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October 15, 2018: Station Manager Ken Freedman on algorithms - and a new Scam Roundup

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This week: Station Manager Ken Freedman, on algorithms - and a new Scam Roundup

Two recent examples of algorithms in the news, from Amazon:

• Amazon has been promoting its own products at the bottom of competitors' listings (CNBC, Oct 2), "raising questions around how Amazon uses its marketplace sales data to potentially gain an unfair advantage over other sellers." And on secret Amazon-owned brands (BoingBoing, Oct 5): "If you seee a brand on Amazon and you've never heard of it, there's a chance that it's just Amazon. The company operates a growing number of labels with names like 'Arabella', 'Lark & Ro' amd 'NuPro' to market its own products."

• This Is How Amazon Loses, by John Battelle (Oct 10): "Algorithmic merchandising leaves a bad taste in my mouth. ... I no longer trust Amazon to have my best interests at heart. I’ve lost any trust that Facebook or Twitter can deliver me a public square representative of my democracy. I’ve given up on Google delivering me search results that are truly “organic.” And YouTube? I can’t possibly trust the autoplay feature to do much more than waste my time."

• Amazon built an AI tool to hire people but had to shut it down because it was discriminating against women (BusinessInsider, Oct 10): Amazon's AI-based recruiting tool "showed a bias against women... the AI was unfavorable toward female candidates because it had combed through male-dominated résumés to accrue its data." It was shut down last year.

Recent Tech News

• (following up on my Little Slice of Tech Pie segment on this morning's Wake & Bake) - New Evidence of Hacked Supermicro Hardware Found in U.S. Telecom (Bloomberg, Oct 9): A security expert "provided documents, analysis and other evidence of the discovery following the publication of an investigative report in Bloomberg Businessweek that detailed how China’s intelligence services had ordered subcontractors to plant malicious chips in Supermicro server motherboards over a two-year period ending in 2015."

• Myanmar’s Military Said to Be Behind Facebook Campaign That Fueled Genocide (NYT, Oct 15): "Members of the Myanmar military were the prime operatives behind a systematic campaign on Facebook that stretched back half a decade and that targeted the country’s mostly Muslim Rohingya minority group, the people said. The military exploited Facebook’s wide reach in Myanmar, where it is so broadly used that many of the country’s 18 million internet users confuse the Silicon Valley social media platform with the internet. Human rights groups blame the anti-Rohingya propaganda for inciting murders, rapes and the largest forced human migration in recent history."

• Facebook Isn’t Sorry — It Just Wants Your Data (BuzzFeed News, Oct 9): "Despite all of the bad press and fallout (which includes everything from disrupting the media business to election interference to ethnic cleansing in places like Myanmar), Facebook is vast, powerful, and profitable. You know what happened after the Cambridge Analytica scandal? After its first president, Sean Parker, expressed regret over its ruthless monetization of attention? After legislators trotted out examples of election interference in front of executives? Facebook reported earnings and monthly average users that exceeded expectations. The stock spiked. Facebook is intimidatingly large and deeply woven into our cultural fabric, largely because we have allowed it to become so, and we can’t consider a world without Facebook in it."

• Via Jason Kint (today, Oct 15): "Facebook press cycles:
- Thursday: 1 domestic fake accounts + 2 Russia scraping
- Friday: 3 "Breach" details (29mm + search & location histories)
- Today: 4 Devastating report on Myanmar...
- 5 can't be far off at this point. ICO (UK Information Commissioner's Office) report expected in next 2 weeks."

• How to Delete Facebook and Instagram From Your Life Forever (NYT, Oct 10): When the Times is telling you how to delete Facebook, it's past time to get it done.

It's also time to wean yourself off of Google, Gmail, and all other Alphabet products.

• Google Executive Declines To Say If China Censors Its Citizens (The Intercept, Sept 27): Ken Enright, Google's chief privacy officer, dodged questions from Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo, and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. "We are not close to launching a search product in China." Asked whether China censors its citizens, Enright responded: “As the privacy representative for Google, I am not sure I have an informed opinion on that question?”

• Leaked Transcript Of Private Meeting Contradicts Google’s Official Story On China (The Intercept, Oct 9): "Google has refused to answer questions or concerns about Dragonfly. On Sept. 26, a Google executive faced public questions on the censorship plan for the first time. Keith Enright told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee that there 'is a Project Dragonfly,' but said 'we are not close to launching a product in China.' When pressed to give specific details, Enright refused, saying that he was 'not clear on the contours of what is in scope or out of scope for that project.'" But actually, in remarks in an internal meeting, search engine exec Ben Gomes told his team that (as The Intercept puts it) he "hoped the censored Chinese version of the platform could be launched within six and nine months, but it could be sooner." The meeting was in July.

• Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For? (NYT, Oct 7): Jack Poulson, a Google research scientist, quit his job over his concerns about Google's censorship-enabled Dragonfly. Not everyone can afford to leave their job at a toxic company, but more and more people are leaving Big Tech companies for similar reasons.

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