June 28, 2022

"Stardust, an astrology-focused menstrual tracking app that launched on the App Store last year... one of Apple’s top three most-downloaded free apps right now... [had] put in writing that it will voluntarily..."

"... without even being legally required to—comply with law enforcement if it’s asked to share user data.... A widely-shared concern is that law enforcement can use personal data created in apps against people who’ve sought or gotten abortions illegally."

That went up at Vice yesterday, but there's an update saying that "Stardust changed its privacy policy to omit the phrase about cooperating with law enforcement 'whether or not legally required.'" 

 You can attempt to comprehend a TikTok from Stardust, which I'll put after the jump. It's pretty complicated — includes the phrase: "We're not an evil corporation...."

Is it paranoid to imagine that the government would aim to keep track of women's menstrual cycles for the purpose of detecting abortions? We're often chided for not caring enough about how much privacy we sacrifice by using apps, and this one is really intrusive, and it's luring in young women who have the gullibility to want to connect their period to astrology. 
@stardust.app 💗🔒💗 #stardustperiodtracker #periodtok #periodtrqcker #periodtrackingdata #roevwade #roevswade #abortionrights ♬ original sound - Stardust Period Tracker

45 comments:

Mr Wibble said...

The government got a warrant for DNA of a third-party from an ancestry website in order to catch a serial killer. I wouldn't put anything past those scumbags.

Steve said...

When I found out that recreational genetics testing companies were complying with warrants from law enforcement, I decided that there were absolutely no limits on police powers.

rhhardin said...

It's more than just the moon. There are planets out there.

WK said...

“Is it paranoid to imagine that the government would aim to keep track of women's menstrual cycles for the purpose of detecting abortions?”
I don’t believe any commitment to privacy and not sharing data will be maintained in the long term. The government is likely gathering data through a variety of methods. But maybe I am paranoid.

Enigma said...

Why has the Ministry of Truth not yet banned all astrology apps as disinformation???????!!!!???? I'm shocked!!!!! I need protection!!!!!

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

Women! Don't ovary act.

Doug said...

Who cares?

Ann Althouse said...

Excellent pun, Bill!

WK said...

“Is it paranoid to imagine that the government would aim to keep track of women's menstrual cycles for the purpose of detecting abortions?”
Or are they being tracked for breeding purposes? Handmaiden’s Tale stuff I keep hearing about.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Point of clarity; the app is not intrusive. The app's users are extrusive

Doug said...

The government got a warrant for DNA of a third-party from an ancestry website in order to catch a serial killer. I wouldn't put anything past those scumbags.

Same here. Those serial killers will stop at nothing.

Temujin said...

You may be assuming they're just interested in women menstruating. In this day and age, we are told that not only women can menstruate. Maybe they just want to track that phenomenon.

Bill, Republic of Texas wins.

Readering said...

By government we mean PRC?

Rabel said...

What an annoying voice. Is she trying for an Elizabeth Holmes effect?

Also, astrology! When Jupiter aligns with Mars you should go fuck yourself Stardust.

What's emanating from your penumbra said...

This is always the problem with identity politics. The government's tracking of its citizens without a warrant is a problem for all of us. But apparently some animals are more equal than others.

Hur dee dur. Let's pass laws intended to protect menstrual privacy (and leave all the other problems with government tracking to be dealt with some other time).

Let's pass laws that make police brutality against [b]lacks extra bad (and leave police brutality against others to be dealt with some other time).

The reason progressives have no problem with this identity strategy is that they have gathered together a base consisting mostly of protected classes and those championing protected classes. In fact, they intend for government to abuse the citizens, as long as it's perpetrated against the right people. This can be shown using Ann's own hack for understanding why politicians do what they do.

Kevin said...

this one is really intrusive

How is it intrusive if you’re voluntarily entering the data?

Is the FBI going to kick in the doors of every teenage girl who forgot to enter data for a couple of months?

kristen said...

I'm astonished at the number of people who sincerely believe the government is competent enough to track millions of womens' menstrual cycles. Y'all have been to the dmv, right? Ever tried to call a govnt department to straighten out a clerical error?

They can't even manage their own essential functions, there's no way they're going to have the bandwidth to track menstrual cycles, much less the expertise to analyze the information and determine whether the info has something to do with an abortion, or you know, maybe just someone forgetting to input their data for a couple of weeks.

n.n said...

The Covax-20/21/22 mutagenic treatments are know to cause menstrual dysfunction in a female cohort.

Blair said...

This is further proof that the Left really do believe their own bs about Republicans wanting to control women. Nothing about this story is based in reality. It's bizarre. Add to that the fact that most anti abortion laws are concerned with prosecuting *doctors*, not their patients. They don't get that this is about protecting human lives, not women.

rhhardin said...

Apparently a lot of people don't understand astrology. It concentrates the mind on details, it doesn't matter what details. That has an effect.

I've seen Vicki Hearne take down psychologists with it. This detail accounts for this, that detail accounts for that, with enough literary overdetermination to beat their counter-theories.

wait here's one (gets USB stick) added Thurber information you need to know: he had been shot in the eye with an arrow as a kid and so had enormous vision problems:

"Thurber's biographers like to say astounding things such as that the loss of an eye in childhood was what accounted for his genius. For instance, according to Charles S. Holmes in _The Clocks of Columbus_, "The psychological impact of the injury was more significant than the physical ... In compensation he cultivated his already crowded fantasy life ... Some of the intense competitiveness which marked his character throughout his life obviously derived from this childhood injury and his natural desire to make up for it." Holmes is not the only one who talks this way, and it is a very strange way indeed to talk. It is not unusual, of course, being just a new version of the theory of the writer as a human being manque. Or, as in this case, the writer as a baseball player manque. I suppose that Thurber's brothers would also have been geniuses if only they had been in some way maimed early on. My suspicion is that if Thurber's eye troubles can be said to account for anything about his life and career, they probably account for the difficulty he had seeing, for his having submitted to five eye operations, and maybe for his habit of writing short pieces, which are less physically (not psychologically) demanding than long pieces are.

"Astrology serves as a much better candidate for the Explanation of Thurber than psychology does. Thurber was born under the sign of Sagittarius, which rules, among other things, archery. The placement of the sun is what rules a man's health, so a man born with any afflictions to the sun in Sagittarius is going to be vulnerable to health problems associated with archery. I don't have an ephemeris handy for December 8, 1894, the date of his birth, but I bet there is either an affliction of the sun to Mercury, the planet of the eyes and of sense perception in general, or else an affliction from his sun to some planet in Gemini, Pisces, or Virgo. An affliction to Virgo, however, is made fairly unlikely by the enormous intellectual and domestic pleasure Thurber got from dogs - Virgo rules animal training. But Gemini rules dogs, so that lets Gemini as a source of affliction out. It was therefore probably an opposition to Mars in Pisces, which would also account for Thurber's excessive dreaminess and his problems with alcohol, as well as the tenderer and more romantic spheres of experience, as Pisces rules love and all other intoxicants. I would also expect to find Uranus, the planet of the inexplicable and especially the planet of misunderstood geniuses, in the constellation Scorpio, which rules erotic thought, since his brilliant visions of the wars and comedies of the sexes are so persistently misunderstood.

"So his life is explained, but his life is not what Thurber left behind for us, and it is too late for me to tell him that the placement of his sun in Sagittarius indicates that he ought to have come to terms with horses ..."

_Animal Happiness_, Vicki Hearne, p.110

Yancey Ward said...

The existence of this app, and people worrying about the government tracking menstrual cycles is just more evidence we live on a Clown Planet.

Tina Trent said...

Oh poor Mr. Wibble. The blue meanies have used the internet to take a beautiful serial killer off the streets.

With the cooperation of the family members who contributed DNA, by the way.

I hope the mothers and fathers of the murdered find you, so you can hear in person what it feels like to be them. If you're capable of empathy, ass that you are.

Mark said...

The problem with disinformation like this is both that people who hear it believe it and some who parrot it also believe it.

Again, the ONLY people who have ever promoted the idea of prosecuting women who have abortions is the pro-abortion crowd. Yes, there have been a couple of hayseed lamebrain politicians who have floated the idea -- there are always a couple of unhelpful nutcases on any issue -- but it is overwhelmingly the pro-abortionists who are pushing the scare tactic.

If anyone had seriously listened to the pro-lifers they would know that there is absolutely zero desire from them to prosecute the women who are exploited victims as well.

madAsHell said...

I don't trust any 3rd party app, and sometimes I wonder about the Apple IOS.

iPhone is not really a telephone. It's a tracking device!!

boatbuilder said...

While I seriously doubt that THIS government has any interest in tracking or prosecuting women who may have had abortions, it is entirely possible that a government, or a government entity, would do so. (CDC?)

Perhaps this could be a wake-up call to women in general about their trust in government in general and the ubiquitous nature of government surveillance? Oh who am I kidding?

madAsHell said...

I viewed the video.

This isn't a parody......is it??

Rob C said...

So how ironic is it to post a Tik Tok about something being a privacy issue?

Michael K said...

When my first wife lived in a sorority house in college, all the girls who lived in that room, by the end of the semester, had synchronized periods. Would have made this app easier.

The Vault Dweller said...

Looks like the Department of Internal Affairs has expanded its portfolio. Even given the increasingly cozy relationship between tech companies and government it is shocking that a tech company like this put out a statement saying they would voluntarily comply with a government request for information. Just as a business decision it seems self-destructive regardless of any moral concerns. I'm guessing it is more likely they wanted to scare women to try and gin up fear and anger and then hopefully later motivation to vote. If the idea of a Federal menstrual cycle index scared some people maybe they will understand the fear of people who worry about a Federal gun owner registry.

Jerry said...

If you believe in astrology to track your cycles, you just might be of the sort to not use contraception.

And you might also believe that the evil gubbmint's gonna try to turn all fertile wimmins into Handmaids. Which in the '80s was women's p0rn on the level of more classical 'bodice rippers' - submission fantasy stuff - who'd have thought it would have turned into a political movement?

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

Its a meme that's been going around lately. I'm not clever enough to come up with something like that on my own.

Shoeless Joe said...

"Is it paranoid to imagine that the government would aim to keep track of women's menstrual cycles for the purpose of detecting abortions? "

It's projection rather than true paranoia. If the shoe were on the other foot (say, tracking legal gun owners) The Left would go to any length to get the information they wanted, privacy be damned. But there's no chance in hell the deep state would do something like this to keep a mother from killing her baby.

Mason G said...

"Is it paranoid to imagine that the government would aim to keep track of women's menstrual cycles for the purpose of detecting abortions?"

Many of those paranoids would be applauding the government in using personal info gathered from apps in tracking people's vaccination status.

Just sayin'.

natatomic said...

I’m extremely pro-life, and I deleted all of my period tracking apps. Not worried about being prosecuted for some fake abortion in the event I have a miscarriage, but I never thought the government would be interested in my menstrual cycle, and I certainly am not going to voluntarily input that information anywhere that the government might have access to it.

A tangentially related comment, I think my husband and I will be reverting back to dumb phones within a year.

JAORE said...

Government will be too busy tracking every gun sale, loan or inheritance to follow the blood trail.

Meade said...

Pick up lines—

Out: “Hi. I’m Steve. What’s your sign?”

In: “Hi. My pronouns are me, myself and I. When’s your period?”

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Next July a Musk rocket collides with Mars... Cole Porter.

WK said...

Maybe tie the cycle tracking app to Tinder. Help avoid an uncomfortable evening.

n.n said...

Venus! Mars! Uranus! Synchronize diverse swatches for a planned parade.

Charlie said...

The government can barely fill a pothole or issue a drivers license. So no.

farmgirl said...

An astrological period tracker is the #1 app in the world??!
Geez. I can’t even…

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Is it paranoid to imagine that the government would aim to keep track of women's menstrual cycles for the purpose of detecting abortions?

Was it paranoid to imagine that the government would put microchips in the Covid shots? If "yes", then the menstrual delusion is also paranoid.

Are there lunatics on the Right? Of course there are

But there's at least 3x as many on the Left, and they get regular support from the press.

KellyM said...

Who thought using astrology for charting even made sense? How does that even work?

I learned to chart my cycles on paper, and used a software program that you had to install on a stand alone computer - no option for a connection to the internet. When I decided to switch to an app for more flexibility, none were as good as that stand alone software, even the subsequent app put out by the same company. I dismissed the whole endeavor and went back to paper.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Let's assume that the fantasy is in fact true.

Now, what happens?

Well, "the government" accuses you of having had an abortion, and then has to show the app data at your preliminary hearing

Then everyone stops using that app.

It's like these nimrods think "the gov't" can throw you in jail without proving anything, even when your'e not accused of parading on J6

SoLastMillennium said...

"madAsHell said...
I don't trust any 3rd party app, and sometimes I wonder about the Apple IOS.

iPhone is not really a telephone. It's a tracking device!!"

Android has entered the room.