My Digital FootPrint

Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe . The next post will be Surveillance Capitalism vs Zucked - this one is just a quick review of Roger's book. Further to reading the book worth listen to Roger on Sam Harris https://samharris.org/podcasts/152-trouble-facebook/ As background: Roger McNamee is a Silicon Valley investor for thirty-five years. He was a former mentor to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and helped recruit COO Sheryl Sandberg. What you will read is how the BigTech (esp Facebook) amplify tribalism, allow “bad actors” to “harm democracy” and as there is no accountability there is an ever “shirking civic responsibility.” The book is how we got to this point and not really one on how to answer the problem (will come back to this below). The key point which might be missed is that mafia of funding giants, such as the Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman and many others shape the culture of start-ups and models. Don't blame one person (company), the eco-system is not tak...

My picture last week approaching Christchurch NZ. On  my way to pay respect at Al Noor Mosque Dire Straits Telegraph Road . "Then came the liars and then came the rules" Two major posts about Facebook (and web content/ data) by Mark . Both have had lots of coverage, some repeat the messages and some don't have a clue what they are talking about.  Life is normal. 31st March 2019 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10107013839885441 7th March 2019 https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/a-privacy-focused-vision-for-social-networking/10156700570096634 Both pieces are responses to how to address the very real 21st century, 1st world problems of data: harmful content, election integrity, shari ng, privacy, real-time, data portability, bias, manipulation, consent, addiction, and surveillance.   For me it is all very real as I was in Christchurch taking time to visit Al Noor Mosque ,  to pay my respects and reflect.   If y...

source : https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/facial-recognition-s-dirty-little-secret-millions-online-photos-scraped-n981921?cid=par-aff-nbc-knbc_20190312 “Facial recognition's 'dirty little secret': Millions of online photos scraped without consent.”  so is the headline on this # NBC story.   Classic headline for click bate.  IBM released 1 million pictures of faces, intended to help develop fairer face recognition algorithms. This is not a new issue and the bias features in a few very good TED talks so is very real.  However the story was that you  face was scraped directly from #Flickr.  Now the question is all about permission of the subjects rather than this is something we need data for to remove bias.  Data researchers scrape data from the internet (it is public) all the time to train algorithms. Photos are often a fantastic source of image data as the hashtags conveniently correspond to the content of the photos, maki...

Image: https://cdn-grid.fotosearch.com/CSP/CSP462/opt-out-vs-in-marketing-consent-agree-clip-art__k60530152.jpg Key message : the simple decision about seeking the right “consent” is currently an unseen delegated authority. There is a need to bring back consent decisions to the board. At the board we need to debate consent in light of the ideals such as “privacy by design” and brand position; given that consistency across a business is now more important than a single commercial decision. - o - As a context, much of the classic(al) thinking and definition(s) of consent are here on wikipedia . There is excellent technical work on consent from Kantara for both the user interface and back office processes based on new consent thinking. In the idea of implementing “privacy by design”, I published this blog exploring the concept of Approval vs Forgiveness as the method of gaining consent when considering, specifically, innovation. We explored that the purity of a pos...

Follow Meredith Broussard on twitter @merbroussard https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredithbroussard/ Highly recommended reading , and if interested also pick up  Weapons of Math Destruction  by Cathy O’Neill  How computers mis understand the world. A great and very accessible book on why understanding the inner workings and outer limits of technology help us appreciate that we should never assume that computers will always get it right. It explores the limits of artificial intelligence (AI) and techno-solutionism, furthermore showing how we can easily replicate existing structural inequalities which is not an achievement. --- This beautifully written book by Meredith Broussard argues that our collective enthusiasm for applying computer technology to every aspect of life has resulted in a tremendous amount of poorly designed systems. We are so eager to do everything digitally; hiring, driving, paying bills, even choosing romantic partners, that we have stopped dema...

Thesis : Disrupting the privacy policy to make it do what it says on the tin. we need to shift from the ‘privacy policies’ of companies, which springs from data protection laws, to enabling citizens to gain visibility of what they are signing up to, in regards to their data, and provide ‘privacy’ of individuals, as contemplated by human rights laws . Context Privacy pertains to the person; “privacy” is the state of being free from public attention and unwanted intrusion; Data is not privacy, but data from or about the person can be private or not private depending on how it’s used, who is using it, and who has control of it; In the digital world a person’s privacy policy is like the clothing that one puts on to signal what data they consider private, and what is not private; The view is that companies who respect their customers privacy will be able to build relationships and trust over time - which will create growth, sustainability and deference How: polic...

define: Agency [the ability to shape the context of one’s life] define: Purpose [the belief that there is something beyond your immediate self that matters] define: Belonging [the belief that there is a context to which you matter in turn] define: Power [practical access to genuine opportunities to shape that context] define: Agree [time gives experience which concludes I accept or understand] Run (life) TIME = 0 REPEAT  Agency AND (Purpose, Belonging, Power) = TRUE; TIME = TIME + 1 UNTIL Agree; THEN Print ("I am therefore I now have Identity") End ------ Start here on the Stanford Site talking about Plato In very general terms, an agent is a being with the capacity to act, and ‘agency’ denotes the exercise or manifestation of this capacity.  The philosophy of action provides us with a standard conception and a standard theory of action. The former construes action in terms of intentionality, the latter explains the intenti...