Social Media, Social Problems, Technology The Week in Tech: How Google and Facebook Spawned Surveillance Capitalism. Shoshana Zuboff, author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,” says digital services like Google and Facebook claim private human behavior “as something to be bought and sold in the marketplace.” By Natasha Singer Jan. 18, 2019 Link
Media, politics, Technology Facebook creates Orwellian headache as news is labelled politics. by Emily Bell Archive of political content becomes battleground between publishers and platforms. Sun 24 Jun 2018. Facebook logo reflected in a person’s eye Should companies such as Facebook just rely far more heavily on human judgment or should they leave it to algorithms? George Orwell wrote in his essay Politics and the English Language: “In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues.” When Facebook constructed a new archive of political advertising, had it thought a little more about this concept of what is “political”, it might have more accurately anticipated the subsequent Orwellian headache. As it is, journalists are finding their articles restricted from promotion because they are lumped in with campaigning materials from politicians, lobby groups and advocacy organisations. Link
Social Problems Franken-algorithms: the deadly consequences of unpredictable code We might be tempted to call them ‘frankenalgos’ – though Mary Shelley couldn’t have made this up. The death of a woman hit by a self-driving car highlights an unfolding technological crisis, as code piled on code creates ‘a universe no one fully understands’ by Andrew Smith Link
Social Problems This oversteps a boundary’: teenagers perturbed by Facebook surveillance News that Facebook shared teens’ details with advertisers throws focus on firm’s ability to mine the data of its 2 billion users – and raises serious ethical questions Facebook told advertisers it can identify teens feeling ‘worthless’ Link
Social Problems Moral panic over fake news hides the real enemy – the digital giants Evgeny Morozov Claims that Russia is behind the political shocks of 2016 ignore the corrupting influence of digital capitalism Link
