The 231st Block: The jury is still out
Court is in session
This week…
Your reading time is about 5 minutes. Let’s start.
CNN and Reuters announced paywalls. I understand why publications go this route, I know times are hard for journalism, but there’s got to be a different way? Paywalls help the spread of misinformation when bad actors don’t erect them, which allows their nonsense to reach as wide an audience as they so wish. Meanwhile, reputable sources that can be useful for refutation cannot be accessed. Kinda like this April 2024 piece by Richard Stengel in The Atlantic, “Democracy dies behind paywalls,” which is paywalled, by the way.
Anyway, I start my law degree this weekend, so my mind is empty because it is overwhelmed, you know what I’m trying to say? I have not been in a serious formal education setting in a while, so it’s a leap. Well, I did one high school English credit a few years back (Canada does not think I am an English speaker), and that was extremely mortifying. They taught and graded me on things like writing a news article, producing a “three-minute” podcast, writing captions for a photojournalism piece, etc.—things I have been doing for the last decade, in English. Anyway, excuse the resentment. Public law should be mortifying, too, but differently, I suppose.
Your Wikipedia this week: Gish gallop and attention theft
And now, a selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.
ICYMI: The Previous Block was about fake news, the cheapest, most effective misinformation tool. FWIW:
Why the fake news confidence trap could be your downfall by Chris Stokel-Walker for The Guardian.
CORRECTION NOTICE: None notified.BIG TECH BRO
Is big tech harming society? To find out, we need research, but it’s being manipulated by big tech itself
Timothy Graham (Queensland University of Technology) for The Conversation:
For almost a decade, researchers have been gathering evidence that the social media platform Facebook disproportionately amplifies low-quality content and misinformation.
So it was something of a surprise when in 2023 the journal Science published a study that found Facebook’s algorithms were not major drivers of misinformation during the 2020 United States election.
This study was funded by Facebook’s parent company, Meta. Several Meta employees were also part of the authorship team. It attracted extensive media coverage. It was also celebrated by Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, who said it showed the company’s algorithms have “no detectable impact on polarisation, political attitudes or beliefs”.
But the findings have recently been thrown into doubt by a team of researchers led by Chhandak Bagch from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In an eLetter also published in Science, they argue the results were likely due to Facebook tinkering with the algorithm while the study was being conducted.
Loosely linked:
How Meta brings in millions off political violence by Colin Lecher and Tomas Apodaca for The Markup.
Some online conspiracy-spreaders don’t even believe the lies they’re spewing by H. Colleen Sinclair (Louisiana State University) for The Conversation.
Dozens of police influencers are running for office in Brazil by Matheus Andrade and Daniela Dib for Rest of World.
What happens to all 23andMe DNA data? by Bobby Allyn for NPR.
Drone tech is transforming warfare in real time by Wesley Wark for CIGI.
GAGGED
Chatbot tells story of woman imprisoned for drug trafficking in Paraguay
Katherine Pennacchio for LJR:
“Hello, I’m Eva. It’ll be ten months since I was first imprisoned here. They accuse me of international trafficking and organized crime, although I feel more like a victim than anything else.”
This is how the conversation begins with Eva, a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence (AI) developed by the team at Paraguayan media outlet El Surti.
Although it uses a fictitious name, there is a real person behind every word of the chatbot. She is not a virtual assistant. Eva is actually a 28-year-old woman held in the Buen Pastor prison in Asunción, Paraguay. She was accused of serving as a mule for a drug trafficking network and the chatbot is a tool to maintain her anonymity.
Loosely linked:
AI company published a chatbot based on a murdered woman. Her family is outraged by Foster Kamer for Futurism.
Unheard, unseen, off air: Afghan law could erase women in media by Emma Batha and Orooj Hakimi for Context.
Forced closure of weekly spells the end for Russia’s independent print media by Lucy Papachristou for Reuters.
Russia’s propagandists target the West but mislead the Kremlin, too ($) by Thomas Rid for Foreign Affairs.
YouTube apologises for falsely banning channels for spam, canceling subscriptions by Sarah Perez for TechCrunch.
SCIENCE
How tech creates hidden work for women
Katherine Pennacchio for LJR:
It's now been well established that in heterosexual relationships, women also do more of the hidden labour – the anticipating, planning and organising of the tasks that helps family life function. It creates a substantial mental workload at the intersection of cognitive and emotional labour. Less obvious is the fact that technology is exacerbating this, putting women at risk of digital overload and even burnout.
Clearly technology can help us be more productive in many areas of our lives. But at home, it is evident that technology is adding to women's already busy mental workloads. A recent cross-national study analysed data from the European Social Survey of more than 6,600 parents from 29 countries who had at least one child and one living parent. It found that the mental load on women, especially mothers, is exacerbated by technology. There appears to be a gender division of labour when it comes to digital communication regarding work and family life.
Loosely linked:
Nearly 50 per cent of researchers quit science within a decade, huge study reveals by Miryam Naddaf for Nature.
In genetic data, gaps that affect Indigenous communities by Claudia López Lloreda for Undark.
We need a new language to describe the reality that animals love, grieve, and fear by Ula Chrobak for Open Mind.
Other curious links, including en español et français
LONG READ | Hidden traces of humanity: what AI images reveal about our world by Rachel Ossip for The Guardian.
PHOTO ESSAY | South Korea adoptees endure emotional, sometimes devastating searches for their birth families by Jae C. Hong for AP and Frontline (PBS).
The myth and the hero: the writing and rewriting of Vietnam’s history by Thiện Việt for Coda.
Social media is helping bring Indigenous languages back from the brink by Michelle Cyca for The Walrus.
The messy WordPress drama, explained by Emma Roth for The Verge.
Cómo afecta la ideología política al trabajo de los traductores por Ana María Rojo López (Universidad de Murcia) en The Conversation.
Claudia Sheinbaum, la primera presidenta de México y las mujeres que le abrieron el camino por Karen Rojas Kauffmann en Gatopardo.
¿Qué tiene que ver la hispanofobia con la exclusión del rey de España en la investidura de Sheinbaum? por Fabian Acosta Rico (Universidad de Guadalajara) en The Conversation.
L’évolution de l'amitié à l’ère des algorithmes par Laurent François et Katherine Dee dans En vivance - Réseaux sociaux et communauté de vie.
Le gouvernement étudie une pérennisation de la vidéosurveillance algorithmique par Florian Reynaud dans Le Monde.
Ce que révèlent cinq années de traitement médiatique des violences sexistes et sexuelles par Camille Pettineo dans La revue des médias.
What I read, listen, and watch
I’m reading The Attention Merchants (2016) about attention theft, by Tim Wu.
I’m listening to Semafor’s Mixed Signals with Ben Smith and Nayeema Raza about how AI cures writer’s block.
I’m watching this short video posted on HGModernism about a ‘conspiracy theory’ claiming that bots are reverse engineering YouTube creators’ list of blocked words to find out personal information. It sounds plausible, and I’m intrigued. Cybersecurity experts, what do you reckon?
Chart of the week
On Nature, Kerri Smith and Chris Ryan explain what you need to do to win a Nobel prize: be a middle-aged North American man who works in the laboratory of another middle-aged North American man who has already won the Nobel prize. (We love and honour nepotism.)
Regarding the YouTube comments... yes, it is doxxing. I believe.