"This way of thinking about search results is wrong. Recent studies suggest that search engines, rather than providing a neutral way to find information, may actually play a major role in shaping public opinion on political issues and candidates. Some research has even argued that search results can affect the outcomes of close elections. In a study aptly titled In Google We Trust participants heavily prioritized the first page of search results, and the order of the results on that page, and continued to do so even when researchers reversed the order of the actual results."
"Surrendering our privacy to the government would be foolish enough. But what is more insidious is the Faustian bargain made with the marketing industry, which turns every location ping into currency as it is bought and sold in the marketplace of surveillance advertising.
Now, one year later, we're in a very similar position. But it's far worse.
A source has provided another data set, this time following the smartphones of thousands of Trump supporters, rioters and passers-by in Washington, D.C., on January 6, as Donald Trump's political rally turned into a violent insurrection. At least five people died because of the riot at the Capitol. Key to bringing the mob to justice has been the event's digital detritus: location data, geotagged photos, facial recognition, surveillance cameras and crowdsourcing."
AI and machine learning, combined with the science of turning data into insightful information (aka data science), have become more important than ever in the “new normal” to guide innovation based on new market trends and consumer preferences
"The answer is simple: nobody, including opinion pollsters, knew about the Trump campaign's astonishing mastery of social media, especially Facebook. Trump may not have known much about that at the time - he really only understood Twitter - but Brad Parscale and his team sure knew how to make use of Facebook's micro-targeting machine. And they did."
"While 77% of shoppers in a recent study by Opinion Lab said in-store tracking is unacceptable, 61% also responded that they expect to be compensated with cost-saving discounts if they're tracked.
How stores sell in-store tracking to shoppers and highlight its benefits is where one of the next major battles of retail will be fought, Kilcourse says. "
"The most well-documented of these deals with the hash function used to "anonymize" the license and medallion numbers. A bit of lateral thinking from one civic hacker and the data was completely de-anonymized. This data can now be used to calculate, for example, any driver's annual income. More disquieting, though, in my opinion, is the privacy risk to passengers. With only a small amount of auxiliary knowledge, using this dataset an attacker could identify where an individual went, how much they paid, weekly habits, etc. I will demonstrate how easy this is to do in the following section."
"Filter bubbles are certainly at work online around any big political event, agreed the panel. "Within your network - Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn - you're probably within your own bubble of opinion," said Aiken."
"The algorithmic manager seems to watch everything you do. Ride-hailing platforms track a variety of personalized statistics, including ride acceptance rates, cancellation rates, hours spent logged in to the app and trips completed. And they display selected statistics to individual drivers as motivating tools, like "You're in the top 10 percent of partners!"
Uber uses the accelerometer in drivers' phones along with GPS and gyroscope to give them safe driving reports, tracking their performance in granular detail. One driver posted to a forum that a grade of 210 out of 247 "smooth accelerations" earned a "Great work!" from the boss."
"Already, artificially intelligent software can evolve false political and social constructs highly targeted to sway specific audiences. Users find themselves in highly individualized, algorithmically determined news and information feeds, intentionally designed to: isolate them from conflicting evidence or opinions, create self-reinforcing feedback loops of confirmation, and untether them from fact-based reality. And these are just early days. If memes and disinformation have been weaponized on social media, it is still in the musket stage."
"While some experts still disagree, most now believe that Conficker was the work of Ukrainian cybercriminals building a platform for global theft who succeeded beyond all expectation, or desire. The last thing a thief wants is to draw attention to himself. Conficker's unprecedented growth drew the alarmed attention of cybersecurity experts worldwide. It became, simply, too hot to use."
"A new online study in Scientific Reports finds that drivers of these vehicles are assigned most of the blame for crashes which, the team argues, they can't reasonably avoid. This work is important because, as Niek Beckers at Delft University of Technology and colleagues point out, public opinion on this matter could shape future vehicle design and also legislation."