More

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Why clean slate Techno-Cities are doomed

Another older piece that was waiting to be read… Kaitlyn Tiffany in The Atlantic wrote a beautiful article about Silicon Valley utopian new cities for likeminded tech-elites. In her thoughtful reporting and musings, she weaves together several strands: One quote from someone in the article rebuking critique of these developments, which IMO exposes the whataboutism logical fallacy so often used: “I find it interesting that critics of the project seem to have no problem living in a city where homeless people are allowed to die on their doorsteps, in a country that murders people at home and abroad every day.” Link […] Read More

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Data and algorithms used for housing prices collusion

A somewhat older news item. Politico and Ars Technica/Wired are among the outlets reporting about the RealPage price collusion case on the housing market. The heart of the matter is that this company is accused of allowing landlords to fix rental prices, using its software: The Justice Department is gearing up to challenge what it says is collusive conduct in the rental housing market with a lawsuit against a software company that it believes allows large landlords to fix prices. (Quote from Politico) The underlying issue already to be that the company’s software platform has become very good at aggregating […] Read More

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Please stop technologists from city-making

A strange rambling interview with technology futurist Vinay Gupta in Vice from some time ago. Some quotes send shivers down my spine… What I wanted was control of a substantial piece of planetary infrastructure. And then I wanted to tax people for access to that infrastructure […] I wanted it to generate enough wealth that I could go and privately finance climate mitigation work. Individual control of privately owned global infrastructure? Private ‘solutions’ for collective issues like climate change? No thank you. …when it comes to hundreds of millions of people needing housing, you just can’t get there in a […] Read More