https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/s...reappshare

An article worth reading. About all these tech companies have spyware on school computers. They can see what a kid types and flag him if he typed out something “alarming” like a threat. They can see what the assignments are, how kids answer, what they turn in, the IP addresses where the kid uses the software etc.

Honestly surprised that USATODAY allowed that to appear on its website. Granted, it’s just an editorial (was there an opposing to go with it?) and not a “news” article. But still.

Hopefully this tip will help some people out.

If you are on a site and there is an article you want to read that is behind a paywall or for subscribers only, copy and paste the title of the article into a search engine and most times you’ll find a free link provided by the publisher themselves.

The article I posted above about school spying was one I ran across on USA Today but was only for subscribers. But these publishers put out links to the free version so they can get into peoples feeds, to work the algorithms to drive traffic to their sites etc. This article came up in the MSN news site for free. I have no doubt MSN pays them something for content in order to drive traffic and clicks to MSN, so they’re all just playing the same games understand.

My other tip, if you get 5 or 10 article a month for free from a given site and you run out, go to a different device like your phone, tablet or laptop and you’ll get another 5 or 10 there. Even it’s on the same Wi-Fi, they usually only care about which device it’s on.

Sorry I’m a bit off topic, but I think this forum has a lot of news and information hounds, so thought these might help some folks out.

(08-24-2022 05:14 PM)Native Georgian Wrote:  Honestly surprised that USATODAY allowed that to appear on its website. Granted, it’s just an editorial (was there an opposing to go with it?) and not a “news” article. But still.

I used to really scoff at USA Today in my younger years. But they have maintained a little more of a balanced approach than almost any other publisher. No matter how their “slant” may be perceived, they haven’t gone 1000% hard left or right. It might seem like it at times to some people, but keep reading and you’ll quickly find articles proving otherwise.

I think everyone scoffed at USAT for its 4th-grade prose and goofy/irrelevant graphs and surveys. Although it was actually valuable for sports coverage in the pre-online era.

I agree it was more politically balanced in the 80s/90s than the traditional Bigfoot newspapers like NYT, WaPo, etc. But over time, they slowly oozed into the same pro-Left/anti-Right posture as (almost) all the others. If they have stepped back from that in the past few years, I admit I’m surprised.

(08-24-2022 05:53 PM)Native Georgian Wrote:  I think everyone scoffed at USAT for its 4th-grade prose and goofy/irrelevant graphs and surveys. Although it was actually valuable for sports coverage in the pre-online era.

I agree it was more politically balanced in the 80s/90s than the traditional Bigfoot newspapers like NYT, WaPo, etc. But over time, they slowly oozed into the same pro-Left/anti-Right posture as (almost) all the others. If they have stepped back from that in the past few years, I admit I’m surprised.

It's quite simple. USA Today is a Gannett organization. They all lean left. They may have tried to rebrand and change that name but it is still the same organization.

As far as spying on the kids...... There were some people that did some digging and found that during covid, groups in bed with the streaming two way set-ups similar to Zoom were data harvesting not only about the students but about their families.