Politics

If you want to convince people not to trust an inaccurate political post on Facebook, labeling it as satire can help reduce such misinformation from spreading, says a new study. Researchers at the Ohio State University found that flagging inaccurate political posts because they had been disputed by fact-checkers or fellow Facebook users was not as good at reducing belief in the falsehoods or stopping people from sharing them. However, labeling inaccurate posts as being humour, parody or a hoax did help and resulted in significantly less willingness to share such posts. "We thought that fact-checking flags might work pretty well on Facebook, but that's not what we found," said R. Kelly Garrett, lead author of the study and professor of communication at Ohio State. It only helped to have flags for satirical posts. "This raises some really interesting questions about why people are moved to disbelieve a claim when you tell them it is hoax or satire, but not when journalists or even … [Read more...] about Flagging fake political posts as satire more effective on Facebook: Study

A posthumous manifesto by Giovanni Buttarelli, who until his death this summer was Europe’s chief data protection regulator, seeks to join the dots of surveillance capitalism’s rapacious colonization of human spaces, via increasingly pervasive and intrusive mapping and modelling of our data, with the existential threat posed to life on earth by manmade climate change. In a dense document rich with insights and ideas around the notion that “data means power” — and therefore that the unequally distributed data-capture capabilities currently enjoyed by a handful of tech platforms sums to power asymmetries and drastic social inequalities — Buttarelli argues there is potential for AI and machine learning to “help monitor degradation and pollution, reduce waste and develop new low-carbon materials”. But only with the right regulatory steerage in place. “Big data, AI and the internet of things should focus on enabling sustainable … [Read more...] about A 10-point plan to reboot the data industrial complex for the common good

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has joined the chorus of voices warning that data itself is being weaponized against people and societies — arguing that the trade in digital data has exploded into a “data industrial complex”. Cook did not namecheck the adtech elephants in the room: Google, Facebook and other background data brokers that profit from privacy-hostile business models. But his target was clear. “Our own information — from the everyday to the deeply personal — is being weaponized against us with military efficiency,” warned Cook. “These scraps of data, each one harmless enough on its own, are carefully assembled, synthesized, traded and sold. “Taken to the extreme this process creates an enduring digital profile and lets companies know you better than you may know yourself. Your profile is a bunch of algorithms that serve up increasingly extreme content, pounding our harmless preferences into harm.” “We … [Read more...] about Apple’s Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the ‘data industrial complex’

Apple CEO Tim Cook is expected to endorse the idea of a “comprehensive federal privacy law” for the U.S. in a keynote speech tomorrow. He will also back Europe’s approach to data protection and privacy — recently cemented in place via the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — essentially saying technology does not have to be creepy to be innovative. Nor should the tech itself be a cause of harm. Cook will be addressing the 40th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners (ICDPPC), which is being held in Brussels this year to coincide with the introduction of GDPR. Europe’s updated privacy framework came into timely force, this May, weeks after the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal had erupted into a major global scandal — further raising the profile of data protection as a consumer need, and convincing governments to prioritize an oft overlooked area. By contrast US lawmakers have found … [Read more...] about Apple’s CEO Tim Cook to flag trust and humanity in major privacy speech

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has today been announced as the keynote speaker at a European data protection conference taking place in Brussels later this month — at a time when US lawmakers are asking tech giants outright if they’ll support “EU-like” privacy rules to shield US consumers from platform power. For a week this month Europe’s data protection commissioners will gather to discuss the bloc’s shiny new privacy framework, GDPR, and what comes after it. They will also gather to listen to Cook talking on the theme of data ethics. It’s a topic the Apple CEO has been speaking out about publicly for years. Just this week, in an interview on US television, he couched privacy as “one of the most important issues of the 21st century” — describing it as a human right, and saying he supported “some level” of regulation, even as he professed himself “not a pro-regulation kind of person”. … [Read more...] about Apple’s Tim Cook is sending a privacy bat-signal to US lawmakers