16 Matching Annotations
  1. Apr 2022
  2. Oct 2020
    1. People come to Google looking for information they can trust, and that information often comes from the reporting of journalists and news organizations around the world.

      Heavy hit in light of the Facebook data scandal this week on top of accusations about fake news spreading.

    2. We’re now in the early stages of testing a “Propensity to Subscribe” signal based on machine learning models in DoubleClick to make it easier for publishers to recognize potential subscribers, and to present them the right offer at the right time.

      Interestingly the technology here isn't that different than the Facebook Data that Cambridge Analytica was using, the difference is that they're not using it to directly impact politics, but to drive sales. Does this mean they're more "ethical"?

  3. Oct 2019
  4. Jul 2019
    1. “Urgent action must be taken by the UK’s governments to ensure that the tools used to regulate political campaigning online continue to be fit for purpose in a digital age,” said Sir John Holmes, chair of the Electoral Commission.
    1. According to Shoshana Zuboff, professor emerita at Harvard Business School, the Cambridge Analytica scandal was a landmark moment, because it revealed a micro version “of the larger phenomenon that is surveillance capitalism”. Zuboff is responsible for formulating the concept of surveillance capitalism, and published a magisterial, indispensible book with that title soon after the scandal broke. In the book, Zuboff creates a framework and a language for understanding this new world. She believes The Great Hack is an important landmark in terms of public understanding, and that Noujaim and Amer capture “what living under the conditions of surveillance capitalism means. That every action is being repurposed as raw material for behavioural data. And that these data are being lifted from our lives in ways that are systematically engineered to be invisible. And therefore we can never resist.”

      Shoshana Zuboff's comments on The Great Hack.

  5. Jul 2018
    1. Cambridge Analytica are like stage mentalists: they’re doing something labor-intensive and pretending that it’s something supernatural. A stage mentalist will train for years to learn to quickly memorize a deck of cards and then claim that they can name your card thanks to their psychic powers. You never see the unglamorous, unimpressive memorization practice

      The comparison between Cambridge Analytica (and big data in general) with the stage mentalist is intriguing. I am left wondering about the disappointment and disbelief in the truth. Sometimes there is a part of us that oddly wants to be mesmerised and to believe.

    2. Facebook doesn’t have a mind-control problem, it has a corruption problem. Cambridge Analytica didn’t convince decent people to become racists; they convinced racists to become voters.
    3. Cambridge Analytica are like stage mentalists: they’re doing something labor-intensive and pretending that it’s something supernatural. A stage mentalist will train for years to learn to quickly memorize a deck of cards and then claim that they can name your card thanks to their psychic powers. You never see the unglamorous, unimpressive memorization practice.
  6. Apr 2018