Data Propaganda

Normally we wouldn’t share a TED talk, but this is so good. Carole Cadwalladr – Facebook’s role in Brexit and the threat to democracy

Who thought sharing sensitive data about sexual orientation could be an issue? Grindr’s Chinese owner forced to sell service over US security concerns, says report – The Verge Would one be so out of touch to draw a parallel line to the Breed Ready Rewards Status? An exposed database tracked whether 1.8 million Chinese women […]

I recall reading this some time ago: Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) claims that algorithms, which are driven by math, are racist pic.twitter.com/X2veVvAU1H— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) January 22, 2019 People took pains to educate him, to no avail. Though it spurred an interesting conversation from scholars But I didn’t expect this: Stanford just launched their […]

The book “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” by Shoshana Zuboff is out. Don’t miss it.

The Logic magazine (logicmag.io) turns two, with their unique take on tech. They’re celebrating two years at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco on March 5th, 2019, with a great roaster of speakers: Alexis Madrigal (The Atlantic) Julie Carrie Wong (The Guardian) Megan Rose Dickey (Tech Crunch) Fred Turner (Stanford) Logic turns two

In 2014, the company set out to learn whether it could make its users sad and angry on purpose. It learned it could. When this astonishing breach of user trust became public, the company claimed it wasn’t a big deal, that many companies did similar things. It was, and they don’t. An Anti-Facebook Manifesto, by […]

Voter suppression through social media… ugh. The most popular account, @blackstagram__, had 303,663 followers, generated over 28 million total interactions, and targeted the black community. As of 2017, the account regularly received upwards of 10,000 likes on its posts How Instagram Became the Russian IRA’s Go-To Social – Paris Martineau, Wired

It’s quite difficult to understand what is happening in France, but it does seem to fueled by fake information on Facebook: Les gilets jaunes pollués par une myriade de fausses informations – France Inter (link in French) This movement is quite strange, for the reasons behind are not quite clear. It seems as if a […]

We are unprepared for the things to come. I’m curious why we haven’t seen more deepfakes lately… As governments become increasingly aware of the problem, they each pursue responses tailored to the tactics of the last specific battle that manifested in their own digital territory; in the United States, for example, we remain focused on […]

Interesting read for the holiday season: “The End of Trust”, a special issue of McSweeneys. You can read the whole thing here, and can buy a hard copy there. occasionally principles are more valuable than people – Jenny Holzer