My CS degree had a required semester of "Ethics in CS" - it was usually taken senior year as a blowoff class, but when I took it, a different lecturer was running it. In the first class session,...
My CS degree had a required semester of "Ethics in CS" - it was usually taken senior year as a blowoff class, but when I took it, a different lecturer was running it. In the first class session, he told us "In order to understand why this class is so important, we need to start somewhere dark". He gave us an overview of this book, and explained that atrocity at a certain scale is only possible because of technology, and that technology is only possible because of the people who designed, implemented, and maintained it.
I think this is a book which STEM people (and also humanities people, of course) would really benefit from reading. Researched with a really incredible attention to detail, it outlines a lot of...
I think this is a book which STEM people (and also humanities people, of course) would really benefit from reading. Researched with a really incredible attention to detail, it outlines a lot of the very real risks of mechanised data processing.
As a Jewish IBMer, this is one book that I probably should read, though I did go through the Wikipedia synopsis at one point. I'll say internally where I am, people are widely aware of this book,...
As a Jewish IBMer, this is one book that I probably should read, though I did go through the Wikipedia synopsis at one point.
I'll say internally where I am, people are widely aware of this book, even if management doesn't acknowledge it.
I was debating making Meta in Myanmar, Part 1: The Setup into its own post, at the same time this IBM one appeared. [I'm going to content-warn on this one - it contains very graphic descriptions...
I was debating making Meta in Myanmar, Part 1: The Setup into its own post, at the same time this IBM one appeared. [I'm going to content-warn on this one - it contains very graphic descriptions of violence, including against children.]
tl;dr - It's a detailed account of the six year period from 2012 - 2018 where Facebook directly and knowingly contributed to the Rohingya genocide and expulsion from Myanmar. All the while making mealy-mouthed claims it didn't know what was happening, couldn't have forseen the slaughter because there weren't Burmese translators, and didn't have the ability to moderate.
Myanmar's populace had been cut off from most Internet access by its military junta and there was little Burmese language material before Facebook. The platform took over the country like a virus to which no one was immune.
It's arguable that Facebook should have known about problems as soon as it opened channels in Myanmar in 2011, because open, unmistakable violent threats against Rohingya began immediately, including in English. But Facebook handed megaphones to the most murderous (in particular, Ashin Wirathu, a Buddhist monk who had been jailed by the prior governing junta in 2003 for calling for genocide of the Muslim Rohingya), and refused to take them away.
I don't know if the intentionality of Facebook's actions was the same as IBM's at the outset. However, there were any number of points at which they were made aware of the danger, including a Time Magazine cover story in 2013 about Wirathu's evil anti-Muslim pronouncements and rising death tolls. Nonetheless, Facebook continued supporting and profiting from this hateful messaging and organization of attacks through its platform.
On a personal note, most of my paternal and half of my maternal great-aunts and great-uncles and their families disappeared into Auschwitz and Treblinka. And yet my father wound up working directly for Henry Ford (yes, that Henry Ford) after the war, and I ended up interning at IBM in the 1990's, never knowing any of this at the time.
I think it should be its own post. It is a great example of how concerns around Facebook are not just abstract platitudes. It is very painful to listen to people talk about social media "echo...
I think it should be its own post. It is a great example of how concerns around Facebook are not just abstract platitudes. It is very painful to listen to people talk about social media "echo chambers" and the risks to public discourse without giving concrete examples (such as this one).
On a personal note, most of my paternal and half of my maternal great-aunts and great-uncles and their families disappeared into Auschwitz and Treblinka. And yet my father wound up working directly for Henry Ford (yes, that Henry Ford) after the war, and I ended up interning at IBM in the 1990's, never knowing any of this at the time.
Sunday is my "I'm going to read all the things" day, and it so happened that I read both the IBM post and a newsletter that linked the Facebook story. I'll take your advice, but I may give it a...
Sunday is my "I'm going to read all the things" day, and it so happened that I read both the IBM post and a newsletter that linked the Facebook story.
I'll take your advice, but I may give it a few days before posting. I don't know how much tolerance there is for a relentless drumbeat of frankly horrifying topics on Tildes, given how few topic posts there are in general.
Ford's The International Jew polemics were immensely influential at the time (including in Germany, to the early Nazi Party and Hitler himself), and they still circulate in white supremacist circles. Ford was a deeply crazy man, and I'm just waiting to see what Elon Musk does while trotting along in his footsteps.
One of my favorite Netflix productions ever is the German mini-series dark satire Altes Geld. A present day super-rich Austrian family that profited handsomely from expropriated Jewish assets and...
One of my favorite Netflix productions ever is the German mini-series dark satire Altes Geld. A present day super-rich Austrian family that profited handsomely from expropriated Jewish assets and slave labor goes through a combination of Succession-style exploits and a reparations drama. Udo Kier, of course, plays a patriarch who is every bit as loathsome as Logan Roy, with added Nazism.
My CS degree had a required semester of "Ethics in CS" - it was usually taken senior year as a blowoff class, but when I took it, a different lecturer was running it. In the first class session, he told us "In order to understand why this class is so important, we need to start somewhere dark". He gave us an overview of this book, and explained that atrocity at a certain scale is only possible because of technology, and that technology is only possible because of the people who designed, implemented, and maintained it.
I think this is a book which STEM people (and also humanities people, of course) would really benefit from reading. Researched with a really incredible attention to detail, it outlines a lot of the very real risks of mechanised data processing.
As a Jewish IBMer, this is one book that I probably should read, though I did go through the Wikipedia synopsis at one point.
I'll say internally where I am, people are widely aware of this book, even if management doesn't acknowledge it.
I was debating making Meta in Myanmar, Part 1: The Setup into its own post, at the same time this IBM one appeared. [I'm going to content-warn on this one - it contains very graphic descriptions of violence, including against children.]
tl;dr - It's a detailed account of the six year period from 2012 - 2018 where Facebook directly and knowingly contributed to the Rohingya genocide and expulsion from Myanmar. All the while making mealy-mouthed claims it didn't know what was happening, couldn't have forseen the slaughter because there weren't Burmese translators, and didn't have the ability to moderate.
Myanmar's populace had been cut off from most Internet access by its military junta and there was little Burmese language material before Facebook. The platform took over the country like a virus to which no one was immune.
It's arguable that Facebook should have known about problems as soon as it opened channels in Myanmar in 2011, because open, unmistakable violent threats against Rohingya began immediately, including in English. But Facebook handed megaphones to the most murderous (in particular, Ashin Wirathu, a Buddhist monk who had been jailed by the prior governing junta in 2003 for calling for genocide of the Muslim Rohingya), and refused to take them away.
I don't know if the intentionality of Facebook's actions was the same as IBM's at the outset. However, there were any number of points at which they were made aware of the danger, including a Time Magazine cover story in 2013 about Wirathu's evil anti-Muslim pronouncements and rising death tolls. Nonetheless, Facebook continued supporting and profiting from this hateful messaging and organization of attacks through its platform.
On a personal note, most of my paternal and half of my maternal great-aunts and great-uncles and their families disappeared into Auschwitz and Treblinka. And yet my father wound up working directly for Henry Ford (yes, that Henry Ford) after the war, and I ended up interning at IBM in the 1990's, never knowing any of this at the time.
I think it should be its own post. It is a great example of how concerns around Facebook are not just abstract platitudes. It is very painful to listen to people talk about social media "echo chambers" and the risks to public discourse without giving concrete examples (such as this one).
It's amazing how Henry Ford's antisemitism has to a large extent been forgotten about, even by the ADL!! (https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2022-10-09/ty-article/.premium/adls-jonathan-greenblatt-praises-elon-musk-as-a-modern-henry-ford-then-reconsiders/00000183-bdba-dc37-adfb-bdfb4b330000)
Sunday is my "I'm going to read all the things" day, and it so happened that I read both the IBM post and a newsletter that linked the Facebook story.
I'll take your advice, but I may give it a few days before posting. I don't know how much tolerance there is for a relentless drumbeat of frankly horrifying topics on Tildes, given how few topic posts there are in general.
Ford's The International Jew polemics were immensely influential at the time (including in Germany, to the early Nazi Party and Hitler himself), and they still circulate in white supremacist circles. Ford was a deeply crazy man, and I'm just waiting to see what Elon Musk does while trotting along in his footsteps.
I don't know why, but the article about Meta in Myanmar doesn't work for me. However, archived version works: https://web.archive.org/web/20231004084001/https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-part-i-the-setup
It looks like the whole erinkissane.com site is down at the moment - hoping someone didn't DDoS or hijack it.
One of my favorite Netflix productions ever is the German mini-series dark satire Altes Geld. A present day super-rich Austrian family that profited handsomely from expropriated Jewish assets and slave labor goes through a combination of Succession-style exploits and a reparations drama. Udo Kier, of course, plays a patriarch who is every bit as loathsome as Logan Roy, with added Nazism.
Yes I think it is quite incredible how a lot of Nazis effectively "got away with it", despite their obvious crimes during the Hitler regime.