Rick O'Shea’s Comments

• Oct 28th, 2021 @ 1:05pm

  this explains a lot

  on Let Me Rewrite That For You: Washington Post Misinforms You About How Facebook Weighted Emoji Reactions

  Thanks Mike for delving into the details of how their algorithms work. Anecdotally, I did note a preponderance of "extreme" articles in my feed that has since toned down a bit.
  Naive me thought it was my reactive comments that caused it...now I know better.

• Jan 30th, 2018 @ 11:39am

  unintended consequences is right...

  on Unintended Consequences Of EU's New Internet Privacy Rules: Facebook Won't Use AI To Catch Suicidal Users
  I can visualize the gun lobby slavering over Facebook Ads Manager questions like:
  
  
  Select individuals with:
  ☐ suicidal tendencies
  ☐ low self esteem
  ☐ actualization anxiety
  
  
  They may ostensibly be collecting the information to avoid self-harm, but the real question is how wide that information will spread beyond the Chinese walls of the organization. I, for one, wouldn't trust Facebook to not capitalize on such information. Such is the nature of corporate America.
• Feb 2nd, 2016 @ 1:02pm

  next steps

  on EU And US Come To 'Agreement' On Safe Harbor, But If It Doesn't Stop Mass Surveillance, It Won't Fly
  If the Article 29 Working Party doesn't reject this out of hand, I expect this will lead to:
  
  - another court challenge from Max Schrems
  
  - Data Protection Authorities will do their job and start taking unilateral action
  
  - the legal departments of some American companies will start a flurry of click-through privacy policy rewriting, since most of them have been couched in terms of we'll do whatever we consider reasonable with your data in order to not be actionable, and now these will be subject to obligations and rights guarantees that are actionable under the Alternative Dispute Resolution mechanism
  
  - the "annual joint review" kangaroo court, since it has no authority or enforcement provisions, being dropped entirely because nobody will want to take on the Sisyphean task of being the NSA police without a big gun
• Jul 18th, 2012 @ 10:48pm

  only one qualifying comment

  on Answer Some Trivia Questions To Get A Free Copy Of Year Zero; The Epic Sci-Fi Story Of What Happens When Aliens & Copyright Intermingle
  Perhaps that result had something to do with the prize only being available in the U.S.
  Lost my interest as soon as I saw that.
• Jun 29th, 2012 @ 12:48pm

  validity check

  on Anonymous Courtroom Notes Raise Serious Questions About SurfTheChannel Conviction
  Surely the court transcript is a matter of public record.
  Perhaps one of the over 150,000 lawyers in the UK with access to the Newcastle crown court transcripts for June 25, 2012 could simply look it up and confirm or deny some of the points in the anonymous blog post that has since been taken down.
  Otherwise, I would consider this input as highly suspect.