The Dangers of Tech that Tracks Everything We Do w/ Shoshana Wodinsky

Episode Summary

Executive Summary: Paris Marks and privacy reporter Shoshana Wodinsky examine how post-Roe abortion surveillance is enabled by the broader data-broker economy: apps, phones, retailers, ad networks, and location tracking can all expose people seeking reproductive care. The conversation argues individual fixes are inadequate; only systemic regulation and transparency can meaningfully constrain this surveillance ecosystem.

Main Topics: Abortion surveillance after Roe v. Wade (Priority: 5/5): The episode centers on how the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe intensified concerns about pregnancy apps, location data, and digital traces being used to identify people seeking abortions. Data brokers and the collapse of privacy boundaries (Priority: 5/5): Wodinsky explains that data is gathered from purchases, location pings, apps, and brokers, making deletion or app removal insufficient because information is already widely distributed. The limits of individual privacy actions (Priority: 5/5): The hosts debate whether deleting apps, using cash, or avoiding phones materially helps, concluding these tactics are partial at best and can create a false sense of control. Corporate privacy as PR and market strategy (Priority: 4/5): Apple, Google, and other firms are discussed as using privacy messaging to gain advantage while still building or retaining powerful data and ad businesses behind the scenes. Ad-tech monopolies and the economics of surveillance (Priority: 4/5): The discussion links privacy harms to a massive ad-tech market dominated by Meta, Google, and Amazon, where profit incentives drive ever more intrusive data collection. Facebook, moderation, and political extremism (Priority: 4/5): Later in the interview, Wodinsky discusses Facebook Papers findings about weak moderation, conservative pressure, and the platform’s role in spreading climate denial and right-wing content.

Key Arguments: Deleting a pregnancy app is not sufficient protection because data about pregnancy and abortion intent can be inferred from many other sources, including purchases, location data, search behavior, and brokers. Data brokers and law enforcement are increasingly intertwined; cops can buy commercial data without warrants and use it to investigate reproductive care. Privacy advice focused on individuals mirrors climate-change messaging that shifts responsibility away from corporations and regulators and onto consumers. Tech companies present themselves as privacy-friendly while building or preserving their own surveillance and advertising businesses. The ad-tech economy is so large and concentrated that strong privacy regulation may have costs for small businesses and publishers, but the current system still primarily enriches intermediaries and dominant platforms. Facebook’s moderation systems are opaque and inconsistent, and internal bureaucracy makes it slow to address obvious harms such as climate denial or abortion-related misinformation. Democrats and other lawmakers have not used the available time and power to build meaningful protections for abortion data or digital surveillance before and after Roe was overturned.

Data Points: Date Roe v. Wade overturned: June 24, 2022 - Referenced as the day the U.S. Supreme Court officially overturned national abortion rights Roe v. Wade decision year: 1973 - The original Supreme Court ruling that established abortion rights nationally in the United States Facebook Papers document set: about 1,300 documents - Wodinsky says she has read the full set of documents released by Frances Haugen Facebook Papers volume: tens of thousands of pages - Used to emphasize the scale of internal material she reviewed Ad-tech companies in the U.S.: close to 10,000 companies - Used to describe the size and fragmentation of the surveillance advertising ecosystem Market concentration in ad tech: two-thirds of the money controlled by three companies - Meta, Google/Alphabet, and Amazon dominate ad-tech spending Privacy legislation impact on publishers in EU: close to 1,000 newspapers - Small local newspapers reportedly pulled out of the EU after GDPR due to compliance costs Facebook climate-denial content batch: about 20 documents - Referenced as one slice of the Facebook Papers about climate denial moderation failures Panel/industry estimate of ad market size: $400 billion market - Used to describe the scale of ad tech and surveillance advertising Consumer device identifier: MAID - Mobile advertising identifiers can be changed on iOS and Android, though many users do not do so

Pivotal Quotes: "It's like shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic." — Data broker quoted by Shoshana Wodinsky: On whether deleting data meaningfully stops law enforcement or data access "You need to think like a sociopath, because that's how I always report my stories." — Shoshana Wodinsky: Explaining how marketers and brokers infer pregnancy and abortion intent from many tiny data points "The thing is, capitalism's fault." — Paris Marks: Summarizing the structural, rather than individual, causes of pervasive tracking and surveillance

Implications: Listeners are pushed to see abortion privacy as a systemic surveillance problem, not a consumer-choice issue. The episode suggests meaningful protection will require regulation, transparency, and limits on data brokerage, ad tech, and platform power.