Re-Public Weekly: Period Tracking Apps = Government Surveillance
The biggest story for Re-Public this week was probably the overturning of Roe v. Wade and, along with all the other catastrophic consequences, its instant effect on menstruation/period tracking apps.
These apps collect data about you that is not covered by HIPAA, can be sold to third parties, and can likely be used in court against you as evidence that you've had a, now illegal, abortion.
I'll leave a deeper analysis of this dystopian nightmare scenario for another day, but simply note here that we are all in this exact situation whether we're menstruating or not.
As the newly formed PeriodDAO noted:
This isn’t a problem innate to just period tracking apps. This is a problem inherent to the web2 model that lacks real ownership of data.
PeriodDAO is community of period-havers that are building a web3 solution for period tracking and education
If any of your activities that are legal now suddenly become illegal, many of the apps you use will contain evidence that can be used against you.
You may think this is unlikely, but last year many of us would've thought that these period tracking apps being used in court against us was extremely unlikely as well.
Tech companies create a variable amount of friction for government access to data. Some play hardball, some give over immediately, but I doubt any would risk a fine or jail time to keep your data safe. If a company controls your data, we can assume the government has access to it.
How does this relate to Re-Public? I believe this is the first of many confrontations the public will have with the reality that their most personal data can and will be used against them in markets, in courtrooms, and socially. As this happens, more and more people will come looking for exactly the tools that Re-Public is building.
And so with that, let's look at the status of those tools.
Voting
The voting app continues to improve and it takes up a lot of my time. I'm prioritizing it for reasons that I outline in last week's post: We're Going to Fix DAO Governance, Because We Have To.
If you have a small team or organization and you'd like to help pilot the app, please email [email protected].
iOS
I'm now focused on bringing over the bug fixes and upgrades that went out recently in the Android app into the iOS app. On top of that I'll be updating many of the libraries we depend on and this always messes with getting the app to build. Next week I should have a rough estimate of when the update might be available on the App Store.
I've also begun integrating the differential privacy module made by our health data partner, AGORA. They will be forking the Re-Public mobile app to be their standalone branded app, and we're hoping to get that in testers' hands soon.
If you have a feature you'd like me to prioritize or a bug you'd like to report, please let me know in the Re-Public Forum.
Android
No updates since the last release.
Desktop
The desktop app is still on hold while I get the mobile app in better shape. I'm excited to get back to building it though since I believe it will show people that Re-Public is a suite of apps and other software, and not just a mobile app.
See you next week!
Thanks for reading our first weekly update post. I'd love to hear ways I could make it more useful, or things you'd like me to include.
Cover image by Manny Becerra on Unsplash