Inside Facebook’s Data Wars
Time and again, when peering inside Facebook’s communications and decisions, at the highest levels, they reveal a serious paucity of authenticity and a preoccupation with window dressing. The main driver appears to be how they are perceived by the outside world (please see the plethora of charm offensive adverts near you), rather than actually correcting for issues in a substantive way.
It also seems that they, like Google, soon see off executives with diverse views that challenge these internal narratives. Both highlight a cultural issue right at the top of the organisation.
Racist Abuse of Black Footballers Reignites Debate Over Social Media Policing
Yet again, we see the whack-a-mole approach to content moderation. It appears that those who want to circumvent moderation are now utilising emojis, which the current systems cannot yet detect.
Content moderation is indubitably difficult work, yet we have top notch talent dedicated to innovating a plethora of new spectacular start-ups. Surely if the incentives where equally attractive, some of this ingenuity could be applied to solving (and pre-empting) abuse?
Twitter Seeing More Government Requests to Remove Journalists’ Content: Report
It’s at once encouraging that Twitter is amassing and sharing this data, and simultaneously discouraging to see the growing intervention from certain governments:
“Overall, Twitter said it received 38,524 legal demands to take down content. “Although there was a 9% decrease in the number of legal demands received, these requests sought removal of the largest number of accounts ever in a reporting period since releasing our first transparency report in 2012,” the report noted, saying that it removed some or all of the reported content in 29 percent of the cases.” The countries that had the highest number of requests to take down content included India (128 requests), Turkey (108 requests), Pakistan (52 requests) and Russia (28 requests).”
Game Over: Chinese Company Deploys Facial Recognition to Limit Youths’ Play
This article is certainly eye-opening in terms of government micro-management…where does the line get drawn? Is this parents’ best intervention or worst nightmare:
“In the case of video games, the government has long blamed them for causing nearsightedness, sleep deprivation and low academic performance among young people. The 2019 regulations also limited how much time and money underage users could spend playing video games.”
China’s ubiquitous use of facial recognition (even for minors) utilising the accompanying ‘nudge’ carrot of convenience, is also worrisome for some of the reasons outlined in this article, as well as others well-researched in the West.
How New Biden Rules Could Make It Easier To Buy Hearing Aids Or Fix Your Phone
Not only are tech companies facing legal and regulatory pressures, but increasingly they are subject to a host of ‘soft’ regulations. These could, over time, impact their business models and profitability.
With this executive order, Biden is unwinding some of the locks that tech companies have had on exclusive rights affecting users, ones that have been a source of repeated complaints: “His executive order on competition contains directives for a dozen government agencies to take 72 measures — some big, some small — to shake up key markets for consumers, workers, farmers and small businesses”