One year in, Facebook’s big algorithm change has spurred an angry, Fox News-dominated — and very engaged! — News Feed

One year after Facbook's algorithm change, a report by NiemanLab shows that the change has led to the spread of split and emotionally charged content even faster. The key to this is a change that rewards "commitment", i.e. likes, shares and comments. The big beneficiary of the changes is the conservative channel Fox News, whose content on Facebook is more "engaging" than any other English-language news site. However, other factors can also play a role here, such as the fact that more older people are active on Facebook.
....(....)
In a farewell note after his departure from Facebook was announced yesterday, chief product officer Chris Cox said that “social media’s history is not yet written, and its effects are not neutral.” These lists would seem to back the idea Facebook’s effects are indeed not neutral.

http://www.niemanlab.org/2019/03/one-year-in-facebooks-big-algorithm-change-has-spurred-an-angry-fox-news-dominated-and-very-engaged-news-feed

The full report (Publishing on Facebook in 2019) is available for download here:
http://go.newswhip.com/rs/647-QQK-704/images/Facebook%20Publishing%202019_Final.pdf

#DeleteFacebook #algorithm #NewsFeed #FoxNews #why
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ALEX - fbtrex - Facebook-tracking-exposed

Our vision is to increase transparency behind personalization algorithms, so that people can have more effective control of their online Facebook experience and more awareness of the information to which they are exposed.

👉🏼 Facebook users that want data about own filter bubble

👉🏼 Researchers collecting data with control groups in FB

👉🏼 Journalist interested in echo chambers and algorithm personalization

It works by collecting what Facebook sends to you, as your timeline. Because is personalised, it can be obtained as evidence and used to understand the algorithm logic.

Our mission is to help researchers assess how current filtering mechanisms work and how personalization algorithms should be modified in order to minimize the dangerous social effects.

https://facebook.tracking.exposed/

Firefox addon:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-tracking-exposed/

📺 Video about Facebook-tracking-exposed:
https://t.me/BlackBox_Archiv/399 or https://t.me/NoGoolag/1300

#facebook #ALEX #tracking #exposed #addon #algorithm #DeleteFacebook
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📡@FLOSSb0xIN

Congratulations, YouTube... Now Show Your Work

Earlier this week, #YouTube finally acknowledged their #recommendation #engine suggests harmful content. It’s a small step in the right direction, but YouTube still has a long history of dismissing independent #researchers. We created a #timeline to prove it.

Over the past year and some, it’s been like clockwork.

First: a news story emerges about YouTube’s recommendation engine harming users. Take your pick: The #algorithm has radicalized young adults in the U.S., sowed division in #Brazil, spread state-sponsored #propaganda in #HongKong, and more.

Then: YouTube responds. But not by admitting fault or detailing a solution. Instead, the company issues a statement diffusing blame, criticising the research methodologies used to investigate their recommendations, and vaguely promising that they’re working on it.

In a blog post earlier this week, YouTube acknowledged that their recommendation engine has been suggesting borderline content to users and posted a timeline showing that they’ve dedicated significant resources towards fixing this problem for several years. What they fail to acknowledge is how they have been evading and dismissing journalists and academics who have been highlighting this problem for years. Further, there is still a glaring absence of publicly verifiable data that supports YouTube’s claims that they are fixing the problem.

That’s why today, #Mozilla is publishing an #inventory of YouTube’s responses to external #research into their recommendation engine. Our timeline chronicles 14 responses — all evasive or dismissive — issued over the span of 22 months. You can find them below, in reverse chronological order.

💡 We noticed a few trends across these statements:

‼️ YouTube often claims it’s addressing the issue by tweaking its algorithm, but provides almost no detail into what, exactly, those tweaks are

‼️ YouTube claims to have data that disproves independent research — but, refuses to share that data

‼️ YouTube dismisses independent research into this topic as misguided or anecdotal, but refuses to allow third-party access to its data in order to confirm this

👉🏼 Read more:
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/congratulations-youtube-now-show-your-work/

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Conservative government giving NHS data to Amazon for free, documents reveal

US company will be able to access all ‘healthcare information, including without limitation symptoms, causes, and definitions’

#NHS #data on the #health of the #population is being handed over to #Amazon at no charge under a controversial deal between the #USA giant and the #Department of Health and Social Care.

While individual patient data is not being given to the company, a copy of the December 2018 contract between Amazon and the #DHSC reveals the company will be able to profit from its access to a range of NHS information.

Health secretary Matt #Hancock hailed the deal with Amazon in July as a way to help give patients better medical advice using #technology such as #Alexa, which uses Amazon’s #algorithm to answer key question.

Campaigners from #Privacy International obtained a copy of the contract using freedom of information laws. The full contract reveals the deal goes far beyond medical advice for use by Alexa.

It states the company will be able to access all “healthcare information, including without limitation symptoms, causes, and definitions, and all related copyrightable content, data, information and other materials”, the DHSC has.

The contract allows Amazon to use this data in a number of ways – not just providing advice to UK users.

👉🏼 Read more:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/amazon-nhs-data-access-uk-government-contract-a9237901.html

#DeleteAmazon #UK #thinkabout
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Hidden Algorithm Flaws Expose Websites to DoS Attacks

Why throw a bunch of junk traffic at a service, when all it takes to stall it out is just a few bytes?

This week, the notorious 8chan went down after its infrastructure provider Cloudflare withdrew services over the forum's radical, violence-promoting content. Cloudflare didn't shut the site down directly, but by removing its protection against distributed denial of service attacks, it could all but guarantee that the forum would crash. But while classic DDoS attacks, which overwhelm a site with junk traffic, have persisted and evolved across the web, researchers are warning about a new spinoff: subtle attacks that target not server capacity, but algorithms.

https://www.wired.com/story/algorithm-dos-attack/

#algorithm #ddos

The algorithms that make decisions about your life

Thousands of students in England are angry about the controversial use of an algorithm to determine this year's GCSE and A-level results.

They were unable to sit exams because of lockdown, so the algorithm used data about schools' results in previous years to determine grades.

It meant about 40% of this year's A-level results came out lower than predicted, which has a huge impact on what students are able to do next. GCSE results are due out on Thursday.

There are many examples of algorithms making big decisions about our lives, without us necessarily knowing how or when they do it.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53806038

#Europe #UK #GCSE #exams #algorithm

Students uncover method to manipulate AI grading algorithm

Spamming relevant keywords, many of which could be found online, saw students' grades rise to potentially perfect scores

Students in the United States have discovered a way to cheat an algorithm marking their work by simply typing out a list of words relevant to the topic.

Edgenuity, an online platform for virtual learning, was found to be using an artificial intelligence that was scanning students’ answers for keywords it expected to see in the answers.

The discovery was made after one child received 50 per cent grade on an assignment – marked within seconds by the algorithm – and testing with other responses found the methodology Edgenuity was seemingly using to determine grades.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/students-ai-grading-algorithm-edgenuity-keyword-spam-a9703751.html

#US #AI #grading #algorithm

The public don’t trust computer algorithms to make decisions about them, survey finds

The majority of people do not trust computers to make decisions about any aspect of their lives, according to a new survey.

Over half (53%) of UK adults have no faith in any organisation to use algorithms when making judgements about them, in issues ranging from education to welfare decisions, according to the poll for BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT.

The survey was conducted in the wake of the UK exams crisis where an algorithm used to assign grades was scrapped in favour of teachers’ predictions.

Just 7% of respondents trusted algorithms to be used by the education sector - joint lowest with social services and the armed forces. Confidence in the use of algorithms in education also differed dramatically between the age groups - amongst 18-24-year-olds, 16% trusted their use, while it was only 5% of over 55-year-olds.

Trust in social media companies’ algorithms to serve content and direct user experience was similar at 8%. Automated decision making had the highest trust when it came to the NHS (17%), followed by financial services (16%) and intelligence agencies (12%), reflecting areas like medical diagnosis, credit scoring and national security.

Police and ‘Big Tech’ companies (like Apple and Google) were level with 11% of respondents having faith in how algorithms are used to make decisions about them personally.

Older people are less trusting about the general use of algorithms in public life, with 63% of over-55s saying they felt negative about this, compared with 42% of 18-24-year-olds. Attitudes to computerized decisions in the NHS, private health care and local councils differ very strongly by age. 30% of 18-24-year-olds said they trusted the use of algorithms in these sectors, while for those over 55, it was 14%.

Over 2,000 people responded to the survey conducted for BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT by YouGov; all were shown a description of algorithms before answering any questions.

Dr Bill Mitchell, Director of Policy at BCS said: “People don’t trust algorithms to do the right thing by them – but there is little understanding of how deeply they are embedded in our everyday life.

“People get that Netflix and the like use algorithms to offer up film choices, but they might not realise that more and more algorithms decide whether we’ll be offered a job interview, or by our employers to decide whether we’re working hard enough, or even whether we might be a suspicious person needing to be monitored by security services.

👀 👉🏼 https://www.bcs.org/more/about-us/press-office/press-releases/the-public-don-t-trust-computer-algorithms-to-make-decisions-about-them-survey-finds/

#people #dont #trust #computer #algorithm #survey
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ByteDance won't allow TikTok's algorithm to be part of a sale: Report

As the deadline for a forced sale or shutdown of the U.S. operations of the TikTok video-sharing app fast approaches, ByteDance is said to have decided its algorithm won't be part of any sale that happens.

September 15, the date by which U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered ByteDance to either sell TikTok to a U.S. company or see the service banned from the U.S. market, is looming. Today, September 13, The South China Morning Post is reporting (based on an unnamed source that the SCMP says was briefed on the Chinese company's boardroom discussions) that ByteDance has decided TikTok's algorithm won't be included as part of the sale.

So now the question is will a sale still happen by Tuesday? Will Microsoft and Walmart, Oracle -- with close ties to Trump -- and/or various TikTok investors still see enough value in TikTok to push forward with a purchase? And for how much?

Even before today's report about terms around the algorithm, there were questions whether a sale would happen at all. The Wall Street Journal reported on September 9 that ByteDance was discussing with the U.S. government various possible arrangements that would allow TikTok to avoid a full sale of its U.S. operations. And before that, the Chinese government had put in place steps designed to make a sale to a U.S. company more difficult, if not impossible.

👀 👉🏼 https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3101362/tiktoks-algorithm-not-sale-bytedance-tells-us-source

👀 👉🏼 https://www.zdnet.com/article/bytedance-wont-allow-tiktoks-algorithm-to-be-part-of-a-sale-report

#report #TikTok #DeleteTikTok #china #usa #sale #algorithm
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