Continue Reading

Facebook And Social Science One: The Academics Are Rushing To Mine Our Private Data

Facebook’s rush to make our data available to academics around the world to mine reminds us that all its talk…

Continue Reading

Would Forcing Longer Social Media Posts Reduce Online Toxicity?

What might happen if social media enforced a minimum length on posts rather than a maximum and required us to…

Continue Reading

Is Social Media Curating Hate And Scouring The Web For Our Greatest Fears?

Are social algorithms ensuring we are deluged with hate and our deepest and darkest fears in order to maintain us…

Continue Reading

FiveThirtyEight: Biden Is (Still) Leading Cable News Coverage

FiveThirtyEight's Dhrumil Mehta offers his weekly update on the 2020 Democratic race. Read The Full Article.

Continue Reading

Facebook's Pivot To Groups Could Help It Create Privacy-Protecting Ads

Could Facebook’s pivot to fostering community through Groups actually help it reinvent its advertising business for this new regulatory climate?…

Continue Reading

The US Has Stopped Talking About 'Fake News' But Not The Rest Of The World

A closer look at both media coverage and search interest shows the phrase "fake news" has steadily faded from interest…

Continue Reading

The Web That Once Sought To Destroy Community Is Working To Rebuild It

After a quarter century of ceaseless efforts to minimize and even eradicate the very concept of togetherness, the web is…

Continue Reading

Could Data Analytics Force Electric Scooters To Obey Traffic Laws?

Would it be feasible to force the electric ride sharing scooters that are increasingly deluging our cities to integrate technological…

Continue Reading

Deep Learning Will Be The End Of End To End Encryption

Rather than governments demanding encryption backdoors, it will likely be technology companies themselves building in those bypasses to ensure the…

Continue Reading

Trump Era Coverage of AG 'Contempt' Dwarfs Obama Era 'Crisis'

A White House citing executive privilege in refusing to hand over subpoenaed documents to Congress. An attorney general held in…

Continue Reading

Countering Online Extremism Is Too Important To Leave To Facebook

Facebook reminds us how little we actually know about the success or failure of Silicon Valley’s counter-terrorism efforts. Read The…

Continue Reading

Facebook's Disaster Maps And The Limits Of Privacy Preservation

As Facebook provides additional details of its Disaster Maps’ inner workings, it reminds us how it sees our personal data…

Continue Reading

What Happens When Television News Gets The Deep Fake Treatment?

In our era of “fake news” and foreign influence, we are likely to see the rise of “falsified newscasts” in…

Continue Reading

Why Web Archives Need To Engage With Researchers

Web archives preserve the only record of our ephemeral digital evolution. It is imperative that they get that record right…

Continue Reading

Data Science Must Embrace Creating Not Just Collecting Data

Data science will fail to achieve its full potential until it lets go of this idea of “cheap and fast”…

Continue Reading

Data Isn't 'Truth'

As data science matures it must become far more like the hard sciences, especially a willingness to expend the resources…

Continue Reading

Is Digital Age Propaganda Fundamentally Different From That Of Past Eras?

If we truly hope to understand misinformation, disinformation, “fake news” and foreign influence, we must let go of the idea…

Continue Reading

As GDPR Turns One Is It A Success Or A Failure?

GDPR has been merely public posturing rather than privacy protection, offering the public empty promises that their governments have yet…

Continue Reading

As Orwell's 1984 Turns 70 It Predicted Much Of Today's Surveillance Society

As we rush towards an ever more Orwellian world of surveillance and censorship, perhaps we might all take the time…

Continue Reading

Will Social Media's Active Algorithmic Moderation Lead To 1984?

Algorithmic moderation might at first glance seem like the ultimate solution to all of the online world’s evils, but in…

Continue Reading

Would Facebook's Move To The Edge Really Solve The Privacy Problem?

Facebook’s move to the edge will create a useful public relations story for it but do little to constrain the…

Continue Reading

FiveThirtyEight: Cable News Is Covering Biden As Much As Every Other Democratic Candidate Combined

FiveThiryEight's Dhrumil Mehta graphs the state of the 2020 Democratic field. Read The Full Article.

Continue Reading

Would Facebook's Phone-Based Content Moderation Solve Its Globalization Problem?

Could Facebook’s move towards shifting its content moderation algorithms from its centralized datacenters out to users’ phones help it transition…

Continue Reading

How Edge AI Could Solve The Problem Of Personalized Ads In An Encrypted World

One of the greatest challenges confronting social media companies as they push towards their “privacy first” visions of our digital…