The 271st Block: User data and the algo
And is international law enforceable?
This week…
Your reading time is about 5 minutes. Let’s start.
XTwitter CEO Linda Yaccarino steps down after two years at the platform — now mainly used by porn spambots and content-stealing meme accounts — lasting longer than most would've expected. Not sure what she has accomplished, but the integrated AI chatbot Grok did evolved to be more Nazi-aligned (also not surprising).
Your Wikipedia this week: LGAT
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 academics hacking AI reviews for positive reviews and health influencers. FWIW:
Is there a place for AI in research assessment? by Elizabeth Gadd and Nick Jennings for LSE Blog.
CORRECTION NOTICE: None notified.USER DATA & ALGORITHM
Why Big Tech is threatened by a global push for data sovereignty
Damilare Dosunmu for Rest of World:
A battle for data sovereignty is brewing from Africa to Asia.
Developing nations are challenging Big Tech’s decades-long hold on global data by demanding that their citizens’ information be stored locally. The move is driven by the realization that countries have been giving away their most valuable resource for tech giants to build a trillion-dollar market capitalization.
In April, Nigeria asked Google, Microsoft, and Amazon to set concrete deadlines for opening data centers in the country. Nigeria has been making this demand for about four years, but the companies have so far failed to fulfill their promises. Now, Nigeria has set up a working group with the companies to ensure that data is stored within its shores.
“We told them no more waivers — that we need a road map for when they are coming to Nigeria,” Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, director-general of Nigeria’s technology regulator, the National Information Technology Development Agency, told Rest of World.
Other developing countries, including India, South Africa, and Vietnam, have also implemented similar rules demanding that companies store data locally. India’s central bank requires payment companies to host financial data within the country, while Vietnam mandates that foreign telecommunications, e-commerce, and online payments providers establish local offices and keep user data within its shores for at least 24 months.
Loosely linked:
TikTok prepares US app with its own algorithm and user data by Krystal Hu for Reuters.
Elon Musk’s X platform investigated in France for alleged data tampering and fraud by Kelvin Chan for AP.
Tech’s diversity crisis is baking bias into AI systems by Natasha Ghoneim for Context.
Sweden’s migration minister ‘shocked’ by teenage son’s far-right activism by Miranda Bryant for The Guardian.
INTERNATIONAL LAW
What’s left of the UN
Isabelle Mayault for The Dial:
Inside the guarded bubble of the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, there are signs of a problem. Next to the security carousels, a large sign, replicated all over the hallways, says: “In response to the ongoing UN budget crisis, we have had to reduce operating hours. We apologize for the inconvenience.” During the past two years, corridors and meeting rooms of the Palais des Nations have been occasionally kept in the dark, central heating and elevators cut to save on the very inflated Swiss electricity bills.
Back in December 2023, the UN’s liquidity crisis got so dire that the Palais was shut down for three whole weeks. Ahead of a security meeting, a source told me a Russian delegate once joked in front of a dead elevator that they should turn the power off for Americans but not for him: His country had already paid its yearly contribution to the UN.
The much delayed, years-long renovation of the UN buildings, which has overrun its budget by as much as 118 million CHF ($144 million), adds a layer of uncertainty to the otherwise neatly sophisticated decor. Construction gear lies in the grass. A sign about Building E, the building where the main conference rooms are, states, nostalgically, that it was once the world’s largest glass window. (The world’s largest glass window is now in China, according to the Guinness Book of World Records).
Behind the rain-soaked foliage of the gardens, a peacock wails. Peacocks were offered as a gift to the UN by India’s permanent mission in the 1980s and, as a result, the UN gardens are full of them. They are still being fed by Geneva’s municipal staff.
Loosely linked:
U.S. issues sanctions against Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur probing abuses in Gaza by Farnoush Amiri for AP.
Russia has committed flagrant human rights abuses in Ukraine since 2014, rules ECHR by Haroon Siddique for The Guardian.
Other curious links, including en español et français
LONG READ | A true hell: How three Srebrenica survivors defied death 30 years ago by Alma Milisic for Al Jazeera.
INTERACTIVE | Analysis of animal gender in children’s books by Melanie Walsh with Russell Samora, Michelle Pera-McGhee, and Jan Diehm for The Pudding.
PHOTO ESSAY | Childhood shaped by war for two Ukrainian brothers by Violeta Santos Moura and Dan Peleschuk for Reuters.
I’m a statistics professor who became embroiled in the world of online chess drama by Jeffrey S. Rosenthal (University of Toronto) for The Conversation.
El .es ha entrado en crisis: España es el caramelo preferido de los hackers por Ricardo Aguilar en Xataka.
La ‘comprensión potemkin’: el motivo por el que las inteligencias artificiales explican todo pero no entienden nada por Carlos del Castillo en elDiario.es.
El antifascismo es una virtud ética y cívica que deberían practicar también los de derechas por Barbara Celis en CTXT.
Futur d’internet ou outil voué à l’échec : que sont devenus les NFT, trois ans après l'éclatement de la bulle spéculative ? par Luc Chagnon dans Franceinfo.
Confident, ami et psy : en thérapie avec l’intelligence artificielle par Denis Wong dans Radio-Canada.
Ce cirque en nature qui fait rêver au Kamouraska par Véronique Duval (texte) et François Gagnon (photographie) dans Radio-Canada.
What I read, listen, and watch
I’m reading Among the Braves (2023) by Shibani Mahtani and Timothy McLaughlin on the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement.
I’m listening to NPR’s Codeswitch on how self-censorship shapes the language of TikTok.
I’m watching Bloomberg’s piece on the IM Academy. I’m not a true crime girly, but I am a LGAT/corporate cult girly.
Chart of the week
From CNBC’s analysis of Coin Metrics data, Bitcoin price dropped more than 18 per cent in April but ended the first half of the year up 14.7 per cent.