OLDaily

Malgorithm: How Instagram's Algorithm Publishes Misinformation and Hate to Millions During a Pandemic
Center for Countering Digital Hate, 2021/03/26

OK, let's address the issue of social media platforms. We have people like Thierry Henry and Chrissey Teigen leaving Twitter because of the abuse, and at the same time social libertarians like Cory Doctorow saying that we don't have a content problem, we have a Facebook problem, and that we can't allow the creation of regulations that only large companies can follow. But I don't agree. People need to be held accountable for what they say, especially if what they say is said for the purpose of harming people and spreading hate. And the problem with Facebook and other companies isn't that they are failing to regulate what people say, it's that they are using their algorithms to recommend this content. And that's the point of this report (42 page PDF) from the Center for Countering Digital Hate. And the message to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the rest should be very clear. It's not what your customers are doing. It's what you're doing. Stop recommending hate. Stop popularizing it. Stop monetizing it. That's not a complicated and expensive fix, that's a simple fix. Turn off the algorithm and leave it off until it behaves properly.

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Here's a Quick Way to Instantly Have Closed Captions
Tom Kuhlmann, The Rapid E-Learning Blog, 2021/03/26

Two things are going on in this post. The first is the obvious: it's now possible to get live transcriptions (in English; support for other languages is awful) through Google Chrome. I assume it's the same technology I've been using for a while with my Pixel 4. We're almost to the point where live (English) transcription will be ubiquitous, which should help people everywhere. The second thing, though, is that this is one more service Google is offering through its own platform only. Now I would imagine Microsoft isn't far behind with its own transcriptions for edge, but it concerns me that independent browsers like Firefox won't have access to this capability. If it were just this I might not be so worried, but there's a wider range of integrations that are Chrome-only. This isn't just about platform dominance. These services also reflect what Google thinks is ethical, and I don't think we want Google to define what's ethical for ourselves or for the web.

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Diversity & Inclusion The Sherlock Holmes effect
Sydney Savion, Chief Learning Officer, 2021/03/26

I think there's an argument to be made for the assertion that when a company doesn't really care about something, it just assigns a mandatory course to cover the subject, and then forgets about it. Certainly this seems to be the practice with diversity and inclusion (D&I). And the results are about what you would expect: racial segregation is up, sexual harassment is up, and overall D&I seems to be losing ground. Why? Well, not surprisingly, giving people courses and not holding them accountable for outcomes doesn't change behaviour, and has no impact on attitudes.  What's needed, this article suggests (and I agree) is for both the design of the program and the application of the program to be based on evidence.

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Students Talk to Me About Webcams
Maha Bali, Reflecting Allowed, 2021/03/26

Maha Bali begins by acknowledging what appear to me to be some of the contradictions in this discussion: students and teachers synchronous preferred online teaching during the pandemic even though it was well known not to be best practice. So it's not surprising trensions arose; one common example was where teachers, craving inbteraction, would require students turn their camera on. "It feels like I’m being watched by someone and it’s really distracting," responds one student. Students, meanwhile, wanted to interact and do something, not just be talked to. "In all my classes with cameras off, there is still participation in class, and in addition to this, I don’t have to worry about how my environment looks or if people are passing into frame behind me."

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