Group items tagged

"Autonomous machines capable of deadly force are increasingly prevalent in modern warfare, despite numerous ethical concerns. Is there anything we can do to halt the advance of the killer robots?"

"Service providers, including many ORG members, will be required to do this through the imposition of a "duty of care" - a concept awkwardly borrowed from health & safety - which will require them to monitor the integrity of their services not by objective technical standards, but by subjective "codes of practice" on both illegal and legal content. Although the framework has been drawn up with large American social media platforms in mind, it would apply to any site or service with UK users which hosts user-generated content. A blog with comments will be fair game. An app with user reviews will be fair game. "

"The first and most obvious explanation for older internet users' increased vulnerability to misinformation is the effect of aging on the brain. A huge body of research has demonstrated that the same factors that make older Americans susceptible to financial scams - lower impulse control, slower cognitive function, higher rates of social isolation - also make them vulnerable to misinformation. "

"If someone sees the police approaching, they can press a button on their phone to start recording. Footage is uploaded in real time to the cloud using military-grade encryption, so that if the phone is damaged or confiscated during an interaction with police, the footage is preserved."

"Twitter has said that tweets wishing for Donald Trump's death in the wake of the president's diagnosis with Covid-19 violate its policies and could result in suspension."

"If anything, I think in the 50s and 60s - because so few people had direct experience of computers - there was even more concern than there is now. Computers were associated with vast power. It was only with the arrival in the 1980s and 1990s of the personal computer we were sold the idea that the technology was participatory and liberal. I think we have returned, in a way, to the original fears, now we sense that these personal devices very much represent the power of vast corporations. "

"But those same services have also enabled the creation of what one professional factchecker calls a "perfect storm for misinformation". And with real-life interaction suppressed to counter the spread of the virus, it's easier than ever for people to fall deep down a rabbit hole of deception, where the endpoint may not simply be a decline in vaccination rates or the election of an unpleasant president, but the end of consensus reality as we know it. What happens when your basic understanding of the world is no longer the same as your neighbour's? And can Facebook stop that fate coming to us all?"

"One point I found heartening in preparing this data was this quote from one of our data scientists. Following the announcement of a winner, 'Americans applying heart reactions on political content were off the charts, while angry reactions were closer to baseline.' It's possible to have a spike in positivity without having a corresponding spike in negativity. There has been a lot of interest in Facebook's impact on civic discourse and reasonable requests for us to share more data so it can be studied more fully. Obviously, this post is not meant to be a perfect analysis."

""There has been a high degree of improvisation in the rollout of Chivo and a great deal of opacity," says Ricardo Castaneda, a local economist. "The app asks for access to your microphone and your contacts, which are not needed for a wallet. Bitcoin might be a distraction but given the decision to push ahead with the plan despite popular opposition and the advice of experts, it could also be an important pillar of Bukele's political project.""

"The use of AI in military applications - such as small anti-personnel weapons - is of particular concern, he said. "Those are the ones that are very easily scalable, meaning you could put a million of them in a single truck and you could open the back and off they go and wipe out a whole city," said Russell."

"This is called a supply-chain attack, because it targets a supplier to an organization rather than an organization itself - and can affect all of a supplier's customers. It's an increasingly common way to attack networks. Other examples of this sort of attack include fake apps in the Google Play store, and hacked replacement screens for your smartphone."

"Some have argued for much greater policing of content online, and companies like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have talked about hiring thousands to staff up their moderation teams.8 8. April Glaser, Want a Terrible Job? Facebook and Google May Be Hiring,Slate (Jan. 18, 2018), https://slate.com/technology/2018/01/facebook-and-google-are-building-an-army-of-content-moderators-for-2018.html (explaining that major platforms have hired or have announced plans to hire thousands, in some cases more than ten thousand, new content moderators).On the other side of the coin, companies are increasingly investing in more and more sophisticated technology help, such as artificial intelligence, to try to spot contentious content earlier in the process.9 9. Tom Simonite, AI Has Started Cleaning Up Facebook, But Can It Finish?,Wired (Dec. 18, 2018), https://www.wired.com/story/ai-has-started-cleaning-facebook-can-it-finish/.Others have argued that we should change Section 230 of the CDA, which gives platforms a free hand in determining how they moderate (or how they don't moderate).10 10. Gohmert Press Release, supra note 7 ("Social media companies enjoy special legal protections under Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, protections not shared by other media. Instead of acting like the neutral platforms they claim to be in order obtain their immunity, these companies have turned Section 230 into a license to potentially defraud and defame with impunity… Since there still appears to be no sincere effort to stop this disconcerting behavior, it is time for social media companies to be liable for any biased and unethical impropriety of their employees as any other media company. If these companies want to continue to act like a biased medium and publish their own agendas to the detriment of others, they need to be held accountable."); Eric Johnson, Silicon Valley's Self-Regulating Days "Probably Should Be" Over, Nancy Pelosi Says, Vox (Apr. 11, 2019), https:/

"After a decade or so of the general sentiment being in favor of the internet and social media as a way to enable more speech and improve the marketplace of ideas, in the last few years the view has shifted dramatically-now it seems that almost no one is happy. Some feel that these platforms have become cesspools of trolling, bigotry, and hatred.1 1. Zachary Laub, Hate Speech on Social Media: Global Comparisons, Council on Foreign Rel. (Jun. 7, 2019), https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/hate-speech-social-media-global-comparisons.Meanwhile, others feel that these platforms have become too aggressive in policing language and are systematically silencing or censoring certain viewpoints.2 2. Tony Romm, Republicans Accused Facebook, Google and Twitter of Bias. Democrats Called the Hearing 'Dumb.', Wash. Post (Jul. 17, 2018), https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/07/17/republicans-accused-facebook-google-twitter-bias-democrats-called-hearing-dumb/?utm_term=.895b34499816.And that's not even touching on the question of privacy and what these platforms are doing (or not doing) with all of the data they collect."

""Social media surveillance technologies, such as the software acquired by Michigan State Police, are often introduced under the false premise that they are public safety and accountability tools. In reality, they endanger Black and marginalized communities,""

"Twitter has admitted it amplifies more tweets from rightwing politicians and news outlets than content from leftwing sources. The social media platform examined tweets from elected officials in seven countries - the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Spain and Japan. It also studied whether political content from news organisations was amplified on Twitter, focusing primarily on US news sources such as Fox News, the New York Times and BuzzFeed."

"In past months, an AI-generated image of an explosion at the Pentagon caused a brief dip in the stock market. AI audio parodies of US presidents playing video games became a viral trend. AI-generated images that appeared to show Donald Trump fighting off police officers trying to arrest him circulated widely on social media platforms. The Republican National Committee released an entirely AI-generated ad that showed images of various imagined disasters that would take place if Biden were re-elected, while the American Association of Political Consultants warned that video deepfakes present a "threat to democracy"."

"Saudi Arabia appears to be exploiting the US messaging app Snapchat to promote the image of its crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, while also imposing draconian sentences on influencers who use the platform to post even mild criticism of the future king."

"Team Trump shares video of Ron DeSantis deepfaked into the "Michael Scott wearing a women's suit" scene from The Office"

""We know [geofence warrants] are a ubiquitous policing tool, and as long as companies make it possible to comply with these sorts of court orders, they're putting their users at risk," Fox Cahn said. "Whether it's Google or Uber or Lyft or payment companies, by segregating their user data in a way which prevents the aggregated location searches, you can keep that data while preventing compliance with a geofence warrant.""

"The Italian supreme court ordered prosecutors last month to disclose how the Sky ECC data had been retrieved, arguing that it was impossible to have a fair trial if the accused is unable to access the evidence or assess its reliability and legality, a position supposed by the NGO Fair Trials. Whether prosecutors choose to do so could determine whether the arrests made this week lead to convictions or not. Prosecutors in the UK face a similar dilemma in relation to the hacking of EncroChat, another secret messaging platform that had the added facility of a "panic" button that when pressed would immediately erase the phone's contents."