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Facebook labelled 'digital gangsters' by report on fake news / Facebook is out of control and politicians have no idea what to do
by Alberto Cammozzo Feb. 18, 2019

Feb. 18, 2019

Facebook labelled 'digital gangsters' by report on fake news <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/feb/18/facebook-fake-news-inves…> Company broke privacy and competition law and should be regulated urgently, say MPs Facebook deliberately broke privacy and competition law and should urgently be subject to statutory regulation, according to a devastating parliamentary report denouncing the company and its executives as “digital gangsters”. The final report of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee’s 18-month investigation into disinformation and fake news accused Facebook of purposefully obstructing its inquiry and failing to tackle attempts by Russia to manipulate elections. “Democracy is at risk from the malicious and relentless targeting of citizens with disinformation and personalised ‘dark adverts’ from unidentifiable sources, delivered through the major social media platforms we use every day,” warned the committee’s chairman, Damian Collins. The report: Accuses Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive, of contempt for parliament in refusing three separate demands for him to give evidence, instead sending junior employees unable to answer the committee’s questions. Warns British electoral law is unfit for purpose and vulnerable to interference by hostile foreign actors, including agents of the Russian government attempting to discredit democracy. Calls on the British government to establish an independent investigation into “foreign influence, disinformation, funding, voter manipulation and the sharing of data” in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, the 2016 EU referendum and the 2017 general election. Labour moved quickly to endorse the committee’s findings, with the party’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, announcing: “Labour agrees with the committee’s ultimate conclusion – the era of self-regulation for tech companies must end immediately. “We need new independent regulation with a tough powers and sanctions regime to curb the worst excesses of surveillance capitalism and the forces trying to use technology to subvert our democracy.” [...] Facebook is out of control and politicians have no idea what to do <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/18/facebook-powerful-pol…> Death threats, bullying, mental torture, privacy invasion, election rigging, fake news, monopoly abuse: as was said of a medieval pope, this is merely to suppress more serious charges. It is hard to recall the social media of 15 years ago and its offer of universal love, democracy and global peace. Britain’s parliament has finally caught up, and today’s Commons report is at least unequivocal. A menace stalks the land, and must be curbed. Some of the report’s accusations are astonishing. Facebook “purposefully obstructed” the committee. Its boss, Mark Zuckerberg, who “continues to choose profit over data security,” held parliament in contempt. His rambling empire is portrayed as lying, thieving “digital gangsterism”. Yet British electoral law is puny. It is “unfit for purpose,” leaving elections “vulnerable to foreign influence, disinformation and voter manipulation”. Not a week passes without evidence that cybersecurity is inadequate and public services have been left vulnerable to hacking. So far, so familiar, as are the report’s proposals: the usual comfort blankets of a code of ethics, an independent regulator and “more transparency”. We have sought them for a decade and still not found them. The real question is, why not? What are the pressures, who are the lobbyists, why the inertia? As over Brexit, parliament is fine at demolition, hopeless at construction. The spirit fails at the door marked Something Must Be Done. [...] Il rapporto finale del parlamento britannico: <https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmcumeds/1791/1791.…>

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This is how Google will collapse – Hacker Noon
by J.C. DE MARTIN Feb. 18, 2019

Feb. 18, 2019

https://hackernoon.com/how-google-collapsed-b6ffa82198ee (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Open Data Day 2019 | 2 marzo 2019, Torino
by Francesco Ruggiero Feb. 18, 2019

Feb. 18, 2019

Carissimi, vi segnalo che l'edizione torinese dell'*Open Data Day* *2019* si svolgerà il *2 marzo* dalle ore 09.30 alle ore 17.00, presso la sede di *Rinascimenti Sociali,* in via Maria Vittoria 38. *Open Data Day 2019 – Come monitorare i flussi dei soldi pubblici *è un’iniziativa organizzata da *Synapta* in collaborazione con *SocialFare* e il *Centro Nexa.* Nata per promuovere la trasparenza e dare ai cittadini la possibilità di capire qual è il ciclo di vita degli Open Government Data: come vengono generati e distribuiti, quali sono e a quali domande rispondono i diversi sistemi che ne consentono la fruizione. Ingresso libero fino a esaurimento posti. Sarà disponibile un piccolo rinfresco per tutti coloro che si registreranno all’indirizzo: https://bit.ly/2SuE6ZR Cordiali saluti, Francesco -- Francesco Ruggiero Communication Manager Nexa Center for Internet & Society Politecnico di Torino - DAUIN Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24 - 10129 Torino web: http://nexa.polito.it mail: francesco.ruggiero(a)polito.it tel: 011 090 7219

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Machines are not our masters – but the sinister side of AI demands a smart response | Will Hutton | Opinion | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo Feb. 17, 2019

Feb. 17, 2019

<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/17/machines-not-our-mast…> [...] Last week, OpenAI, a US-based nonprofit organisation, decided that its new AI model, GPT2, is so good at generating articles from just a few words and phrases that the model could be not be released until OpenAI better understood how it might be used. GPT2’s database is so sophisticated and its algorithms so smart that it has gone far beyond text prediction to writing readable and plausible text. The good news is that this means that computers, for example, could speed-read articles on our behalf, summarise them and answer our questions. Those chatbots that come to your aid when you are lost on some website could become really helpful. If you wear a watch that monitors your health, GPT2 could spell out warnings and diagnoses quickly in plain English. Interesting books in foreign languages will be translated more effectively. The bad news is that in the wrong hands the likes of GPT2 could flood every social media site on a grand scale with fake news or troubling comment. In one test carried out by the US news and technology network the Verge, which was given access to GPT2, a text prompt such as “Jews control the media” led to the following: “They control the universities. They control the world economy. How is this done? Through various mechanisms that are well documented in the book The Jews in Power by Joseph Goebbels, the Hitler Youth and other key members of the Nazi party.” [...]

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Come (e con chi) Trump sta spostando gli Stati Uniti verso un sistema basato sull'Intelligenza artificiale - Startmag
by J.C. DE MARTIN Feb. 16, 2019

Feb. 16, 2019

https://www.startmag.it/mondo/trump-stati-uniti-intelligenza-artificiale/ (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Revealed: Facebook enables ads to target users interested in 'vaccine controversies'
by Alberto Cammozzo Feb. 16, 2019

Feb. 16, 2019

<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/feb/15/facebook-anti-vaccinatio…> Facebook enables advertisers to promote content to nearly 900,000 people interested in “vaccine controversies”, the Guardian has found. Other groups of people that advertisers can pay to reach on Facebook include those interested in “Dr Tenpenny on Vaccines”, which refers to anti-vaccine activist Sherri Tenpenny, and “informed consent”, which is language that anti-vaccine propagandists have adopted to fight vaccination laws. Facebook’s self-serve advertising platform allows users to pay to promote posts to finely tuned subsets of its 2.3 billion users, based on thousands of characteristics, including age, location, gender, occupation and interests. In some cases, users self-identify their interests, but in other cases, Facebook creates categories based on users’ online activity. In 2017, after a controversy involving antisemitic interest categories, Facebook vowed to build “new guardrails” on its targeting categories. Facebook is already facing pressure to stop promoting anti-vaccine propaganda to users amid global concern over vaccine hesitancy and a measles outbreak in the Pacific north-west. Facebook under pressure to halt rise of anti-vaccination groups On Thursday, California congressman Adam Schiff, the chair of the House intelligence committee, cited the Guardian’s reporting on anti-vaccine propaganda on Facebook and YouTube in letters to Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai urging them to take more responsibility for health-related misinformation on their platforms. [...]

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Quante persone micro-lavorano?
by Antonio Casilli Feb. 15, 2019

Feb. 15, 2019

Carissim*, con il sindacato Force Ouvrière e il consultivo del governo France Stratégie, dirigo il progetto DiPLab (Digital Platform Labor) che studia i legami tra micro-lavoro e intelligenza artificiale. Abbiamo appena pubblicato un working paper che propone una stima del numero di "operai del clic" in Francia. Si intitola "How many people microwork in France? Estimating the size of a new labor force" e lo trovate qui in inglese: https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.03889 E per quell* che hanno poco tempo e leggono il francese, c'è un riassunto appena uscito su Le Monde: https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2019/02/15/jobs-du-clic-la-france-com… Al di là dei risultati (266 000 micro-lavorator•rici, ovvero 10 volte più dei dipendenti di Uber), vi potrebbero interessare i metodi che abbiamo sviluppato, che possono applicarsi anche a altre popolazioni difficili da stimare (riders, moderatori, gig-workers, etc). Cheers, Antonio -- Antonio A. Casilli Associate Professor (HDR), Telecom ParisTech Member, Interdisciplinary Institute for Innovation (i3 UMR 9217 CNRS) Associate Member, LACI-IIAC (EHESS) Faculty Fellow, Nexa Center for Internet & Society

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Il cyber spazio come bene comune. Una riflessione sulla internet governance | LUISS Open
by J.C. DE MARTIN Feb. 15, 2019

Feb. 15, 2019

http://open.luiss.it/2019/02/14/il-cyber-spazio-come-bene-comune-una-rifles… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Sentenze spagnole su Glovo ed i fattorini
by Luigi Scorca Feb. 15, 2019

Feb. 15, 2019

Vi segnalo due sentenze spagnole che definiscono falsi lavoratori autonomi i fattorini di Glovo, che come Deliveroo, Foodora, etc sono piattaforme per le consegne. https://www.google.it/amp/s/www.lavanguardia.com/economia/20190215/46473611… https://www.google.it/amp/s/amp.elperiodico.com/es/economia/20190214/inspec… Luigi

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https://www.valigiablu.it/direttiva-copyright-accordo-finale/
by J.C. DE MARTIN Feb. 15, 2019

Feb. 15, 2019

https://www.valigiablu.it/direttiva-copyright-accordo-finale/ (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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