Dangerous data and understanding privilege
The best bookmarks I saved in Week 10, 2019.
Our data is used against us
Here are the data brokers quietly buying and selling your personal information
By Steven Melendez AND Alex Pasternack on Fast Company
“Apart from the dangers of merely collecting and storing all that data, detailed (and often erroneous) consumer profiles can lead to race or income-based discrimination, in a high-tech version of redlining.”
Article: Here are the data brokers quietly buying and selling your personal information
Diagram mapping the commercial digital tracking and profiling landscape. Copyright Cracked Labs CC BY-SA 4.0
Don’t look now: why you should be worried about machines reading your emotions
By Oscar Schwartz on The Guardian
“According to Meredith Whittaker, co-director of the New York University-based research institute AI Now, building machine learning applications based on Ekman’s outdated science is not just bad practice, it translates to real social harms.”
Article: Don’t look now: why you should be worried about machines reading your emotions
Revealed: Facebook’s global lobbying against data privacy laws
By Carole Cadwalladr and Duncan Campbell on The Guardian
“The documents… reveal a secretive global lobbying operation targeting hundreds of legislators and regulators in an attempt to procure influence across the world, including in the UK, US, Canada, India, Vietnam, Argentina, Brazil, Malaysia and all 28 states of the EU.”
Article: Revealed: Facebook’s global lobbying against data privacy laws
Privacy complaints received by tech giants’ favorite EU watchdog up more than 2x since GDPR
By Natasha Lomas on Techcrunch
“‘The phenomenon that is the GDPR has demonstrated one thing above all else: people’s interest in and appetite for understanding and controlling use of their personal data is anything but a reflection of apathy and fatalism,’ writes Helen Dixon, Ireland’s commissioner for data protection.”
Article: Privacy complaints received by tech giants’ favorite EU watchdog up more than 2x since GDPR
Nearly Half Of All ‘AI Startups’ Are Cashing In On Hype
By Parmy Olson on Forbes
“Startups that are labelled as being in the field of artificial intelligence attract 15% to 50% more in their funding rounds than other technology startups…”
Article: Nearly Half Of All ‘AI Startups’ Are Cashing In On Hype
The real reason why Facebook and Google won’t change
By Shoshana Zuboff on Fast Company
“These histories illustrate Facebook’s radical indifference, my term for the formal relationship between surveillance capitalists and their users. Facebook doesn’t care about disinformation, or mental health, or any of the other issues on Zuckerberg’s list of resolutions. Users are not customers, nor are they ‘the product.’ They are merely free sources of raw material.”
Article: The real reason why Facebook and Google won’t change
Understanding privilege
Violence is not the only way LGBT+ people are ‘erased’
By Eva Wiseman on The Guardian
“We can start with these stories, of preachers and beatings, but then we must widen our lens. To the covert message of assimilation that comes from assumed heterosexuality. From the lack of diverse representation in politics and on film, to what conversion therapy might look like in a time and place unruled by religion, where legislation around equality is outrunning the attitudes we see in schools and on the streets.”
Article: Violence is not the only way LGBT+ people are ‘erased’
To My Fellow White Others
By Chase Strangio on The Progressive
“Our duty as white people who are Othered in society is to name the ways in which our discrimination, our hurt, our alienation, does not erase the power we simultaneously hold, and to watch for the ways it also serves white supremacy.”
Article: To My Fellow White Others
Accessibility toolkit
Semantics to Screen Readers
By Melanie Richards on A List Apart
“If you make websites, you may have tested your sites with a screen reader. But how do these and other assistive programs actually access your content? What information do they use?”
Article: Semantics to Screen Readers
Tips to Create an Accessible and Contrasted Color Palette
By Stéphanie Walter
“Let’s be clear from the start: color contrast will concern every one of you users. Everybody struggles at some point with issues linked to lack of contrast in interfaces and websites, color blind or not.”
Article: Tips to Create an Accessible and Contrasted Color Palette