Digital Ethics

'Washington Post' tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler talks about how web browsers, phone apps, and smart speakers are tracking users, even when they're asleep. Fowler listened to four years' worth of audio that Amazon had captured and stored from his Alexa smart speaker — and was surprised by what he found.Soraya Nadia McDonald reviews the final season of Netflix's 'Orange is the New Black,' set in a immigration detention center.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate HireVue, an AI tool that helps companies figure out which workers to hire.

Just heard about a student who got a free report from 23&me, contingent on participation in a months-long survey about their clinical depression.This is creepy AF that they're doing research privately, without ethical oversight.Oh and 23&me is basically a google operation.— Terry McGlynn (@hormiga) November 7, 2019

For years, Mark Zuckerberg was perceived in Silicon Valley as a bold and erudite leader who could outmaneuver anyone. Now the tables have turned—but not for the reasons you might think.

Wanted posters, the distracted boyfriend meme, #ThugThursday. Police departments have discovered how Facebook makes negative or extreme content go viral. Experts say it ruins people’s trust in cops.

An explosive new study reveals that political misinformation is running rampant on Facebook as the 2020 election approaches. In the first ten months of 2019, "[p]olitically relevant disinformation was found to have reached over 158 million estimated views, enough to reach every reported registered voter in the US at least once," according to the report.

Hello from 20 Minutes into the Future. This week’s letter is 901 words, a 3 1/2 minute read. Happy Black History Month. Tonight we’ll be taking a critical look at inclusion in big tech. What's working, what's not working, and what could be next. Let's start with a clarifying quote:

Short-term rental guests expect a modicum of privacy when they message hosts or stay in an apartment or vacation rental booked through Airbnb or Expedia's Facebook shut down Airbnb Guests Blacklist. Facebook is investigating Airbnb Host Community with an eye toward removing any postings that violate Facebook's policies.

An interview with this specialist in human rights, technology and freedom of expression to discuss how today’s societies are advancing to the drumbeat of “digital colonialism”.

Facial recognition: A solution in search of a problem?

The company can't avoid damaging democracy.

What won’t the company do to earn a profit?

Many of the drones are made in China or use Chinese parts

Apple Watch and HomePod have the highest rate of inadvertent recordings, a whistleblower says.

You know those “anonymous surveys” you may have filled in? They don’t tell anyone it was you. Or do they?

.@kimgoodwin showing just how possible it would be for Facebook to measure better things, & be better, if they chose to #CanUX pic.twitter.com/wUCVZNfkKK— Cyd Harrell (@cydharrell) November 2, 2019

An analysis of Alexa Answers data conducted by VentureBeat shows that questionable questions and answers are accepted and served to Alexa users.

Thread: A bipartisan group of Senators led by @johnthune has introduced the Filter Bubble Transparency Act. https://t.co/25mvFWhK8o Here’s why people like @shoshanazuboff and me support it: 1/10— Eli Pariser (@elipariser) November 1, 2019

When my phone died I couldn’t prove that I had bought a bus ticket with Apple Pay

In an exclusive global series, the Guardian lays bare the tech revolution transforming the welfare system worldwide – while penalising the most vulnerable

Facebook Inc said Tuesday it has data sharing partnerships with at least four Chinese companies including Huawei, the world's third largest smartphone maker, which has come under scrutiny from U....

A recent literature review of 80 app safety studies details a laundry list of shortcomings.

Microsoft committed to protecting democratic freedoms. Then it funded an Israeli facial recognition firm that secretly watched West Bank Palestinians.

Digitalization is rapidly taking over all aspects of society, but still there are parts of the population who have to struggle for access to, and to be able to use, the digital resources. Design pr ...

A new interview with the campaign's digital director reveals how the campaign got help straight from Facebook.

In information societies, operations, decisions and choices previously left to humans are increasingly delegated to algorithms, which may advise, if not decide,...

System analyses body language and word choice, but polling suggests public are opposed

The idea that skull shapes and facial features determine a person's character or social identity is enjoying a worrying renaissance, thanks to facial recognition.

Fueled by fears of school shootings, the market has grown rapidly for technologies that monitor students through official school emails and chats

Hong Kong law enforcement authorities have access to artificial intelligence software that can match faces from any video footage to police databases, but it’s unclear if it’s being used to quell months-long pro-democracy protests, according to people familiar with the matter.

A look at the full lifetime emissions of the vehicles call into question the ecological assumptions around “micromobility.”

Until appropriate safeguards are in place, we need a moratorium on biometric technology that identifies individuals, says Kate Crawford.

As Gen Z grows up and goes to college, some parents are using technology to keep a close watch

Mozilla releases Firefox 70 with social tracking protection, dramatic macOS performance gains, more https://t.co/UsQfEe9krV— Marco de Luca (@dondeluca) October 23, 2019

i (in a wheelchair) was just trapped *on* forbes ave by one of these robots, only days after their independent roll out. i can tell that as long as they continue to operate, they are going to be a major accessibility and safety issue. [thread] https://t.co/JHo5PlzMFs— 👻Emily Eek ! Ackerman 👻 (@EmilyEAckerman) October 21, 2019

Deepfakes have come across as serious problems this year and big companies are now paying attention. Amazon announced today it’s joining the DeepFake Detection challenge (DFDC) driven by major corporations such as Facebook and Microsoft to boost efforts to identify manipulated content. The company is going to contribute $1 million in AWS credits over the […]

The hotel is returning to human workers after the robot experience failed to reduce costs or workload for its employees.

Exclusive: Amazon, Google fail to address security loopholes in Alexa and Home devices more than a year after first reports.

Facebook is everywhere, extracting data. They only provide political ads data back to the gray countries on this map. What does it mean to withhold extracted data from all the red countries? —@Beltrandroid of https://t.co/DigXOlSdCc on #datacolonialsm pic.twitter.com/dzyR8TJiwH— Rachel Weidinger (@rachelannyes) October 21, 2019

A privacy regulator had sought to force firm to delist links across the world and not just Europe.

Stanford just launched their Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (@StanfordHAI) with great fanfare. The mission: "The creators and designers of AI must be broadly representative of humanity."121 faculty members listed.Not a single faculty member is Black. pic.twitter.com/znCU6zAxui— Chad Loder ➐ (@chadloder) March 21, 2019

Timnit Gebru looks around the AI world and sees almost no one who looks like her. That’s a problem for all of us.

There was a time when technology was perceived as neutral. But we now know the technology we thought would save us is actually recreating the same kinds of inequalities we were trying to redress in the first place. Princeton sociologist Ruha Benjamin asks if there's a way to create a new technological reality without a digital underclass.

The US criminal legal system uses predictive algorithms to try to make the judicial process less biased. But there’s a deeper problem.

Following the publication of a landmark MIT study alleging gender and racial bias in their Rekognition AI product, Amazon have gone on the defensive.

Ethical questions about artificial intelligence are being raised by “obvious problems” with biased algorithms

Facebook is ill-equipped to define what constitutes voter suppression, especially at the local level.

The Facebook CEO's Georgetown speech tried to assauge the complaints of Democrats, Republicans and the news media against his company. But will it work?