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The Problem With Your Chatty Apps.


One day in 2015, Dan Hon put his toddler, Calvin, on the scale. He was two and a half years old, and he clocked in at 29.2 pounds—up 1.9 pounds from the week before, and smack in the middle of the normal range for his age. Hon didn’t think twice about it.

Adapted from Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech. Copyright © 2017 Sara Wachter-Boettcher. Reprinted by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

But his scale did. Later that week, Hon received Calvin’s “Weekly Report” from Withings, the company that makes his “smart scale” and accompanying app. It told Calvin not to be discouraged about his weight gain, and to set a goal to “shed those extra pounds.”