Facebook and Twitter are algorithmically assigning users a secret “trustworthiness” score. This score is used to determine whether your posts are seen by others – in effect, its a computational shadow ban on users. Twitter takes into account who you follow and who follows you and their scores – which means people you have no control over may be determining your trustworthiness score.
FACEBOOK says it “regrets” an algorithm blunder that caused balloons and confetti to appear in posts about the deadly earthquake in Indonesia because the same spelling of a word means “I’m unhurt” or “congratulations” depending on context. Facebook automatically displayed animated festive balloons on people using FB to tell their friends they were safe by mistakenly thinking the messages contained congratulatory quotes. Facebook has repeatedly said it will use artificial intelligence (aka artificial stupidity) algorithms to identify and halt hate…
“Social media manipulation is big business,” the researchers found. “We estimate that tens of millions of dollars are being spent on social media manipulation campaigns, involving tens of thousands of professional staff.” While there is nothing new about political parties and governments using disinformation to manipulate elections at home and abroad, the Oxford researchers note that the massive, easily accessible, and lightly regulated platforms offered by Facebook and Twitter have become enormously powerful tools in the hands of political actors,…
Facebook restricts certain conduct on its platform. However, journalists and academics are seeking to receive special privileges to do things that are prohibited for others. Journalists and academics, for example, would be permitted to set up fake accounts with fake or curated content, for the purpose of studying users. Individuals, however, would be banned from conducting the same research and thus, would be prohibited from verifying or evaluating the work of journalists and academics. Basically, the proposal is to have…
Social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Google attempt to discern our interests and voting profile by interpreting the text we write, the texts we receive, the posts we like and share, the web sites we visit, and combine that with data purchased from third party companies that collect our credit card purchases and store loyalty card purchases. Google is just as bad as Facebook. This information is compiled into a dossier on each of us and is sold…