We are joined by Chris Gilliard, Professor of English at Macomb Community College. His scholarship concentrates on privacy, institutional tech policy, digital redlining, and the re-inventions of discriminatory practices through data mining and algorithmic decision-making, especially as these apply to college students. He is currently developing a project that looks at how popular misunderstandings of mathematical concepts create the illusions of fairness and objectivity in student analytics, predictive policing, and hiring practices. Follow him on Twitter at @hypervisible.
Show Notes
- Pedagogy and the Logic of Platforms (Educause)
- Living Apart: How the Government Betrayed a Landmark Civil Rights Law (ProPublica)
- How Youth Navigate the News Landscape (Knight Foundation)
I’m a bit surprised to find that I’ve been blocked by Chris Gilliard (@hypervisible) on Twitter. I hope I haven’t done or said anything in particular to have offended him. More likely I may have been put on a block list to which he’s subscribed?? Just not sure. I’ll have to follow him from another account as I’m really interested in his research particularly as it applies to fixing these areas within the edtech space and applications using IndieWeb principles. I think this may be the first instance that I’ve gone to someone’s account to notice that I’ve been blocked.
People get blocked for all sorts of reasons. Don’t take it personally. I’ve muted and unmuted a few here and there just because of the volume of tweets from time to time.
Usually brands who are excessively targeting me with ads every half scroll.
Thanks Joe. I’ll have to write up some thoughts about how some of the blocking, muting pieces work and might dovetail into the Vouch extension of the Webmention spec. Wide scale block lists can be a brutal tool if not implemented properly.
I’m sure there are a few I’m following who have quietly muted me or blocked me along the way, I’m just blissfully unaware, but I’m also less informed as a result, particularly in cases like this for thought leaders in areas I think are dramatically important to greater society.
I’m reminded by how much I miss having quiettime.xyz as a tool, though I think Twitter now supports that sort of muting natively now.
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Perhaps. But I once got a Like from Alex Jones while giving Trump Tower a thumbs down. 🤣
I once had someone block me on G+. Turns out they frequently did it to others as well. I suspect that was their method to limit notifications. A lot of people are still confused by social media platforms. Partly because they’re on several and all do things differently.
Given Dr. Gilliard’s areas of expertise in areas like institutional tech policy, digital redlining, re-inventions of discriminatory practices through data mining and algorithmic decision-making, etc. I highly doubt it’s a simple explanation. If it wasn’t purposeful, it’s something incredible subtle.
If we discuss it further, I recommend you do it on a separate thread so as not to continue @’ing him in our little canoe.
Syndicated copies:
Perhaps. But I once got a Like from Alex Jones while giving Trump Tower a thumbs down. 🤣
From the archives, but apropos for #Domains19: A great podcast episode on surveillance capitalism from
@acroom, @ralphbeliveau & @hypervisible
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