The 41st Block: Listen, listen, listen...
A belated World Radio Day (February 13th) in the era of digital audio.
🔊 The echo chamber gets literal
Freedom of speech and exclusivity, those were the ingredients that boosted Facebook’s desirability in its early days. And the same ingredients are put into the making of Clubhouse. Can we expect that the app will run into the same issues that are currently beleaguering Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, TikTok and gang? Yes, but it’s probably going to be worse.
Moderation of audio-based content is the least advanced compared to other media. Clubhouse is a ticking infodemic timebomb. You can use word filters for text, and AI-driven moderation of images and videos are getting better. (Those CAPTCHA challenges to test if you’re not a robot? Notice how it’s been getting tougher and tougher over the years? You’ve been training AI to get smarter at image recognition.)
However, audio, as a medium, is one of the hardest to moderate especially without the visuals to aid your review because once you encounter language barriers, once you have speech that is not conventional or that is colloquial – and you don’t have the experts for that, you lose. Just ask Facebook about how they failed Myanmar in 2016/7.
Even within Malay-speaking online spaces, standard Malay is different from written Malay, which is different from spoken Malay. Broadly speaking, I understand or speak standard Malay, the dialects used in Sarawak, Sabah and loghat utagha – and I also understand local contexts – only because I’ve lived in these regions long enough; but East Coast Malay and the region’s sociopolitics? Very different, very foreign to me. And moderation requires not just the language mastery, but knowledge of hyper-localised geopolitical contexts.
If we take a step back and examine other audio media, specifically, podcasts, you’ll remember that I’ve shared about how podcasting is still a largely unmoderated platform.
And if we take one more step back, the troubling bit is its ancestor, the radio, is one of the most personal media to consume. Listening to the radio is like having a private, even intimate, moment with the host, especially when experienced with headphones. It always feels like the host is speaking to you directly, in your head. It feels like it’s just the two of you, no one else, even if there are thousands of other listeners tuning in to the same show at the same time. And this is what makes audio such a dangerous medium – because misinformation preys on emotional connection.
In any case, still collecting potential interviews here. And now, for other related news…
Black doctors work overtime to combat Clubhouse COVID myths
William Turton writes for Bloomberg, taken in part:
Dr. Daniel Fagbuyi is just one of dozens of Black doctors and medical professionals who have taken it upon themselves to counter COVID-19 misinformation, which has proliferated on the app alongside the surge in new users. Unlike Facebook, Twitter or Youtube, where the companies have tried to impose rules on objectionable content, Clubhouse leaves the moderation to the app’s users, who control who gets to speak in certain rooms.
COVID-19 has disproportionately affected Black people, who are 3.7 times times more likely to be hospitalized for COVID-19 than White, non-Hispanics, and 2.8 times more likely to die from the disease, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The dark side of translation: The Epoch Times is now spreading disinformation through new brands
Laura Hazard Owen reports for Nieman Lab about Raquel Miguel’s investigation for EU Disinfo Lab:
The conspiracy-theory-pushing, pro-Trump news site with shadowy origins and ownership, and “the culmination of all that Facebook has encouraged” — is already published in 22 languages, including Persian, Hebrew, and Vietnamese. But those editions are published under The Epoch Times’ banner. Now the organization is expanding its disinformation services with Tierra Pura, a separate, Argentina-based website that spreads conspiracy theories and false information about COVID-19, QAnon, and U.S. election fraud, and publishes in both Spanish and Portuguese. Tierrapura.org doesn’t reveal its link to The Epoch Times.
How should social media be regulated?
“Regulation on social media should not be established only with US interests in mind,” writes Nanjala Nyabola for Al Jazeera:
It would be a tremendous mistake for rule-making around social networking sites to only take the US experience into account, particularly because activists and analysts from other parts of the world have not only been flagging these issues just as long if not longer, but would have to live with the consequences of any new regulations without the social or economic capital to make them sensitive to local contexts.
[…]
In my 2018 book, Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics, I analyse how these sites evolved into key pillars of the public sphere in Kenya where they insert themselves into spaces left open by the retreat of traditional media and constraints on organising and mobilising in the analogue public sphere. Kenya is the example but the principle holds across all societies: the internet is an intensifier of whatever energies exist in the analogue public sphere and you cannot understand the role that these platforms will play in various societies if you do not understand the society in question first.
What I read, watch and listen to…
I’m reading a report on epistemic security in a technologically-advanced world by Elizabeth Seger and colleagues, published by the Alan Turing Institute.
I’m watching Tiffany Ferguson’s analysis on why we must protect meme kids whilst inadvertently discovering they all have mums whose name is Katie:
I’m also watching video essays on the liberal escapism of Bridgerton by Broey Deschanel and on pretty privilege by Psych IRL.
I’m listening to Rebecca Black’s all-star remix of Friday on the hit song’s 10th anniversary. C’mon, you know the lyrics to it, let’s sing along!
I’m attending ‘Can democracy keep pace with digital technology?’ an online event by the University of Cambridge.
Chart of the week
Bat or cat? A less-than-serious pie chart of this week’s share of zoom call memes.
Clubhouse is big one day,, and faltering so quickly. Curious to see its trajectory !!