Moderation also sucks if they aren't moderating what they...
Moderation also sucks if they aren't moderating what they claim to be moderating.
They publicly claim to be moderating, COVID misinformation, election misinformation, hate speech, etc. Privately (at least according to various whistleblowers) they are moderating to maximize engagement, and therefore profits.
It just so happens that; COVID misinformation, election misinformation, hate speech, etc. drive engagement.
The fact that the AI and algorithms misidentify engagement driving content isn't a bug, it's a feature.
Given Murdoch's history, don't be surprised if he calls for intermediary liability protect only for news organizations. A definition that miraculously only includes his properties and not those of any of those evil evil internet companies (he wishes he could be like).
Mike, while it's true that you can usually forward or at least screen shot messages on the destination device, how many people are aware of this?
You, me, probably lots of the folks who read this site, sure. Is little Jonny, Aunt Mable, Uncle Bob aware? Probably not.
A commenter (Jim Salter) of the Ars Technica article summed it up when he posted:
"You're absolutely correct—millions of teens every year have similar discoveries when they share "disappearing" videos on Snapchat."
Which is why I titled my original response; "Poorly setting up user expectations". I think this is especially important when you are talking about the capabilities of a security application.
ProPublica's article may come across a little reactionary to folks like you and me, but if it helps raise awareness about the ways that WhatsApp (or any other application) isn't secure, that can only be seen as a good thing. Excepting law enforcement and Facebook shareholders of course.
Perhaps the issue is one of not setting user expectations correctly. If you laud the fact that no one can read the contents of these messages, but forget to mention that we've set up an easy to use system to forward unencrypted copies of those self same messages to Facebook (not a company exactly known for respecting people's privacy) you can see how that might freak out some people.
Ars Technica has an article covering the same subject. The interesting part in their reporting was how groups were abusing the system to get the AI to ban groups left and right.
More troubling, in my opinion, is speculation that What's App may have the undisclosed ability to scan decrypted messages and automatically flag them for FaceBook review.
The most troubling is the unencrypted metadata that Facebook appears to be storing and forwarding/reporting as it sees fit. From the above mentioned Ars Technica article:
"Although WhatsApp's "end-to-end" encryption of message contents can only be subverted by the sender or recipient devices themselves, a wealth of metadata associated with those messages is visible to Facebook—and to law enforcement authorities or others that Facebook decides to share it with—with no such caveat."
It appears that WhatsApp is a lot less secure than some competitors, such as Signal, and a lot less secure than Facebook likes to admit or users are lead to believe.
The biggest problem (as I see it) with the facilities based approach, is that broadband, like water or power, is a natural monopoly. It is financially unfeasible to have multiple physical broadband providers wiring fiber to everyone's home. Historically, we had cable and phone as separate networks simply because neither could provide what the other could. Now that we can have phone over cable and video over phone, it no longer makes much sense to continue to rollout both types of infrastructure.
Rolling out fiber makes that even clearer. Unless regulated, the first one to roll out fiber to the home wins (assuming they don't price it out of range of most people). Phone companies chose to let their POTS assets rot on the vine as they pivoted to more lucrative wireless (and pipe dreams of digital ad revenue). This left cable companies in a monopoly position with no real incentive to upgrade their now good enough (in their eyes) coaxial infrastructure.
Service based competition, or strict government regulation (think PUC) is the only logical way forward. Of course as long as our government is more interested in cashing company campaign checks than serving their constituents, municipal broadband is the next best thing we can hope for.
HBO gets to get back to making good content (I hope)
I hope that this means that HBO will be able to get back to making truly excellent content and not the pablum that AT&T execs wanted them to switch to.
more hay doesn't make finding the needle any easier
Somehow law enforcement, from the NSA, CIA, FBI, all the way down to your local cop shop still seem to think that the best way to find the needle is to pile on more hay.
Clearview is clearly just giving them what they want.
Personally, I think you'ld get better results with the right hay. A smaller pile that actually contains the needle you are looking for.
It seems the comments are thick with Musk fans. I am going to go out on a very thick branch here and predict that this will go the way of every other pronouncement Elon Musk has made. Over-hyped, under performed and massively scaled back, if fully deployed at all.
Just look at his projects so far:
hyperloop, a.k.a hover train in a tunnel
100+ year old design
morphed to low vacuum
then from hovering to wheels
then open sourced his idea (how generous) for others to build
boring tunnel Las Vegas loop
fully autonomous pods, actually requires drivers
speeds up to (I guess he was working at his ISP creds already) 130 mph. Completed and announced with a speed of 30mph.
advanced operation consists of; getting in the car and telling the driver where you want to go (hmmm, why didn't a taxi, uber, lyft, ever think of that? I guess they aren't the genius that Elon Musk is)
Tesla fully autonomous vehicles.
keeps crashing into stationary objects
can't even get to work in the closed loop system of the Las Vegas tunnel.
Reusable spacecraft.
Hello, what do you think the space shuttle was?
NASA successfully carried people and cargo
Elon is still only carrying small amounts of cargo
Revolutionary battery design
1.5x the capacity, (for only 1.5x the size :D )
If history is any indicator, his current satellite broadband system will be massively over budget, under performing, and scaled back to something fairly ordinary. Unfortunately, he's already busy polluting low earth orbit (making a mess of astronomy) and got his snout at the public trough, asking for funding to bring broadband to under served areas like pentagon parking lots.
There is of course yet another reason to institute a data cap, it helps paper over the amount of money you haven't been spending on maintaining your network.
But won't someone think about the poor prosecutor? I mean, without forcing innocent people to sit in jail until their trial (perhaps for months or years) how will they get them to cop to a plea deal?
All the poor have to do, is dole out there own contributions
Apparently, that's just how the games played.
If the poor really wanted to have some influence in telecom policy, they should do like all the other players and b̶r̶i̶b̶e̶ contribute to the campaigns of their elected officials. /s
Good points Mike. While we shouldn't let the overreacting whitewash the actions of those who truly should be called to task, we should also be careful not to pile on calls for ostracism, until we have taken the time to review for ourselves just what the issue is.
As you have written, things most often call for nuance. We wouldn't want to lend credence to those who want to conflate responsibility with ideological conformity enforcement.
It just goes to show that unfortunately, the type of people most drawn to serving in law enforcement appear to be those with an over-sized sense of self worth and a desire to bully those around them. Give them the ability to wield deadly weapons and little to no accountability and this is what we get.
It appears that the system won't be fixed until it is rethought from the types of people allowed to serve all the way up to the systems built around them.
On the post: Trump Announces His Own Social Network, 'Truth Social,' Which Says It Can Kick Off Users For Any Reason (And Already Is)
Trump canceled by TRUTH.....
If Trump isn't careful, he'll run afoul of the Truth Social network's terms and conditions. Then he'll be banned from the truth.
(yes, I know, he's already banned himself from the truth years ago)
On the post: Facebook AI Moderation Continues To Suck Because Moderation At Scale Is Impossible
Moderation also sucks if they aren't moderating what they...
Moderation also sucks if they aren't moderating what they claim to be moderating.
They publicly claim to be moderating, COVID misinformation, election misinformation, hate speech, etc. Privately (at least according to various whistleblowers) they are moderating to maximize engagement, and therefore profits.
It just so happens that; COVID misinformation, election misinformation, hate speech, etc. drive engagement.
The fact that the AI and algorithms misidentify engagement driving content isn't a bug, it's a feature.
On the post: I Am Rupert Murdoch's Total Lack Of Shame: Now Demanding Intermediary Liability Protections For News Corp.
For me but not for thee
Given Murdoch's history, don't be surprised if he calls for intermediary liability protect only for news organizations. A definition that miraculously only includes his properties and not those of any of those evil evil internet companies (he wishes he could be like).
On the post: Damned If You Do; Damned If You Don't: ProPublica's Bizarre Reporting On WhatsApp Abuse Reports
Re: Re: Poorly setting up user expectations
Mike, while it's true that you can usually forward or at least screen shot messages on the destination device, how many people are aware of this?
You, me, probably lots of the folks who read this site, sure. Is little Jonny, Aunt Mable, Uncle Bob aware? Probably not.
A commenter (Jim Salter) of the Ars Technica article summed it up when he posted:
Which is why I titled my original response; "Poorly setting up user expectations". I think this is especially important when you are talking about the capabilities of a security application.
ProPublica's article may come across a little reactionary to folks like you and me, but if it helps raise awareness about the ways that WhatsApp (or any other application) isn't secure, that can only be seen as a good thing. Excepting law enforcement and Facebook shareholders of course.
On the post: Damned If You Do; Damned If You Don't: ProPublica's Bizarre Reporting On WhatsApp Abuse Reports
Poorly setting up user expectations
Perhaps the issue is one of not setting user expectations correctly. If you laud the fact that no one can read the contents of these messages, but forget to mention that we've set up an easy to use system to forward unencrypted copies of those self same messages to Facebook (not a company exactly known for respecting people's privacy) you can see how that might freak out some people.
Ars Technica has an article covering the same subject. The interesting part in their reporting was how groups were abusing the system to get the AI to ban groups left and right.
More troubling, in my opinion, is speculation that What's App may have the undisclosed ability to scan decrypted messages and automatically flag them for FaceBook review.
The most troubling is the unencrypted metadata that Facebook appears to be storing and forwarding/reporting as it sees fit. From the above mentioned Ars Technica article:
It appears that WhatsApp is a lot less secure than some competitors, such as Signal, and a lot less secure than Facebook likes to admit or users are lead to believe.
On the post: Starlink Reviews Show The Limitations Of Musk's Broadband Play
Natural Monopoly
The biggest problem (as I see it) with the facilities based approach, is that broadband, like water or power, is a natural monopoly. It is financially unfeasible to have multiple physical broadband providers wiring fiber to everyone's home. Historically, we had cable and phone as separate networks simply because neither could provide what the other could. Now that we can have phone over cable and video over phone, it no longer makes much sense to continue to rollout both types of infrastructure.
Rolling out fiber makes that even clearer. Unless regulated, the first one to roll out fiber to the home wins (assuming they don't price it out of range of most people). Phone companies chose to let their POTS assets rot on the vine as they pivoted to more lucrative wireless (and pipe dreams of digital ad revenue). This left cable companies in a monopoly position with no real incentive to upgrade their now good enough (in their eyes) coaxial infrastructure.
Service based competition, or strict government regulation (think PUC) is the only logical way forward. Of course as long as our government is more interested in cashing company campaign checks than serving their constituents, municipal broadband is the next best thing we can hope for.
On the post: After 50,000 Layoffs And Absolute Chaos, AT&T Ends Its Bungled Media Experiment
HBO gets to get back to making good content (I hope)
I hope that this means that HBO will be able to get back to making truly excellent content and not the pablum that AT&T execs wanted them to switch to.
On the post: Law Enforcement Officials Confirm Clearview's Facial Recognition Tech Is Mostly Useless
more hay doesn't make finding the needle any easier
Somehow law enforcement, from the NSA, CIA, FBI, all the way down to your local cop shop still seem to think that the best way to find the needle is to pile on more hay.
Clearview is clearly just giving them what they want.
Personally, I think you'ld get better results with the right hay. A smaller pile that actually contains the needle you are looking for.
On the post: Wall Street Analysts Say Musk's Starlink Poses No Real Threat To Traditional Broadband
Re: Yeah, right
So I take it you've never heard of the Space Shuttle?
On the post: Wall Street Analysts Say Musk's Starlink Poses No Real Threat To Traditional Broadband
the comments are thick with Elon fans....
It seems the comments are thick with Musk fans. I am going to go out on a very thick branch here and predict that this will go the way of every other pronouncement Elon Musk has made. Over-hyped, under performed and massively scaled back, if fully deployed at all.
Just look at his projects so far:
hyperloop, a.k.a hover train in a tunnel
boring tunnel Las Vegas loop
Tesla fully autonomous vehicles.
Reusable spacecraft.
Revolutionary battery design
If history is any indicator, his current satellite broadband system will be massively over budget, under performing, and scaled back to something fairly ordinary. Unfortunately, he's already busy polluting low earth orbit (making a mess of astronomy) and got his snout at the public trough, asking for funding to bring broadband to under served areas like pentagon parking lots.
On the post: Broadband Provider Wide Open West Tries To Justify Unnecessary Broadband Caps Using... Pizza?
Yet another reason...
There is of course yet another reason to institute a data cap, it helps paper over the amount of money you haven't been spending on maintaining your network.
On the post: California Supreme Court Says Keeping People Locked Up Just Because They Can't Make Bail Is Unconstitutional
but what about the poor prosecutor...
But won't someone think about the poor prosecutor? I mean, without forcing innocent people to sit in jail until their trial (perhaps for months or years) how will they get them to cop to a plea deal?
/s
On the post: After Hyping 5G For Years, Verizon Advises Users To Turn It Off To Avoid Battery Drain
:D
Couldn't have happened to a nicer company....
（。＾－＾。）
On the post: Stadia Fallout: Nobody Can Address Stadia Games' Bugs Because Google Fired All The Developers
Just more of the usual Google ADHD
As far as I've seen, the only Google projects with any longevity have been:
For everything else, here today, gone tomorrow. It's a fool's errand to base, or buy into, any new Google project.
On the post: North Dakota's New Anti-230 Bill Would Let Nazis Sue You For Reporting Their Content To Twitter
$50,000 not $50
I think there's a typo in the article:
should be:
On the post: Ajit Pai Tried To Strangle A Broadband Aid Program For Low Income Americans. Then A Pandemic Hit.
All the poor have to do, is dole out there own contributions
Apparently, that's just how the games played.
If the poor really wanted to have some influence in telecom policy, they should do like all the other players and b̶r̶i̶b̶e̶ contribute to the campaigns of their elected officials. /s
On the post: Facebook Oversight Board's First Decisions... Seem To Confirm Everyone's Opinions Of The Board
whatever...
As I don't have a dog in this particular horse show all I can say is;
¯_(ツ)_/¯
On the post: Professional Assholes Equate Consequences With 'Cancel Culture' To Obscure That They're Finally Being Held Accountable
Good points
Good points Mike. While we shouldn't let the overreacting whitewash the actions of those who truly should be called to task, we should also be careful not to pile on calls for ostracism, until we have taken the time to review for ourselves just what the issue is.
As you have written, things most often call for nuance. We wouldn't want to lend credence to those who want to conflate responsibility with ideological conformity enforcement.
On the post: Professional Assholes Equate Consequences With 'Cancel Culture' To Obscure That They're Finally Being Held Accountable
Re:
I think you missed the /s tag. :)
Unless of course you were serious.... ? /s
On the post: Trump's Support Of Cops Pays Off: Multiple Police Officers Under Investigation For Illegal Invasion Of The Capitol Building
Just goes to show...
It just goes to show that unfortunately, the type of people most drawn to serving in law enforcement appear to be those with an over-sized sense of self worth and a desire to bully those around them. Give them the ability to wield deadly weapons and little to no accountability and this is what we get.
It appears that the system won't be fixed until it is rethought from the types of people allowed to serve all the way up to the systems built around them.
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