Category: Read

👓 who is this? | Matt Baer

Read who is this? by Matt BaerMatt Baer (Matt)

I'm Matt Baer, and I built Write.as.

why?

In late 2014 I was getting more concerned for my privacy both online and on my smartphone. I felt stifled, because I knew social media sites were analyzing my status updates and search engines were cataloging my searches. So I wanted to create an antidote for that feeling, and came up with Write.as.

When I left school and entered the working world several years ago, I started to care less about becoming a millionaire and think more about problems in our world — especially when it comes to technology. I see companies like Facebook exploit our basic desire to communicate, and think there should be better options. I see Apple and Google encourage everyone to fondle glass slabs and think maybe we're losing something, even as we've gained “connectivity.”

👓 Fark Banned Misogyny to Facilitate Free Speech | Motherboard

Read Fark Banned Misogyny to Facilitate Free Speech (Motherboard)
"Now that we've done it I feel like a complete ass for waiting so long. So will everyone else who makes the same call."

👓 ‘By whatever means necessary’: The origins of the ‘no platform’ policy | Hatful of History

Read ‘By whatever means necessary’: The origins of the ‘no platform’ policy by Dr Evan Smith (Hatful of History)
Recently the concept of ‘no platform’ was in the news again when there were attempts to cancel a talk by Germaine Greer at Cardiff University. While there is no doubt that the use of ‘no platform’ has expanded since its first use in the 1970s, the term is bandied about in the media with little definition and understanding of how it was developed as a specific response to the fascism of the National Front (and later the British National Party). This post looks back at the origins of the term and how it was developed into a practical anti-fascist strategy.
hat tip: Kevin Marks

👓 Study finds Reddit’s controversial ban of its most toxic subreddits actually worked | TechCrunch

Read Study finds Reddit’s controversial ban of its most toxic subreddits actually worked (TechCrunch)
It seems like just the other day that Reddit finally banned a handful of its most hateful and deplorable subreddits, including r/coontown and r/fatpeoplehate. The move was, at the time, derided by some as pointless, akin to shooing criminals away from one neighborhood only to trouble another. But a…

👓 Deplatforming Works | Motherboard

Read Social Media Bans Actually Work (Motherboard)
Alex Jones says getting banned by YouTube and Facebook will only make him stronger. The research says that's not true.

👓 PayPal Bans Far-Right Social Network Gab After Anti-Semitic User Kills at Least 11 at Synagogue | Gizmodo

Read PayPal Bans Far-Right Social Network Gab After Anti-Semitic User Kills at Least 11 at Synagogue (Gizmodo)
On Saturday, a firearm-wielding man massacred at least 11 people attending Shabbat services at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood and injured a number of others. The Anti-Defamation League described it as likely the deadliest single attack on the Jewish community in U.S. history. Authorities identified the suspect, who was captured after a gun battle with responding police, as 46-year-old Robert Bowers—a vitriolic anti-Semite who allegedly announced the attack on the social network Gab.

👓 Microsoft threatens to take down Gab.ai over hate speech | Quartz

Read Microsoft threatened to stop hosting the alt-right’s favorite social network by Simone Stolzoff (Quartz)
Another company takes a stand for the limits of free speech online.

👓 Gab, the Alt-Right Social Media Site, Gets Banned | NY Mag | Intelligencer

Read Gab, the Social Media Site for the Alt-Right, Gets Deplatformed (Intelligencer)
After the Pittsburgh shooter was found to have used the site, it was abandoned by its business partners. What does that mean for Twitter?

👓 gab | Gab.ai

Read gab (gab.ai)

Gab has spent the past 48 hours proudly working with the DOJ and FBI to bring justice to an alleged terrorist. Because of the data we provided, they now have plenty of evidence for their case. In the midst of this Gab has been no-platformed by essential internet infrastructure providers at every level. We are the most censored, smeared, and no-platformed startup in history, which means we are a threat to the media and to the Silicon Valley Oligarchy.

Gab isn’t going anywhere.

It doesn’t matter what you write. It doesn’t matter what the sophist talking heads say on TV. It doesn’t matter what verified nobodies say on Twitter. We have plenty of options, resources, and support. We will exercise every possible avenue to keep Gab online and defend free speech and individual liberty for all people.

You have all just made Gab a nationally recognized brand as the home of free speech online at a time when Silicon Valley is stifling political speech they disagree with to interfere in a US election.

The internet is not reality. TV is not reality. 80% of normal everyday people agree with Gab and support free expression and liberty. The online outrage mob and mainstream media spin machine are the minority opinion. People are waking up, so please keep pointing the finger at a social network instead of pointing the finger at the alleged shooter who holds sole responsibility for his actions.

No-platform us all you want. Ban us all you want. Smear us all you want.

You can’t stop an idea.

As we transition to a new hosting provider Gab will be inaccessible for a period of time. We are working around the clock to get Gab.com back online. Thank you and remember to speak freely.

Andrew Torba, CEO Gab.com

The link to this site is definitely not an endorsement of any sort. I’m researching the idea of deplatforming and in particular Gab’s instance of it after their site was used by fringe groups to incite hatred which helped to fuel the shooting at the synagogue this past week.

My intent is also to archive a copy of the enhanced statement on what is left of their current website.

👓 Hopkins faculty promote better climate in machine learning | Hopkins CSW

Read Hopkins faculty promote better climate in machine learning (Women Faculty Forum at Homewood)
Today, 122 Hopkins faculty, post-docs, and grad students make a call to promote welcoming environments for women at machine learning conferences. In recognition of egregious behavior at recent conf…
Post moved from old URL
https://hopkinscsw.wordpress.com/2018/03/30/hopkins-faculty-promote-better-climate-in-machine-learning/

👓 Name Change | N.I.P.S.

Read NIPS Name Change by Terrence Sejnowski, Marian Stewart Bartlett, Michael Mozer, Corinna Cortes, Isabelle Guyon, Neil D. Lawrence, Daniel D. Lee, Ulrike von Luxburg, Masashi Sugiyama, Max Welling (nips.cc)

As many of you know, there has been an ongoing discussion concerning the name of the Neural Information Processing Systems conference. The current acronym NIPS has unintended connotations that some members of the community find offensive.

Following several well-publicized incidents of insensitivity at past conferences, and our acknowledgement of other less-publicized incidents, we conducted community polls requesting alternative names, rating the existing and alternative names, and soliciting additional comments.

After extensive discussions, the NIPS Board has decided not to change the name of the conference for now. The poll itself did not yield a clear consensus on a name change or a well-regarded alternative name.

This just makes me sick…

👓 Civix Releases New Online Media Literacy Videos | Hapgood

Replied to Civix Releases New Online Media Literacy Videos by Mike Caulfield (Hapgood)
I worked with Civix, a Canadian non-profit, to do a series of videos showing students basic web techniques for source verification and contextualization. I had boiled it down to four scripts runnin…
As I read this and tinker around a bit with some of the resources, including one for canadafactcheck.ca mentioned within one of the videos and add the “Wikipedia” to the Omnibar or try the “-site:” trick, the results there aren’t very solid themselves. Similarly a search for NewsWise.ca is rough because there are dozens of similar products with the same name which makes me think about the phrase “Doctor heal thyself.”

On the idea of the “-site:xyz.com” trick, perhaps one could create a browser extension or a bookmarklet that would use javascript to take the URL in the browser bar and massage it to return the requisite string and then execute the appropriate search so that with a simple click of a button, anyone can “remember” how to do it?

Similarly with searching for the root URLs of particular outlets by clipping off the longer paths of URLs one could use a browser bookmarklet to accomplish this with a simple click and save the seconds involved with highlighting and pasting? The more dead simple and quicker it can be, the better off we are. I’ve documented a browser bookmarklet on my site that trims news article URLs down to the base URL: https://boffosocko.com/2017/03/27/to-amp-or-not-to-amp-that-is-the-question/

As an example of this type of functionality, albiet probably with a lot more programming and manual work, Brill’s company NewsGuard has developed a Chrome browser extension that is meant to provide visual indicators on pages and in search for levels of fact checking: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/newsguard/hcgajcpgaalgpeholhdooeddllhedegi?hl=en

👓 Steven Brill’s NewsGuard wants to evaluate where you get your news | CNN

Read This start-up wants to evaluate your news sources (CNNMoney)
News Guard wants to grade websites using green, yellow, or red ratings and "nutrition labels" with more detailed information.

👓 A Roll-Up of Digipo Resources (4 September 2018) | Hapgood

Read A Roll-Up of Digipo Resources (4 September 2018) by Mike CaulfieldMike Caulfield (Hapgood)
One of the nice things about running a blog-fueled grassroots semi-funded initiative is the agility. The Digipo project has moved far and fast in the past year. But one of the bad things is all the…