Would You Trade Your Privacy for a Cookie? Plus More #Mustreads.

Good morning!

Here’s some good stuff from around the Web, brought to you by Re/code:

1. ProPublica and Mashable co-published a story (weird to type that, but it’s 2014 and this stuff happens now) about an artist who got a bunch of Brooklyn arts festival attendees to swap personal information in exchange for cookies. Think about that the next time you wait for Americans to get outraged over Web privacy violations.
2. Here is how a poorly constructed sentence made a Politico magazine article seem to suggest that Obama would have to be assassinated in order for the Secret Service to get its act together. Via the Washington Post.
3. Financial news site MarketWatch says it will no longer publish photos from the New York Stock Exchange trading floor. Why? The exchange’s “Big Board is now little more than a Big Tent for a phony media circus of photo-ops and cable-news talking heads.” The article’s worth reading in full, because it goes into greater detail about how little trading actually happens on the floor — and how the constant footage of the floor distorts the reality of what’s going on.
4. The federal government has filed charges against the makers of the spyware app Stealth Genie, which allows users to spy on others undetected, giving them access to text messages, recorded phone calls and more. What’s significant about the case is that this is the rare situation in which a commercial developer is being held liable instead of individual criminal users, like stalkers or domestic abusers. If the case ends in a conviction, it’ll be interesting to see if similar liability issues arise for other tech companies with abusive-user issues, say Reddit or 4chan. Wired has more.
5. Salon political writer Jim Newell tweeted out a link to the single worst and funniest political ad of 2014 (so far!). It’s a parody of the wedding-focused TLC reality show “Say Yes to the Dress” called “Say Yes to the Candidate,” in support of Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott. The video makes terrible jokes, the acting is off and the whole format is just so wildly stupid. It’s amazing.

If you see any stories you’d like to send our way (or have any questions/comments about stories we’ve recommended), feel free to shoot an email to noah@recode.net.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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