Welcome back to Lately, The Globe’s weekly tech newsletter. If you have feedback or just want to say hello to a real-life human, send me an e-mail.
In this week’s issue:
👀 Why your boss could be spying on you
🛒 In grocery stores and on social media, Canadians express fury at tariffs
✉️ Is Apple Invites the new Facebook events?
🧘🏻 New Netflix series dives deep into pseudoscience wellness influencers
SURVEILLANCE
Your boss could be watching you
The idea of a boss monitoring their employees is not new. But now some workplaces are introducing motion-tracking devices that monitor where office workers spend their time, and even who they spend it with. Messages on services like Slack and e-mail can be read at great scale by AI to track employee sentiment to warn managers of potential employee dissatisfaction or union efforts. For remote workers, it’s not just the “online” green dot signalling you’re active on Slack. Some employers install keystroke loggers and cameras to track eye movement.
On this week’s episode of Lately, host Vass Bednar speaks with David Murakami Wood, the Canada Research Chair in Critical Surveillance and Security Studies, about this new flurry of surveillance, and whether it actually makes workplaces more efficient or if it simply erodes trust.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Canadian fury over tariffs goes viral
As a trade war with the United States looked imminent, Canadians took to social media rallying their compatriots to buy local. Influencers filmed themselves at grocery stores shopping specifically for Canadian products, opting for the locally-made French’s ketchup instead of Heinz.
A skit from the CBC sketch show This Hour Has 22 Minutes satirizing this patriotism went viral this week, racking up 11 million views on TikTok. The skit portrays a shopper confronting another shopper in the grocery aisle for buying Cheetos instead of Hawkins Cheezies (made in Belleville, Ont.) As the Globe’s TV critic J. Kelly Nestruck writes, 22 Hours has been able to build a younger audience, and renewed its wider relevance thanks to posting short clips on TikTok and other social platforms, which the CBC originally wasn’t keen on. However, it’s now game to capitalize on the show’s virality and will even post episode clips online before they air.
APPS
Apple launches new app Invites
Is Apple Invites the new Facebook Events? Only time will tellSupplied
When I was in university, Facebook Events ruled my social events. Friends made private events for everything from housewarming soirées to Oscar watch parties, and I used it to discover public events – concerts, night food markets, small art openings. It was arguably one of the best parts of Facebook. But as more people left the app, so too did the events. This week Apple launched Invites, where users can create and RSVP to custom invitations, which are integrated with weather updates, shared photos or curated playlists.
You don’t need an Apple account or device to RSVP, but you do need an iCloud+ subscription to create an invitation. And as some have pointed out, Invites is a knock-off of an already popular app called Partiful, and another app Posh, which has been called “TikTok for small events.” Apple’s Invites will be a success if it’s able to reach critical mass and become everyone’s default events app. Otherwise, it’ll just be another app that people feel obligated to check because that one friend still uses it.
What else we’re reading this week:
Elon Musk wants what he can’t have: Wikipedia (The Atlantic)
Inside the bust that took down Pavel Durov—and upended Telegram (Wired)
Can Rayne Fisher-Quann shift from internet princess to bestselling author? (The Walrus)
Soundbite
“Not only are the same kinds of practices that were developed for market research being deployed on workers, but also the kind of information that bosses are collecting about workers is exactly the kind of information that used to be considered private.” – Dr David Murakami Wood, Canada Research Chair in Critical Surveillance and Security Studies on this week’s episode of the Lately podcast.
Adult Money
MOVIES
I'm dreaming of summer backyard movie nights
Nebula Mars 3 outdoor projector, $1,400
It’s the depths of winter and all I can think about is warm summer nights. Specifically, how fun it would be to host movie nights in my backyard. To make this vision become a reality, I’ll need a projector. The Nebula Mars 3 outdoor projector has a 1080p resolution, built-in speakers and a battery life of around two hours on 100 per cent brightness. (This means if you want to watch The Brutalist, you’ll have to dim it to 20 per cent brightness, where it’ll last more than four hours).
Culture radar
MISINFORMATION
Back in 2013, a 23-year-old Australian influencer named Belle Gibson told the world she had been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour and given weeks to live. But when she turned to wholesome foods and natural remedies she survived the fatal diagnosis and skyrocketed to fame. But in 2015, two journalists uncovered that Gibson had lied about the claims: she never had cancer, had historically manipulated those around her and had kept all of the money she’d raised for charity.
Netflix’s new series, Apple Cider Vinegar, is a dramatized retelling of Gibson’s story and a larger deep dive into the world of health influencers who peddle misinformation on social media. As Globe writer Amber Dowling writes in her review, “the show is as much a commentary on our social media consumption and addiction as it is about the dangers of believing everything you see online. Or, at the very least, failing to fact-check the latest buzzy claim.”