OLDaily

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I'm banned for life from advertising on Meta. Because I teach Python.
2023/10/20

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I shouldn't laugh, because this is serious, and points to the real need for human oversight, but it's also pretty funny. "I teach courses in Python and Pandas. Never mind that the first is a programming language and the second is a library for data analysis in Python. Meta's AI system noticed that I was talking about Python and Pandas, assumed that I was talking about the animals (not the technology), and banned me." What's awful is that when he appealed, Meta doubled down with its AI process and banned him for life.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Internet Archive Scholar
Internet Archive, 2023/10/20

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Dr Pen writes, "In case folks aren't aware, the Internet Archive now has a scholar version with a huge collection of academic work available." Now you know. " The collection spans from digitized copies of eighteenth century journals through the latest Open Access conference proceedings and pre-prints crawled from the World Wide Web." I checked to see if there's more recent stuff, and I see some things, but I can't say how complete it is.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Mastodon Is the Good One
Jason Koebler, 404 Media, 2023/10/20

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"Why is everyone championing Threads as the main Twitter alternative?" asks Jason Koebler. "Mastodon is interoperable, decentralized, operated by a nonprofit, lively, and, ACTUALLY, isn't hard to use." Well it could be because the 'everybody' in question represent commercial publishers, and commercial publishers are not fans of an open source open access distributed federated content model. I will point out that Koebler says he is "using Threads, and I will continue to use Threads, because I am a pragmatic person who wants to connect with readers wherever they are because my livelihood and my reporting relies on it." So to my mind, that makes him just like the people he criticizes for using X/Twitter. Some advice: if your livlihood depends on supporting sites that contribute to "disinformation, algorithmic dark patterns and ever-shifting reward systems, user monetization and tracking, disastrous forays into the news business, shoddy content moderation, and complicity in a genocide," reconsider your livlihood.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Kyoto Statement on End-To-End Encryption
GEC admin, Global Encryption Coalition, 2023/10/20

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End to End Encryption (E2EE) or 'strong' encryption is the idea that communications between two people should be fully encrypted, that is, encrypted such that there is no way for any third party to intercept the data. It's in the news these days because the CEO of Signal, Meredith Whittaker, said the E2EE compny will not comply with KYC (Know Your Customer) laws being proposed in India and elsewhere. Here we have a statement from the Global Encryption Coalition in favour of strong E2EE. I have mixed feelings about laws supporting so-called "backdoors" used by law enforcement. There is a genuine purpose, such as putting financial criminals behind bars. The problem is, backdoors are never limited to legitimate purposes; both state and non-state actors gain acccess to them and then nobody is safe. Some argue there is a 'right' to E2EE but even in the U.S., where this argument originates, even rights have a limit. There's no middle ground, though, and that's a problem.

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China Seeks Stricter Oversight of Generative AI with Proposed Data and Model Regulations
Chris McKay, Maginative, 2023/10/20

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The Chinese government has proposed a comprehensive set of principles for the oversight of generative AI (in Chinese, here (12 page PDF)). "A significant portion of the draft regulation focuses on the safety of the corpus, which is the data used to train AI models," including source safety, traceability, content security and data labeling. Also, " the draft specifies 31 security risks across 5 categories" including violations of socialist values, discriminatory content, commercial violations, infringing the rights of others, and insufficient safeguards for sensitive services. These might be more struct than we might want in the western world, but are certainly more credible than the 'anything goes' policy evidently supported by western corporations. See also Digital Policy Alert.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Elon Musk took the headlines away from Twitter - but you can bring them back with this one weird trick
Joshua Benton, Nieman Lab, 2023/10/20

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Last week Elon Musk removed headlines on X/Twitter "for esthetic reasons". This article describes a simple fix. "It's a browser extension named Control Panel for Twitter. (Yes, Twitter, not X.)." It works by reading the ARIA information used for accessibility and using the content to recreate headlines. This is a lovely example showing how accessibility benefits everyone. But if you're hesitant to read this article because, like me, you no longer use Twitter, do check it out if only to read the second paragraph discussion of "esthetics". Via Tara Calishain.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

We publish six to eight or so short posts every weekday linking to the best, most interesting and most important pieces of content in the field. Read more about what we cover. We also list papers and articles by Stephen Downes and his presentations from around the world.

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