Digital Ethics
Sarah T. Roberts on Twitter
Just spoke to @npr about what I’m now calling “content moderation-washing”: when platforms make a show of good citizenship by a. making an exceptional new policy b. enforced by the least empowered, most precarious workers that c. is relatively easy to implement.— Sarah T. Roberts (@ubiquity75) October 3, 2020
Vampiri-Calli Sucking Up Your Data on Twitter
I want to create a repository of some of the more relevant threads I've created over the years all in one easier-to-find spot, so here you go. Thread-ception. A thread of threads.For all your privacy, law, tech, and terrible movie needs.— Vampiri-Calli Sucking Up Your Data (@Iwillleavenow) September 27, 2020
Rafiq Copeland on Twitter
Given that Facebook’s Community Standards Enforcement Report (CSER) is considered the industry gold standard, it may seem counterproductive to criticize it. But for outsiders wishing to assess Facebook’s enforcement of its rules the CSER provides little value. (1) https://t.co/4A7CayDcU9— Rafiq Copeland (@RafiqCopeland) September 28, 2020
The long, complicated history of “people analytics”
If you work for Bank of America, or the US Army, you might have used technology developed by Humanyze. The company grew out of research at MIT’s cross-disciplinary Media Lab and describes its products as “science-backed analytics to drive adaptability.” If that sounds vague, it might be deliberate. Among the things Humanyze sells to businesses…
The code I’m still ashamed of
If you write code for a living, there’s a chance that at some point in your career, someone will ask you to code something a little deceitful – if not outright unethical. This happened to me back in the year 2000. And it’s something I’ll never be able to forget. I wrote my first line of code at 6 years old. I’m no prodigy though. I had a lot of help from my dad at the time. But I was hooked. I loved it. By the time I was 15, I was working part-time for my dad’s consulting firm. I built websit
Eight case studies on regulating biometric technology show us a path forward
Amba Kak was in law school in India when the country rolled out the Aadhaar project in 2009. The national biometric ID system, conceived as a comprehensive identity program, sought to collect the fingerprints, iris scans, and photographs of all residents. It wasn’t long, Kak remembers, before stories about its devastating consequences began to spread.…
What’s missing from corporate statements on racial injustice? The real cause of racism.
On August 31, Airbnb launched Project Lighthouse, an initiative meant to “uncover, measure, and overcome discrimination” on the home-sharing platform. According to the company, Project Lighthouse will identify discrimination by measuring whether a renter’s perceived race correlates with differences in the rate or quality of that person’s bookings, cancellations, or reviews. This project comes amid…
