The 45th Block: Guess who's back?
Anti-Fake News Law 2.0.
Define ‘fake news’
Malaysia’s illegitimate government, under a state of emergency and thus a suspended parliament, announced an ordinance under its emergency powers to “tackle fake news” surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.
Under the Emergency (Essential Powers) (No. 2) Ordinance 2021 which was dated March 11th and took effect the following day, those found guilty of publishing “fake news” face a fine of up to RM100,000 and/or a three-year prison term.
“Fake news” has never been clearly defined by the law, not under the short-lived Anti-Fake News Act 2018, and certainly not now.
Anatomy of a conspiracy theory: how misinformation travels on Facebook
Nick Evershed, Michael McGowan and Andy Ball show “how a single post from an Australian politician spread to a global network of Facebook groups promoting anti-vaccine, anti-lockdown and coronavirus misinformation” in this data-driven, interactive piece for The Guardian.
A leading critic of Big Tech will join the White House
“Tim Wu’s appointment to the National Economic Council [as a special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy] signals a confrontational approach by the Biden administration,” writes Cecilia Kang for NYT.
The appointment of Mr. Wu, 48, who is widely supported by progressive Democrats and antimonopoly groups, suggests that the administration plans to take on the size and influence of companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, including working with Congress on legislation to strengthen antitrust laws. During his campaign, Mr. Biden said he would be open to breaking up tech companies.
How to poison the data that Big Tech uses to surveil you ($)
“Algorithms are meaningless without good data,” writes Karen Hao for MIT Technology Review, as she explains how research done at Northwestern University suggests three ways users can exploit this to their advantage:
Data strikes, inspired by the idea of labor strikes, which involve withholding or deleting your data so a tech firm cannot use it—leaving a platform or installing privacy tools, for instance.
Data poisoning, which involves contributing meaningless or harmful data. AdNauseam, for example, is a browser extension that clicks on every single ad served to you, thus confusing Google’s ad-targeting algorithms.
Conscious data contribution, which involves giving meaningful data to the competitor of a platform you want to protest, such as by uploading your Facebook photos to Tumblr instead.
Data scrambling isn’t a novel idea; I have not too long ago shared on Instagram what Google thinks of me, and apart from my age group, they got everything wrong.
You can go to your ad settings to find out what Google thinks of you and your interests. Let me know how accurate yours is.
What I read, watch and listen to…
I’m reading Her Name in the Sky by Kelly Quindlen.
I’m watching Gogglebox Australia, because I need a break.
I’m listening to BJ The Chicago Kid’s 1123 to feel the pre-pandemic vibes of 2019.
Chart of the week
Twitter brought to attention that it was recently the one-year anniversary of this now-infamous Statista map:
my ad settings are pretty accurate