Digital Ethics

The buck should stop with the PM, but he won’t be held to account. With summer just around the corner, this week’s $1.2 billion settlement of the Robodebt class action has shone a light on government failings. Scott Morrison and … Continue reading →

WhatsApp sparked user outrage due to changes in its privacy policy as it relates to Facebook. What became very clear very quickly is that, while everyone agreed on being outraged, there was a bit of fuzziness on what they agreed to be outraged about.

When we say that "an algorithm is biased" we usually mean, "biased people made an algorithm." This explains why so much machine learning prediction turns into phrenology.1/ pic.twitter.com/kiXzqIdRbI— Cory Doctorow #BLM (@doctorow) January 15, 2021

Nearly 1.6 million Illinois Facebook users will get about $350 each in a landmark privacy settlement, pending final approval from a California federal judge.

Maybe you've seen this Nuremberg Trials analogy making the rounds. It's an important point: we should hold violent extremists responsible, even if those extremists call it "divisive."/thread https://t.co/SudjygpeN9— Joseph Peterson (@josephwpeterson) January 14, 2021

So many issuing swirling around relating to the net and free speech. Parler struggling after Amazon and Apple acted, President Trump off facebook and twitter. Got stuck into all of this with @jeffjarvis. Thought-provoking stuff. @https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55615214 pic.twitter.com/1aVIq3KyGm— Ros Atkins (@BBCRosAtkins) January 12, 2021

Can’t remember passwords? Well this guy holds your beer...”Programmer has two guesses left to access £175m bitcoin wallet” https://t.co/C46hC1gbQL— Hans Kullin (@kullin) January 12, 2021

The Citizen Browser project seeks to illuminate the content Facebook elevates in its users’ feeds

The game, a phenomenon a decade ago, shut down on New Year’s Eve. But its legacy — for better and for worse — carries beyond gaming.

Unless we make sure the web is a safe place for women and girls, technology will be one more channel for women to be attacked, suppressed, and marginalised.

What the world can learn from Wales, the first place where sustainability is the organising principle of government, as well as what Wales is learning from the world about sustainability.

Like most lawyers, I’m on Twitter a lot and, like most lawyers, I spend most of my time tweeting in an effort to seem funny. (To say the…

The past year has brought remarkable changes in the way we live our everyday lives. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, most governments have placed restrictions in order to curb the spread of the virus, forcing billions of people to spend more time online, and less time outside. The pandemic has accelerated many trends in […]

A growing group of lawyers are uncovering, navigating, and fighting the automated systems that deny the poor from housing, jobs, and basic services.

Alphabet Inc's Google this year moved to tighten control over its scientists' papers by launching a "sensitive topics" review, and in at least three cases requested authors refrain from casting its technology in a negative light, according to internal communications and...

As the world grows increasingly complex, the limitations of user-centered design are beginning to emerge

“According to a detailed database of car crashes that Volvo has been keeping since the 1970s, who gets hurt in car crashes is changing [more pedestrians, people on bikes & kids in strollers] —and it’s forcing the company to rethink what car safety means.” https://t.co/S87XoB7OoP— Brent Toderian (@BrentToderian) December 21, 2020

The unintended consequences of user-centered design

The worship of data tries to eliminate friction: an ideology of the lesser resistance. However, friction is the key to dismantle this new wave of postivism.

How can we build machines that act rational, if the human, computing the machine, is boundedly rational?#Foucault pic.twitter.com/iXq9y8MVBm— Ajla Nesimovic🧑🏼‍🎄 (@EilerNemo) November 4, 2020

Harvard experts examine the promise and potential pitfalls as AI takes a bigger decision-making role in more industries.

platformabuse.org is a knowledge source of technological harms and mitigations to guide safer product development.

If you've upgraded your iPhone to iOS 14 already, you may have noticed a little green dot at the top of your screen when using certain apps. It's a new

Laurence Berland and Kathryn Spiers were fired in the wake of employee organizing efforts. Now, the NLRB says the terminations violated labor law.

Transformative and procedural justice are the foundation of Christine Su's vision for a safer site.

If the only answer to abusive people is successfully persuading them not to be abusive...Then the abuse becomes everyone else’s fault, for not catering to the abuser sufficiently enough to persuade him.Which is exactly the way an abusive person wants you to think.So, don’t.— A.R. Moxon (@JuliusGoat) December 5, 2020

The Shitty Tech Adoption Curve describes the process by which oppressive technology is normalized and distributed through all levels of society. The more privilege someone has, the harder it is to coerce them to use dehumanizing tech, so it starts with marginalized people.1/ pic.twitter.com/9saW0H95OI— Cory Doctorow #BLM (@doctorow) November 25, 2020

The issue of machine learning systems perpetuating bias, not reducing it, remains as alive as ever.