The 65th Block: Essential media on data, disinformation and democracy
Also: One like, one prayer.
This week…
The Starting Block takes a break in format for the next few weeks. Interviews will resume in late August/early September. Meanwhile, I updated the master post on essential media about data, disinformation and democracy. Initially listing only newsletters after being asked for recommendations, I have now expanded the post to include documentaries, podcasts, books, essays, games and even free online courses. This is your summer activity!
And, let me know if you think I should add anything to it:
And now, a selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.
Hundreds of AI tools have been built to catch COVID. None of them helped ($)
Will Douglas Heaven for MIT Technology Review:
That’s the damning conclusion of multiple studies published in the last few months. In June, the Turing Institute, the UK’s national center for data science and AI, put out a report summing up discussions at a series of workshops it held in late 2020. The clear consensus was that AI tools had made little, if any, impact in the fight against covid.
What I learned surrendering my life to algorithms
“I outsourced several of my daily decisions to algorithms for a week, to better understand the lines of code playing a greater and greater role in guiding our lives,” writes Jesse Orrall for CNET.
Facebook decided faith groups are good for business. Now, it wants your prayers
Elizabeth Culliford for Reuters:
The prayer feature is part of Facebook’s recent and concerted outreach to the religious community, which it is speaking about in detail to media for the first time. Facebook sees worshippers as a vital community to drive engagement on the world’s largest social media platform. As early as 2017, CEO Mark Zuckerberg cited churches as one example in a lengthy manifesto on connecting the world and the company created a team focused on "faith partnerships."
COVID gave new urgency to the efforts, Facebook’s head of faith partnerships Nona Jones told Reuters in an interview. The new prayers product was spun up after the company saw an increase in people asking each other for prayers during the pandemic, said Jones, who is also a pastor in Florida.
Jones confirmed prayer posts are used to personalize ads on Facebook, like other content.
Soon available: quantitative data on prayer efficacy. But which God and what denomination?
What I read, watch and listen to…
I’m reading Ronnie de Sousa’s essay on why moral philosophy is distracting and harmful.
I’m watching the Olympic Games.
I’m listening to Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine.
Chart of the week
David Lazer et al. studying the US coronavirus response on WaPo showing that people are more anti-vaccine if they get their COVID news from Facebook than Fox News:
This, as protesters demand Facebook act to stop vaccine falsehoods, reports Kari Paul for The Guardian.