Were we Expecting Exacting Balance from Facebook?
As a company run by humans, biases should be assumed.
Facebook is biased. It’s not purely a question of if tech companies are biased, but could any organization honestly be considered unbiased?
Big news was made this week of how journalism works at Facebook in a few posts on Gizmodo, including information by a former (but anonymous) employee on the stifling of conservative news. This was followed by reports posted by The Guardian of editorial guidelines around trending topics, which like editorial guidelines at more traditional publications, detailed how and when changes should be made to the trending topics, and how metadata should be incorporated, such as relating stories to users on the site.
What you feel about this probably depends a fair amount on your political leanings. As the Wired article above notes, Mark Zuckerberg and many prominent Silicon Valley executives are unapologetically liberal. This doesn’t include Palantir founder Peter Thiel, a Libertarian California delegate for Trump, more about him in the story below. Conservative outlets like Breitbart are quick to point out this bias, though Breitbart never puts an indication in their reporting (nor have I seen in other reports) that their content was purposefully removed from the feed. That’s not to say that it isn’t happening or that it is, but that’s partly the point: we just don’t know.
Facebook is now a news outlet, and people, not algorithms, call the shots. The fact that humans intervene means that there is bias built into the reporting, no matter how pure their intentions. Indeed, algorithms themselves are inherently biased. As Recode notes however, being the largest distributor of news information in the world, Facebook needs to be clear about the process that they use to maintain journalistic integrity. They don’t just distribute data now, they also curate it, such as by paying celebrities and media companies to post Facebook videos.
Inside Palantir, Silicon Valley’s Most Secretive Company
William Alden, Buzzfeed
This was a bit of a present that appeared on Buzzfeed last Friday afternoon. Reporter William Alden has done a detailed analysis on documents relating to the company, as well as interviews with past employees and clients, to determine that not all is rosy in the world of a secretive, enormous big-data analysis company founded by Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel.
Much of the reporting is on financial discrepancies between bookings, the Palantir term for invoiced work, and actual payments. Alden also notes that over 100 employees have left the company in less than four months so far this year, and at least three huge clients have left: Coca-Cola, American Express, and Nasdaq. Palantir is also famous for low pay for their employees, and records corroborate a story that they increased pay for all employees that had been with the company over eighteen months at least 20%, and cancelled annual performance reviews.
By many outward facing indicators, Palintir isn’t maintaining clients the way that they used to, and are struggling to grow as a business despite the heavy investment that they’ve received from their founder and other venture firms.
Mozilla Wants Heads-Up From FBI on Tor Browser Hack
Dan Froomkin, The Intercept
If the government finds a technical flaw that allows them to catch people that most of us would consider bad guys, should they be forced to disclose it to the affected company for product fixes? Mozilla (and many others, myself included) thinks so.
The FBI revealed that a security flaw in the TOR browser, based on Firefox, allowed them to take over a child pornography site and distribute malware to visitors, making them easier to locate, incriminate, and arrest. Lawyers for one of the accused won the right to review the malware, though it’s not clear if the federal government will honor the request.
Mozilla’s lawyers make it clear that they’re choosing to avoid a fight over whether the bug should be revealed or not, but are instead suggesting that if the code is released, they should get private access to it first, with the intent of patching the bug, before the code goes public.
Researcher arrested after reporting pwnage hole in elections site
Darren Pauli, The Register
Ah good, a voting scandal story from my neck of the woods, Florida. Specifically in Lee County, which contains Cape Coral and Fort Meyers.
Security researcher, david Levin, exploited, then disclosed, a SQL injection vulnerability to gain access to the Lee County state election website, including the ability to gain supervisor credentials and logins. Part of the issue is that he also posted the exploit online in a video, which he did in conjunction with a candidate for the supervisor of elections position, Dan Sinclair.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38rsseDeFYQ
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