Xann Posted March 18, 2018 Author Share Posted March 18, 2018 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chindie Posted March 19, 2018 VT Supporter Share Posted March 19, 2018 The Information Commissioner is due to apply for a warrant to raid Cambridge Analytica. Obviously as they've now been given a heads up, you can imagine any evidence the ICO doesn't have already is currently on fire. Also, Facebook have a presence at their offices right now. Which the ICO isn't happy about. CA is a tangled web and the connections between them and various players in the political upheaval we've seen in the past 2 years could be very interesting. The dangerous side of social media is going to be writ ever larger. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maqroll Posted March 19, 2018 Share Posted March 19, 2018 UK govt seeking a warrant to raid their offices apparently. Outfits like this are a true scourge, I hope they are crushed and exposed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted March 19, 2018 Share Posted March 19, 2018 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maqroll Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 So that guy who lives under the bridge near my house is actually telling the truth about the voices he hears? Individual people getting directly targeted for propaganda is every paranoid's worst nightmare come to life. We are pawns in a chess game played by billionaires. I feel like we're entering into a really dangerous era. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xann Posted March 20, 2018 Author Share Posted March 20, 2018 Quote How to Think for Yourself When Algorithms Control What You Read With the flick of a switch, a handful of tech giants can change the nature and extent of mankind’s ingestion of information. In 2013, Google took a step towards understanding the intent of their users with the Hummingbird algorithm. Twitter replaced most-recent with most-important tweets when they introduced their algorithmic timeline in 2016. Facebook claimed they’ll be replacing clickbait with more meaningful interactions on their feeds earlier this year. These changes are almost always met with public uproar for a few weeks, soon after which humanity acquiesces. The ability for an elite to instantly alter the thoughts and behavior of billions of people is unprecedented. This is all possible because of algorithms. The personalized, curated news, information and learning feeds we consume several times a day have all been through a process of collaborative filtering. This is the principle that if I like X, and you and I are similar in some algorithmically determined sense, then you’ll probably like X too. Everyone gets their own, mass-personalized feed, rationed by the machines. The consequences are serious and wide-ranging. Fake news and misinformation are pervasive. Young kids are being subjected to algorithmically generated, algorithmically optimized pernicious content. Perhaps the least concerning implication is that there is systemic bias in our information feeds, that we operate in and are informed by tiny echo chambers. It’s a grotesque irony that our experiences of the world wide web today are actually pretty local, despite warnings from the likes of Eli Pariser back in 2011. What can be done? While data scientists, policymakers, and ethics boards work on large-scale, long-term fixes, it’s incumbent on us, as individual agents, to ensure that we find out and learn what we really need. Against the technological backdrop described above, it’s more important than ever that the modern knowledge worker makes good business decisions based on good information: factual, unbiased, broad-based. Of course, resistance to algorithms is difficult because we’re up against a sophisticated, secret system. But it’s not futile, yet. Here are five practical steps you can take right now... Harvard Business Review Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supermon Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 So is it feasible that what has happened with facebook, could happen with Whatsapp? Don't Facebook own Whatsapp? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chindie Posted March 20, 2018 VT Supporter Share Posted March 20, 2018 54 minutes ago, supermon said: So is it feasible that what has happened with facebook, could happen with Whatsapp? Don't Facebook own Whatsapp? I don't have, and have never used, WhatsApp, so talking from ignorance perhaps, but I'm not sure that it would be as useful as Facebook has proven. Facebook has basically been mined for information (right down to things you might not even be aware they would even know - they can use details they do have to make decent guesses at other things about you. Even to the extent of things you might not even be conscious of yourself - talk today this extended to using an individuals psychological profile) to then target you. Which means you might start to see, for example, ads or articles that push a certain world view that then might start to influence how you vote. WhatsApp would seem to be more 'useful' for intelligence services to access, in the first instance. Hence why the government is absolutely desperate to have it. I'm not so sure, unless I really am completely ignorant about it and how it works, (which I probably am) it would be as useful for the kind of influence Cambridge Analytica was after. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blandy Posted March 20, 2018 Moderator Share Posted March 20, 2018 I'm not on the Facebooks, but am I right in thinking that if you write stuff onto the internet or put pictures on it, other people can, like, see what you put there? and that then they might use it. Cripes! - Who'd a thunk it? This is awful and most unexpected !! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maqroll Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 2 hours ago, blandy said: I'm not on the Facebooks, but am I right in thinking that if you write stuff onto the internet or put pictures on it, other people can, like, see what you put there? and that then they might use it. Cripes! - Who'd a thunk it? This is awful and most unexpected !! It appears to be much more sinister than that. They weren't just harvesting Facebook data, they were manipulating content to shape opinion and action. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villakram Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 Don't worry, your fearless government will step in and retroactively make sure no crime was committed here... oh right, that's only when we are talking about when government agencies illegally steal all of your data. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blandy Posted March 20, 2018 Moderator Share Posted March 20, 2018 1 hour ago, maqroll said: It appears to be much more sinister than that. They weren't just harvesting Facebook data, they were manipulating content to shape opinion and action. Cripes! people telling lies on the internet. Where will it end? *sorry I'm just being a dick to make the point that it's not really a shock to anyone and we all know it has been going on anyway. True, the extent of it and how it's being done is frightening, and I suppose the evidence of the thing is kind of a jolt, maybe it's just my cynical side coming over, but I'm not really in the least surprised by any of this. And I don't see it stopping any time soon. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maqroll Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 1 hour ago, blandy said: the extent of it and how it's being done is frightening This was essentially my point Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chindie Posted March 20, 2018 VT Supporter Share Posted March 20, 2018 Cambridge Analytica has suspended their CEO. And they've had plenty of time to burn, shred, and otherwise erase as much dodginess they could, under Facebook's careful supervision, so this will quietly go away soon. It wouldn't be good for the country to know it might have been lead down the garden path by outside entities. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chindie Posted March 20, 2018 VT Supporter Share Posted March 20, 2018 Also a load of boxes left the building Cambridge Analytica is based in earlier. Never to be seen again no doubt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NurembergVillan Posted March 20, 2018 Moderator Share Posted March 20, 2018 She's basically the oracle on all of this. She'd be on my top 3 dinner guests at the moment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chindie Posted March 20, 2018 VT Supporter Share Posted March 20, 2018 It's a shame such good journalism will be for naught. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted March 20, 2018 Share Posted March 20, 2018 21 minutes ago, Chindie said: Also a load of boxes left the building Cambridge Analytica is based in earlier. Never to be seen again no doubt. Are they off to an undergound car park in Chelsea? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chindie Posted March 20, 2018 VT Supporter Share Posted March 20, 2018 Just now, snowychap said: Are they off to an undergound car park in Chelsea? It's that or Mossad had them. You decide. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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