Open Sourced: exposing and explaining the hidden consequences of tech

Many of us have grown skeptical of tech and the multibillion-dollar companies behind it. We’re still using Google and Facebook and Amazon, but we’ve started to reconsider what we’re signing up for and what we’re giving away when we accept the terms of service for these platforms and use their products. And as this technology gets more and more embedded into our lives, it’s harder and harder to understand the real consequences when we choose between convenience and privacy, or when we consider the differences between the data we willingly share and the data we don’t know we’re giving away.

That’s why Recode by Vox is launching Open Sourced, a multiplatform journalism project supported by the Omidyar Network that will expose and explain the hidden consequences of tech — the good, the bad, and the complicated.

Because most of us don’t really understand either AI or digital privacy, they’re surrounded with hype and fear. Open Sourced is going to change that. The deeply personal nature of data, privacy, and algorithms is often what makes these systems so difficult to understand. One person’s experience can be radically different from another’s.

And that means that to report on them well, we’ll need your help. The Open Sourced Reporting Network is an email community that will keep you up to date with the latest ways you can contribute to our reporting. (We promise to never spam you.) Please subscribe to join us on this Open Sourced journey, as we reveal tech’s hidden consequences together.