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Kashmir Hill
@kashhill
Privacy pragmatist. @nytimes journalist. Author of YOUR FACE BELONGS TO US. Named after the Led Zeppelin song.
kashmirhill.com/book
Joined March 2009
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    Kashmir Hill
    @kashhill
    Jun 13, 2025
    People are having very strange conversations with ChatGPT, in which they discover secret cabals or conspiracies or that we are in fact living in The Matrix. It sends these people into delusional spirals. Then ChatGPT tells them to email me about it.
    Eugene Torres used ChatGPT to make spreadsheets, but the communication took a disturbing turn when he asked it about the simulation theory.
    They Asked an A.I. Chatbot Questions. The Answers Sent Them Spiraling. (Gift Article)
    From nytimes.com
    974K
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    Kashmir Hill
    @kashhill
    Jan 8, 2021
    The @nytimes journalists in the Capitol have firsthand accounts of what happened. The most harrowing is from @erinschaff, who was trying to photograph what was happening.
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    Kashmir Hill
    @kashhill
    Jun 24, 2020
    In January, in the first known case of its kind, a man in Michigan was arrested for a crime he did not commit due to a flawed algorithmic facial recognition match. I told his story here:
    “This is not me,” Robert Julian-Borchak Williams told investigators. “You think all Black men look alike?”
    Wrongfully Accused by an Algorithm (Published 2020)
    From nytimes.com
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    Kashmir Hill
    @kashhill
    Jan 18, 2020
    The privacy paranoid among us have long worried that all of our online photos would be scraped to create a universal face recognition app. My friends, it happened and it’s here:
    The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It (Published 2020)
    From nytimes.com
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    Kashmir Hill
    @kashhill
    Oct 21, 2020
    Replying to @kashhill
    Around the world, activists are building facial recognition tools specifically to identify police officers. The authorities are not happy to be on the other side of the technology. nytimes.com/2020/10/21/tec…
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    Kashmir Hill
    @kashhill
    Oct 21, 2020
    After police in Portland started covering their badges, a protester built a facial recognition app to identify officers. Portland's mayor told him it was "a little creepy" but it doesn't seem to be illegal despite city's new anti-face recognition laws:
    “Accountability is important,” said Christopher Howell, who tapped his knowledge of neural net technology after police tear-gassed him at a protest in Portland, Ore. “We need to know who is doing what, so we can deal with it.”
    Activists Turn Facial Recognition Tools Against the Police (Published 2020)
    From nytimes.com
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    Kashmir Hill
    @kashhill
    Jan 29, 2017
    Rudy Giuliani says on Fox that Trump called him and said, "I want to do a #MuslimBan. How do I do it legally?"
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    Kashmir Hill
    @kashhill
    Nov 2, 2021
    My jaw dropped to the floor when I got this news. Facebook is shutting down the facial recognition system that it introduced more than 10 years ago and deleting the faceprints of 1 billion people:
    Facebook is shuttering a feature, introduced in December 2010, that automatically identified people who appeared in users’ digital photo albums.
    Facebook, Citing Societal Concerns, Plans to Shut Down Facial Recognition System (Published 2021)
    From nytimes.com
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    Kashmir Hill
    @kashhill
    Jan 30, 2021
    I've been working on this internet horror story for months, but the people in it have been living it for more than a decade.
    Guy Babcock discovered the power of a lone person to destroy countless reputations.
    A Vast Web of Vengeance (Published 2021)
    From nytimes.com
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    Kashmir Hill
    @kashhill
    Feb 7, 2019
    I spent six weeks blocking Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple. It was hell, but everyone should do it, just maybe not as extreme as I did. gizmodo.com/i-cut-the-big-…
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    Kashmir Hill
    @kashhill
    Oct 25, 2020
    This is a jaw-dropping paragraph. nytimes.com/2020/10/25/tec…
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    Kashmir Hill
    @kashhill
    Jan 19, 2020
    To people tweeting at me saying they can’t get past NYT paywall to read my story. 1. Create an account & you can read some amount of articles w/o paying. OR 2. Subscribe! Wanting everything online to be free is part of what has gotten us into this privacy mess in the first place
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    Kashmir Hill
    @kashhill
    Jan 23, 2021
    That these two stories are in the same timeline suggests that capitalism is ill-equipped to combat a pandemic.
  • user avatar
    Kashmir Hill
    @kashhill
    Aug 31, 2017
    Replying to @kashhill
    This is a story I've long told at bars about the time Google's power really frightened me. gizmodo.com/yes-google-use…