#709: Shadow stand-ins and survey speedrunners
PLUS: amoral self-enrichment or anti-capitalism?
Friends, a confession: It’s 11:11 on Saturday morning. The temperature is a pristine 78 degrees. I have just finished the Greek frappe I made myself for breakfast, and Jason is — with much grumbling and swearing — attaching the bike rack to our ancient Camry. This is not a morning for sitting on computers. It’s not even a morning for sitting on phones. So I’m gonna end this here and wish *you* a gorgeous weekend. Read these links later!!
If you read anything this weekend
“We’re in a New Era of Survey Science,” by Teresa Carr for Slate. Here’s one consequence of the fall of landlines I never would have guessed: Since nobody answers unknown numbers anymore, public polling has gotten far less accurate. Instead of the traditional phone surveys of yore, media companies, campaigns and other pollsters now commonly commission opt-in online polls, which are plagued by liars, speedrunners, careless gig workers and miscellaneous trolls. Personally, I will never look at a poll result quite the same way again. (And not only because Carr referenced something I wrote in 2017 as an example of bad survey journalism!!)
“The Rise of ‘Shadow Stand-Ins,’” by Rob Price for Insider. The increase can’t be quantified, for obvious reasons, but the number of Western white-collar workers who outsource their jobs abroad has purportedly surged since the pandemic. Whether that “job support” constitutes guerilla anticapitalism or amoral self-enrichment depends, it would seem, on your general views toward work/other people. (Keep that conflict in your head — we’ll revisit in a minute!) Said one American programmer outsourcing *three jobs* to *three different* Filipino contractors and netting the (considerable?) excess: “For-profit corporations are government-sanctioned psychopaths, existing only to predatorily and parasitically earn profit.” Yeah … about that!
“She Defrauded Apps Like Uber and Instacart of Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars. Meet Priscila, Queen of the Rideshare Mafia,” by Lauren Smiley for Wired. A second scammy, stick-it-to-the-man Rorsach test! This is fun. On one hand: Priscila Barbosa’s empire — which helped undocumented immigrants to the U.S. secure work on rideshare and delivery apps — bridged a well-documented gap in U.S. immigration policy. On the other hand: She did get pretty rich (designer-bag rich, luxury-car rich) stealing other people’s identities. I am inclined to agree with one of her victims, who pronounced it “sad” that such a crime should exist at all. And yet … I also wouldn’t go so far as some of Barbosa’s supporters, who describe her as the “Robin Hood” of a righteous “rideshare mafia.”
“No Room for Privacy: How Airbnb Fails to Protect Guests from Hidden Cameras,” by Isabelle Chapman for CNN. If the excessive fees and ludicrous chore lists haven’t soured short-term rentals for you, then this investigation might be the one that converts you to hotels for good. According to recent court testimony from an Airbnb employee, the company has generated 35,000 customer support tickets related to surveillance since 2013. Sure, some of them could be duplicates. Some of them could spring from “broken doorbells” (??), as the company lamely claims. But many of them absolutely relate to creeps with hidden cameras — and Airbnb’s documented, systemic failure to disclose such issues publicly or refer them to police.
“Do Navigation Apps Think We’re Stupid?,” by Ian Bogost for The Atlantic. A really interesting account of all the ways Google and Apple Maps are evolving to see the world a bit more like humans do — by saying “turn left after the light,” for instance, instead of evoking abstract, doubt-inducing yardages.
In case you missed it
The most-clicked link from the last edition was this brief Q&A with the author Gabriel Smith. (Again, surprises abound in my Substack analytics!)
On Wednesday, I interviewed the journalist and novelist Stephen Harrison about Wikipedia, which he has been covering for six+ years now.
Postscripts
A unified theory of internet slop and the coconut tree meme. Threads is still pretender to Twitter’s throne. Dating has never really been “easy.” How restaurants price their wine menus. How AI crept into TV. This $150,000 dog looks an awful lot like the good boy I rescued for free.
Why Trump dominates social media. What a TikTok ban would mean for hip-hop. Gen Z’s favorite camera. RIP Redbox. The woman behind a million “West Village girls.” The man behind the AI gaffes at two big media orgs. The 100 “best” books of the 20th century. The nine types of competitive online daters. Last but not least: For women in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, “the internet is our last hope.”
BELOW the paywall you’ll also find:
Unlocked links from the The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Atlantic
The backstory on my bad survey journalism
That’s it for this week! Until the next one. Warmest virtual regards,
Caitlin
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