The 222nd Block: Nothing to hide

The spammiest social media has ever been; the techiest sports have ever been, for all the world to see

Tina Carmillia

Aug 04, 2024

This week…

Your reading time is about 7 minutes. Let’s start.

Dr. Maria Primitiva Paz Root, PhD drafted the “Bill of Rights for People of Mixed-Heritage” 30 years ago (Root, 1993). Bill of Rights for People of Mixed-Heritage I HAVE THE RIGHT… — Not to justify my existence in this world. — Not to keep the races separate within me. — Not to justify my ethnic legitimacy. — Not to be responsible for people’s discomfort with my physical or ethnic ambiguity. I HAVE THE RIGHT… — To identify myself differently than strangers expect me to identify. — To identify myself differently than how my parents identify me. — To identify myself differently than my brothers and sisters. — To identify myself differently in different situations. I HAVE THE RIGHT… — To create a vocabulary to communicate about being Multiracial or multiethnic. — To change my identity over my lifetime–and more than once. — To have loyalties and identification with more than one group of people. — To freely choose whom I befriend and love.

No further comments.

Now, here’s a selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.

ICYMI: The Previous Block was about all the dark business around us. FWIW:

Darkness reigns over Wikipedia as official dark mode comes to pass by Kevin Purdy for Ars Technica.

CORRECTION NOTICE: None notified.

SCAM / SPAM

Scammers target Middle East influencers with Meta’s own tools ($)

Tekendra Parmar for Bloomberg:

In May 2023, Esaa Ahmed-Adnan, an Iraqi social media influencer who’s amassed more than 500,000 followers on Instagram with his videos about environmental issues, received a curious message from the platform. A sponsored post for a local restaurant he’d made had been taken down after being flagged for a copyright violation. Ahmed-Adnan, who knew to avoid doing things likely to inspire trouble, such as adding copyrighted music to his posts, was confused. This particular video consisted entirely of him touring the restaurant and trying various dishes.
Not long after, other videos started disappearing: A post he made promoting an area volunteer effort to clean up the Tigris River, which flows through Baghdad, was also flagged for a copyright violation. That video showed him talking directly to the camera while helping to pick up trash from the banks of the river and, again, featured no copyrighted music.
Via WhatsApp, Ahmed-Adnan got in touch with the person who flagged his posts, who claimed to be the owner of an intellectual-property protection business. He acknowledged that Ahmed-Adnan’s post wasn’t actually violating anyone’s copyright and suggested he could restore the content for $3,000, about as much as Ahmed-Adnan makes in a month.

Copyright trolling is when one claims another creator’s original post as one’s own. Influencers in the region say Meta makes legitimate access to rights manager too difficult to obtain. A black market has emerged, making it easier for the tool to fall into the wrong hands. On multiple Facebook groups, users can sell accounts with access to rights manager for as much as $3,000. (Archive link.) Loosely linked:

OnlyFans’ porn juggernaut fueled by a deception by Andrew R.C. Marshall, Jason Szep, and Linda So for Reuters.
Trapped in Myanmar’s cyber-scam factories (Part 1 of 2) by Emily Fishbein and Nu Nu Lusan for Al Jazeera.
Under siege in Myanmar’s cyber-scam capital (Part 2 of 2) by Emily Fishbein and Nu Nu Lusan for Al Jazeera.
An organised neo-Nazi TikTok network is getting millions of views by Nathan Doctor, Guy Fiennes, and Ciarán O’Connor for ISD.
Substack lets writers embed predictions from Polymarket, which claims news prediction helps fight against clickbait and propaganda by Laura Hazard Owen for Nieman Lab.

AI / TECH

The AI keeps the score

Dvora Meyers for The Verge:

When Simone Biles saluted the judges and stepped onto the mat to vault at the Sportpaleis in Antwerp, Belgium, it seemed like every camera in the packed arena was trained on her. People in the audience pulled their smartphones to record. The photographers zoomed in from their media perches. One TV camera tracked her run on a high-speed dolly, all the way down the runway, as she hurdled into a roundoff onto the springboard. The spider cam, swinging above, caught the upward trajectory of her body as she turned towards the table and blocked up and off, twisting one and a half times before landing on the blue mat and raising her arms above her head. The apex of human athleticism and kinesthetic beauty had been captured.
But there were other cameras that few other people watching in the arena were thinking about as they took in Biles’ prowess on the event: the four placed in each corner of the mat where the vault was situated. These cameras also caught the occasion but not with the purpose of transmitting it to the rest of the world. These were set up by the Japanese technology giant Fujitsu, which, since 2017, has been collaborating with the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) to create an AI gymnastics judging system.

VAR, TMO, DRS, robo umps, AI judges… do they improve the overall experience of the sport or not? Loosely linked:

AI is complicating plagiarism. How should scientists respond? by Diana Kwon for Nature.
How Brazilian journalists are preparing to deal with deepfakes in municipal elections by Júlio Lubianco and Pollyanna Brêtas (translated by Teresa Mioli) for LJR.
A parody ad shared by Elon Musk clones Kamala Harris’ voice, raising concerns about AI in politics by Ali Swenson for AP.
Here’s how to disable XTwitter from using your data to train its Grok AI by Aisha Malik for Tech Crunch.

SCIENCE / SOCIETY

We are junior scientists from emerging economies—the world needs more researchers like us solving global problems

Mohammed Shaaban, Abib Duut, and Nana Mensah for Nature:

Hollywood has a knack for painting captivating stories of scientists from around the world coming together to achieve the extraordinary—defeating a deadly virus or finding a new home for humanity—demonstrating the idea that the best science transcends borders. International collaborations have gifted us a COVID-19-quelling vaccine, a climate-tracking space station and evidence of the elusive Higgs boson particle.
But as researchers from lower-income countries now working in a wealthier one, we can see that scientific collaborations are not as glamorous or equitable as Hollywood portrays them.

How might their stories differ if they had not pursued academic careers abroad? Loosely linked:

The decimation of Gaza’s academia is impossible to quantify by Ibtisam Mahdi for +972 Magazine.
Fifth of medicines in Africa may be sub-par or fake, research finds by Tharanika Ahillan for The Guardian.
To preserve their work—and drafts of history—journalists take archiving into their own hands by Hanaa’ Tameez for Niemen Lab.

What I read, listen, and watch

I’m reading “I Have Nothing to Hide”: And 20 Other Myths About Surveillance and Privacy (2021) by Heidi Boghosian. I used to say this phrase too before I completed my press fellowship on Big Tech and misinformation.

I’m listening to The 404 Media Podcast about robots.txt and its increased use against AI and Reddit being available only in Google search results.

I’m watching SBS Dateline's investigation into Cambodia’s surrogacy crackdown.

Chart of the week

Percentage of survey respondents who identified China or the United States as the region's most politically and strategically influential power: China 45.8 per cent vs. the US 28.8 per cent in 2019, 52.8 per cent vs. 24.6 per cent in 2020, 49.8 per cent vs. 28.5 per cent in 2021, 54.4 per cent vs 29.7 per cent in 2022, 41.5 per cent vs. 31.9 per cent in 2023, 43.9 per cent vs. 25.8 per cent in 2024. — Although the overall perceptions of China and US influence trended downward in 2024 compared to 2019, China consistently fared above the US.

In Southeast Asia, China’s growing power is recognised—but feared—according to data from a multi-year trend analysis published by ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. The survey sampled more than 100 respondents in each of the 10 ASEAN member states, constituting a sample size of around 1,000. The article, authored by Lee Sue-Ann and William Choong, can be accessed here.

The Starting Block

Discussion about this post