craig newmark is a generous, effective, and humorous philanthropist. he is behind an absurdist easter egg that you can find in the bathrooms of various nonprofits he's supported: a toilet dedicated to his memory.
News Site to Investigate Big Tech, Helped by Craigslist Founder
21–30 of 65 posts
Re: News Site to Investigate Big Tech, Helped by Craigslist Founder
#22The comparison to canned food is interesting. It probably resonates with people better than comparing the tech industry to cigarettes. Few people now remember how beloved cigarettes were in their heyday.
I wonder if anybody could give me a link to read on canned food issues. I come from Russia and there were non in USSR and Russia after USSR dissolved, what were the issues in the US?
You could look at it from at least two angles: canned food became associated with lower economic classes, and people became concerned that much of the nutritional value of canned foods was lost when they were preserved.
https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/really-the-claim-f...
Today people who see themselves as well-off and/or health-conscious may pride themselves on eating fresh (as well as local and in-season) foods, although it can be an expensive habit in places that don't have as much local agriculture. Restaurants will brag about how they don't use packaged food and how they made dishes from fresh ingredients.
If you go to supermarkets that cater to poorer people, you'll probably see comparatively more preserved foods, although this is far from the only factor and all supermarkets will certainly offer a significant selection of preserved foods.
This phenomenon is probably even more pronounced with "TV dinners", which when they were introduced were seen as impressive and futuristic and somewhat luxurious, and nowadays the original styles are seen as somewhat unhealthy and unappetizing and are often associated with poverty or a lack of leisure time (although there are also frozen prepared dishes that are marketed differently).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_dinner
Edit: an example of some marketing about fresh ingredients in a restaurant
https://www.chipotle.com/cooking
Chipotle isn't a very expensive restaurant but they know that being able to say or imply that they prepare most of their items on-site from fresh ingredients makes it look a lot fancier to visitors, compared to other restaurants that might use more canned or frozen ingredients.
Re: News Site to Investigate Big Tech, Helped by Craigslist Founder
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much do you think it costs to employ 30-40 of the following people for 5 or 10 years? “reporters and junior reporters, data journalists, researchers, copy editors, line editors, and an assistant managing editor. Graphics editors and designers, a social media editor, a reach/engagement editor, a partnerships lead, developers, and an analytics lead. A Chief Revenue Officer, a Chief of Finance and Administration, an…
And during that time there's no revenue? I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted: as a publisher of multiple online and offline projects it seems an extravagant amount for a publication that has a very narrow scope.
> And during that time there's no revenue?
Yep. Removing ads and removing revenue removes conflicts.
Re: News Site to Investigate Big Tech, Helped by Craigslist Founder
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a non-profit, so probably not much if any advertising, and they'll likely be drawing a lot from ProPublica's model in terms of organization, impact, and growth. ProPublica's annual expenses were over $12 million in 2016, and if you're interested you can get a rough breakdown of where that goes in their 990: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/142...
ProPublica has a much, much wider brief, which should translate into why it receives $16 million in annual contributions. OTOH, I can't see how a site that covers a technology niche can support that level of ongoing contributions.
Tech is not really a narrow niche.
Re: News Site to Investigate Big Tech, Helped by Craigslist Founder
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if anybody could give me a link to read on canned food issues. I come from Russia and there were non in USSR and Russia after USSR dissolved, what were the issues in the US?
You could look at it from at least two angles: canned food became associated with lower economic classes, and people became concerned that much of the nutritional value of canned foods was lost when they were preserved. https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/really-the-claim-f... Today people who see themselves as well-off and/or health-conscious may pride themselves on eating fresh (as well as local and in-season…
Cans are also lined with plastic, so there's the whole BPA or BPA replacement leeching into your food thing as well.
Re: News Site to Investigate Big Tech, Helped by Craigslist Founder
#26Julia Angwin was one of the key people who shed a light on GNU Privacy Guard's precarious funding, helping OSS dev Werner Koch get donations from Stripe, FB, and others:
The World's Email Encryption Software Relies on One Guy, Who is Going Broke (2015)
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-worlds-email-encrypti...
Re: News Site to Investigate Big Tech, Helped by Craigslist Founder
#27I'd like to see a serious investigation and discussion around the recommendation engines used to rank content added here.
Something is seriously wrong with youtube's algorithm, whether in the technical implementation or how it deals with spam/unintended consequences.
Kids watching cartoons get recommended messed up stuff (e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/65rkxv/what_i... ), watch a single Jordan Peterson video and youtube will recommend you every fringe alt-right anti-feminism video it can find for months... It is toxic, causes real harm, normalizes extremist viewpoints and is shifting the Overton window in politics.
I'm not advocating censorship in any way, my concern is if algorithms/implementation bias what people see towards what will get the strongest reaction it is at least in a similar class of harm as censorship...
I have a hunch this is a natural consequence of using something like UCB (upper confidence bound) for contextual bandits to rank results when the feature vectors are using broad user / video clusters. Are explore vs exploit reinforcement learning algorithms used in production very susceptible to adversarial spam? Any evidence of fringe videos paying for viewbots etc...
Re: News Site to Investigate Big Tech, Helped by Craigslist Founder
#28This looks awesome. >"The site will explore three broad investigative categories: how profiling software discriminates against the poor and other vulnerable groups; internet health and infections like bots, scams and misinformation; and the awesome power of the tech companies. The Markup will release all its stories under a creative commons license so other organizations can republish them, as ProPublica does." Also,…
Glad they mention misinformation! When AirBnb was spamming craiglist with non existing rentals just to capture your email and send you to their website back then it wasnt illegal per se, but was obviously highly immoral despite Y investment (i get that PG and corp doesnt care about morals when the buck is to be made; why wouldnt they invest in for example Uber for abortions if down the road such unicorn can be passed on for a cool billion bucks). Today for such misinformation Airbnb would be booted out of craiglist and probably fined by Fcc. In Europe this is covered by GDPR now, as the law strictly forbids saying one thing, and doing something totally different with captured information.
Re: News Site to Investigate Big Tech, Helped by Craigslist Founder
#29[deleted]
Re: News Site to Investigate Big Tech, Helped by Craigslist Founder
#30> The site will explore three broad investigative categories: how profiling software discriminates against the poor and other vulnerable groups; internet health and infections like bots, scams and misinformation; and the awesome power of the tech companies.
Shouldn't they prove "if" software discriminates before figuring out "how"? It seems like they already have a conclusion in mind which rarely produces quality results.