So who should we blame?
Facebook,
Twitter Execs Admit Failures, Warn of ‘Overwhelming’ Threat to
Elections
Gizmodo:
“Openly recognizing their companies’ past failures in rare
displays of modesty, Facebook and Twitter executives touted new
efforts to combat state-sponsored propaganda across their platforms
before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, acknowledging
that the task is often “overwhelming” and proving a massive drain
on their resources. Despite frequent and contradictory remarks by
President Donald Trump, America’s top national security officials
have continued
to warn of ongoing foreign influence operations aimed at the 2018
and 2020 U.S. elections. Weeks ago, FBI Director Christopher Wray
said that U.S. officials had been targeted using traditional
tradecraft, and that the bureau had detected criminal efforts to
suppress voting and provide illegal campaign contributions. Among
other tactics employed by foreign rivals, senior officials at FBI,
Homeland Security, and U.S. Cyber Command cited open-ended efforts to
spread disinformation on social media, directly targeting U.S.
voters, as well as ongoing cyberattacks against the nation’s voting
infrastructure. “Our adversaries are trying to undermine our
country on a persistent and regular basis,” said Wray, “whether
it’s election season or not…”
Link to video and statements from the
testimony –
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/hearings/open-hearing-foreign-influence-operations%E2%80%99-use-social-media-platforms
(Related) A search for someone to blame or
something completely different (monopoly)?
Justice
Dept. says social media giants may be ‘intentionally stifling’
free speech
… “The Attorney General has convened a
meeting with a number of state attorneys general this month to
discuss a growing concern that these companies may be hurting
competition and intentionally stifling the free exchange of ideas on
their platforms,” said Justice Department spokesman Devin O’Malley
in an email.
It’s not clear exactly if the Justice Department
is pushing for regulation or actively investigating the platforms for
issues relating to competition — or antitrust.
Interesting article. Looks like disclosure laws
will need to be more specific.
Who
controls your data?
… we waded through all sorts of corporate
responses to our data requests: emails, Excel spreadsheets,
data-download tools. Beyond simply what was given to us, would it be
understandable, even meaningful?
Netflix, for instance, provided full glossaries
for its tables of data in a single PDF.
Spotify, in contrast, provided its data through an
online-download function. Inside, one UK-based reporter received 101
JSON files, and another received 90. While admirably comprehensive,
these are dumps from databases normally read by computers: There's no
way to reasonably make sense of the file names, let alone their
plain-text contents. Spotify Customer Service did not provide full
explanations of the file names, and a spokeswoman said while we could
ask about specific data fields, the
company did not have a glossary for all of its files.
Not the death of Facebook, but an opportunity for
someone else?
Pew –
Americans are changing their relationship with Facebook
“Just over half of Facebook users ages 18 and
older (54%) say they have adjusted their privacy settings in the past
12 months, according to a new
Pew Research Center survey. Around four-in-ten (42%) say they
have taken a break from checking the platform for a period of several
weeks or more, while around a quarter (26%) say they have deleted the
Facebook app from their cellphone. All told, some 74% of Facebook
users say they have taken at least one of these three actions in the
past year. The findings come from a survey of U.S. adults conducted
May 29-June 11, following revelations that the former consulting firm
Cambridge Analytica had collected
data on tens of millions of Facebook users without their
knowledge. Facebook has separately faced scrutiny from conservative
lawmakers and pundits over allegations that it suppresses
conservative voices. The Center found that the vast majority of
Republicans think that social platforms in general censor
political speech they find objectionable. Despite these
concerns, the poll found that nearly identical shares of Democrats
and Republicans (including political independents who lean toward
either party) use Facebook. Republicans are no more likely than
Democrats to have taken a break from Facebook or deleted the app from
their phone in the past year…”
Perspective.
Facebook to
invest $1 billion in first Asian data center in Singapore
Facebook said on Thursday it will invest more than
$1 billion to build its first data center in Asia in Singapore,
slated to open in 2022.
Facebook’s facility will be located in the west
of the island, near where Google is expanding its Singapore data
centers in an $850 million investment as mobile growth, e-commerce
and cloud computing demand rise across the region.
… Facebook said in a statement the 170,000
square meter facility represented an investment of more than S$1.4
billion ($1 billion) and would support hundreds of jobs.
Facebook has a number of data centers in the
United States as well as Ireland and Sweden, and it is building a
facility in Denmark.
Perhaps now they will ask Google to help. No
backups would be unforgivable!
The fire
that destroyed a Brazilian museum containing 20 million artifacts
also eliminated records of entire languages that nobody speaks
anymore
As a massive fire destroyed roughly 20 million
items at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday, many audio
recordings of indigenous languages that are no longer spoken were
lost as well.
… It's
not clear whether any of the material was digitized, but
if it wasn't, it's likely these languages have essentially
disappeared forever.
High comedy? Is this in support of President
Trump, an active Bezos hater?
… The bill—titled
the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (Stop BEZOS)
Act—would impose a tax on companies with 500 or more employees
“equal to the amount of federal benefits received by their low wage
workers.” Essentially, this would force large, profitable firms to
pay into welfare programs the amount they’re currently getting for
free from the federal government.
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