A new tool to tell you what websites do while you visit them
The Markup's Blacklight can be a step towards better media literacy.
Ever wonder what exactly is being tracked when you visit a website? There are plenty of tools and extensions that keep tabs on what websites do when you visit them; I use Ghostery, for example, to tell me what a website is doing under the hood.
For instance, here’s what’s happening when I visit this Washington Post article about how the Department of Justice will brief state attorneys general on its coming Google antitrust case.
Today, The Markup, a new(ish) media site, introduced its Blacklight tool that
emulates how a user might be surveilled while browsing the web. Users type a URL into Blacklight, and it visits the requested website, scans for known types of privacy violations, and returns an instant privacy analysis of the inspected site.
Blacklight works by visiting each website with a headless browser, running custom software built by The Markup. This software monitors which scripts on that website are potentially surveilling the user by performing seven different tests, each investigating a specific, known method of surveillance.
It’s a nifty piece of technology. Give it a spin.
I was curious to see what’s going on at two trade media publications whose marketer-audience is the very audience that uses tracking tools to create and sell ads, and found that both Ad Age and Adweek run a lot of trackers, drop a lot of cookies, gives info to Facebook and Google, and in Ad Age’s case, could be monitoring user keystrokes and mouse clicks.
Media companies make their money through ads, and today’s marketer relies on ad tech to get their message out. It’s a complicated environment, but it’s one that ultimately serves the business of media and not the reader.
We’ve talked about the compromises media companies make in order to generate revenue, whether it’s giving circulation departments control of the homepage early on in their transition to digital or it’s all the ad tech pipes that flow in and out of media sites. Publishers and marketers both are guilty of not taking off their industry hat and putting on their normal people hats when making decisions.
But with more tools like Blacklight getting into the hands of the public, I hope/think that decisions will tilt towards providing a smart user experience without bending the knee to questionable marketing or surveillance tactics.
What I like about this tool is that it’s another piece of technology that we can use to understand how the internet works, and from that, how we can be more media literate.
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Ting Tings, “Blacklight”
Some interesting links:
For platforms:
Former YouTube content moderator describes horrors of the job in new lawsuit (CNBC)
TikTok’s Zero Hour: Haggling with Trump, doubts with China, and a deal in limbo (WSJ)
‘We have seen increasing demand’: Facebook video powers a user-generated content surge (Digiday)
Here's why Walmart wants a stake in the TikTok deal (WaPo)
For publishers:
L.A. Times shaken by a summer of turmoil and scandals (LA Times)
For media criticism:
Americans agree the news media is under attack; they diverge on whether it’s justified (Knight Foundation)
For the tech-curious: