Pluralistic: 21 Jun 2022
This Children’s Hospital Network Was Giving Kids’ Information to Facebook – The Markup
When parents scheduled an appointment for their children on the Nemours page, Facebook received that information
Don’t Just “Do Something.” Don’t Make Things Worse.
While some tech tools might indeed be helpful, they should be considered in conjunction with, not as replacement for, regulations that address the role of guns.
What if Algorithms Worked For Accused People, Instead of Against Them? | News & Commentary | American Civil Liberties Union
We created an algorithmic tool to find out what risks the criminal legal system poses to the people entering it, rather than their risk to "public safety."
The Algorithmic Imprint | Upol Ehsan, Ranjit Singh, Jacob Metcalf, Mark Riedl @ FAccT 2022
When an algorithm causes harm, is discontinuing it enough to address its harms?
This paper introduces the concept of the **The Algorithmic Imprint** to show how algorithmic harms can persist long after the algorithm is discontinued. It chronicles the 2020 Ofqual Algorithmic Grading Scandal, not from the UK, but from a Bangladeshi perspective. The concept of the Algorithmic Imprint helps us understand how the algorithm's impact lives on in the algorithm's afterlife much the remnants of palimpsest remain. Critically examining our current conception of algorithmic impact, it expands how we may view algorithmic impact, especially in the algorithm's afterlife (after being discontinued). It also offers practical and actionable guidance on how an imprint-aware mindset can inform algorithmic design.
This is a presentation of the paper "The Algorithmic Imprint" to be presented at the ACM Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT) conference.
Here is a quick tweetorial covering the key points: https://bit.ly/AlgorthmicImprint_Tweetorial
Fair Game — Real Life
Commonly used by researchers and journalists, data scraping is an underacknowledged privacy concern
What Google’s “Sentient” A.I. Is Really Thinking
The language used by AI is the reflection in the mirror.
I’m done with Wyze
Why are we only hearing about a huge security flaw now?
Apple AirTags - 'A perfect tool for stalking'
Apple’s AirTags are great for finding lost items. But they have a darker side.
Gone in 130 seconds: New Tesla hack gives thieves their own personal key
You may want to think twice before giving the parking attendant your Tesla-issued NFC card.
Elon Musk's regulatory woes mount as U.S. moves closer to recalling Tesla's self-driving software
Traffic safety officials escalate and widen probe to 830,000 Tesla cars as they discover patterns suggesting Tesla's Autopilot feature can encourage dangerous driving behavior.
This is Fine: Optimism & Emergency in the P2P Network - A New Design Congress Essay
Centralised power and decentralised communities are on the verge of outright conflict for the control of the digital public space. The resilience of centralised networks and the political organisation of their owners remains significantly underestimated by protocol activists. At the same time, the peer-to-peer community is dangerously unprepared for a crisis-fuelled future that has very suddenly arrived at their door.
Pronouns as Linguistic Care Work | Linguistic Society of America
Leaked Audio From 80 Internal TikTok Meetings Shows That US User Data Has Been Repeatedly Accessed From China
“I feel like with these tools, there’s some backdoor to access user data in almost all of them,” said an external auditor hired to help TikTok close off Chinese access to sensitive information, like Americans’ birthdays and phone numbers.
These Women Say One Man Terrorized Them Online for Years. Then, They Decided to Band Together.
Harassed across the internet for more than a decade, a group of women found each other—and their alleged tormentor.
Can You See Me: because sometimes it's just easier to ask a robot!
Can You See Me is a simple tool that offers guidance on webcam placement to people with limited amounts of useful vision.
Apple and Google are coming for your car
Big Tech’s big car ambitions have antitrust advocates worried.
Google suspends engineer who claims its AI is sentient
‘Is LaMDA sentient?’
Is "acceptably non-dystopian" self-sovereign identity even possible?
In the recent paper about "soulbound" tokens, Vitalik Buterin et al. write that they aim to build technology that is "acceptably non-dystopian". Do any of today's self-sovereign identity projects fit that bill?
She experimented on primates for decades. Now she wants to shut down the labs
Lisa Jones-Engel quit her work as a lab researcher when she began to see how ‘like us’ monkeys are
I refuse to display meta data for other platforms
Nope. Not doing it. Always own your platform.
How Safe Are Systems Like Tesla’s Autopilot? No One Knows.
Automakers and technology companies say they are making driving safer, but verifying these claims is difficult.
Police VR Training: Empathy Machine or Expensive Distraction?
The maker of the Taser believes its new virtual reality firing range and community policing simulator can make cops less violent. Critics are less than sure.
Why Great Things Never Came From Comfort Zones
Why great things never came from comfort zones? Because the world is always changing. We need to face uncertainty to move forward.
Research shows gender disparity in women escooter rentals
Voi releases industry-first research into women and escooter riding. But how do we go from understanding the challenges to making real gains?
"Quite Misleading": DuckDuckGo CEO Responds To Microsoft Tracker Controversy
My goal is to get meaningful privacy protection in the hands of as many people as possible...
Google collects almost 40 data points per user - most out of top tech giants - Atlas VPN
Data analyzed by Atlas VPN reveals that Google collects the most information about its users out of five selected tech giants - Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and Apple.
What the Superhuman Controversy Reveals About the Shifting Ethics of Software
The e-mail startup isn’t the only company learning that a product can be powerful and elegant without being good.
Stefan Plattner on Twitter
🇩🇪 2022(“Dear bathers, if your ticket does not come out of the machine, use the rubber mallet and hit the marked cross.”) https://t.co/uVhkiIsNHl pic.twitter.com/LjiUxz3epv— Stefan Plattner (@splattne) May 29, 2022
Abuse on the blockchain (Lecture transcript)