Laptop shortages, Facebook loudmouths, fake accounts, and 'what inflation?'
What Bob's reading
(‘What Bob’s reading’ is a new weekly feature that will eventually go only to paying subscribers. For a short while, all subscribers will receive it.)
Disinformation
It’s funny. The voices that cry censorship the loudest are actually...the loudest right now. In fact, I could argue they are the new mainstream media.
This NYT story poses a great question: What if Facebook *is* the silent majority? It some great in-your-face prose which argues that social media noise can’t be ignored.
From the piece:
“Looking at people’s revealed preferences — what they actually read, watch, and click on when nobody’s looking — is often a better indicator of how they’ll act than interviewing them at diners, or listening to what they’re willing to say out loud to a pollster.”
The reason right-wing content performs so well on Facebook is no mystery. The platform is designed to amplify emotionally resonant posts, and conservative commentators are skilled at turning passionate grievances into powerful algorithm fodder.
Fake accounts are only going to become a bigger problem as we head into November. NBC News reports on this example: “Viral pro-Trump tweets came from fake African American spam accounts, Twitter says.”
The fake accounts were purported to be run by Black people whose viral tweets received tens of thousands of shares in the past month. One of the accounts, @WentDemToRep, logged over 11,000 retweets on a single tweet that claimed that the user was a lifelong Democrat who was pushed to vote Republican by the Black Lives Matter movement. The tweet was posted shortly after the account was created Tuesday.
For a great deep dive into this issue — one that’s not U.S. focused, so it’s delightfully devoid of pro-Trump or anti-Trump fervor — read the report, “Detecting Digital Fingerprints: Tracing Chinese Disinformation in Taiwan.” From it:
Average clickthrough rate for Facebook ads is 2%, Ko Wen-je’s was 20%. That means 1 in 5 people will push like, will spend time to go watch an ad. This kind of precision isn’t ‘precision’ marketing, it’s brainwashing.”
I often say democracy has been hacked. That's precisely what this for-hire bot company says:
“We feel we are testing where the democratic system’s weak points are, we’re a virus.”
Facebook employees continue to express displeasure with the company’s handling of disinformation and violent accounts. Good. Maybe they’ll walk out again. I’ve long advocated for programmers and other computer scientists to take a more thoughtful role in criticizing the products they are building. Buzzfeed reporter Ryan Mac is doing a great job getting stories from inside Facebook.
“At what point do we take responsibility for enabling hate filled bile to spread across our services?” wrote one employee. “[A]nti semitism, conspiracy, and white supremacy reeks across our services.”
Gotchas
The Federal Reserve has offered a new target rate — er, concept — for inflation. Basically, for the first time in decades, it’s going to encourage more of it. The new target means the Fed has justification to keep interest rates low for a while. I’ve been critical of how inflation is measured for a while. People who actually have to shop for food and shelter know that the official 2%-ish inflation rate it out of touch with reality, but I digress. CNBC explains the new policy here, but Sheila Bair does it better on her Twitter feed. (Who is she? Bair is the former head of the FDIC. Many think of her as consumer hero during the housing bubble collapse.) Fiddling with our definition of inflation is really just cover for lower rates -- which helps rich people a lot, and poor folks very little, if at all. There's a better way, @SheilaBair2013 argues. Read her whole thread here
Or read the WSJ editorial board here
Covid-19 and tech
School districts and parents who don't have Chromebooks, tablets, and laptops they need won't be able to get them for months. That's an education disaster — one that hurts kids the most who are already falling behind due to the digital divide. Here’s Vox on that:
In letters to educators, Lenovo blamed the sanctions for its backlog of 3 million Chromebooks. HP, on the other hand, told school systems that its shortage of 1.7 million laptops is due to pandemic-related production shortages of components made in China.
Tomorrow, I’ll have a report on last-minute back-to-school gadgets that can help with remote learning. Until then, stay safe.