The task force, which sources tell BuzzFeed News includes employees from across the company, has already rebutted a statement made by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at a conference last week that the argument that fake news on Facebook affected the election was “a pretty crazy idea.” “It’s not a crazy idea. What’s crazy is for him to come out and dismiss it like that, when he knows, and those of us at the company know, that fake news ran wild on our platform during the entire campaign season,” said one Facebook employee, who works in the social network’s engineering division. He, like the four other Facebook employees who spoke to BuzzFeed News for this story, would only speak on condition of anonymity. All five employees said they had been warned by their superiors against speaking to press, and feared they would lose their jobs if named. The employees declined to provide many details on the task force. One employee said “more than dozens” of employees were involved, and that they had met twice in the last six days. At the moment, they are meeting in secret, to allow members of the group to speak freely and without fear of condemnation from senior management. The group plans to formalize its meetings and eventually make a list of recommendations to Facebook’s senior management. Another Facebook employee said while the task force remained small, “hundreds” of Facebook employees had expressed dissatisfaction with the company’s stance on fake news in private online chats, and wanted to support efforts to challenge that position.

(via Renegade Facebook Employees Form Task Force To Battle Fake News - BuzzFeed News)

This is a hugely important thread with many points being made that members of the technology community need to address and have a serious conversation about

Really good piece. linked too by just about everybody // JAY

"In this essay I argue that an important recent development in the struggle to represent algorithms is that computer algorithms now have their own public relations. That is, they have both a public-facing identity and new promotional discourses that depict them as efficient, valuable, powerful, and objective. It is vital that we understand how the algorithms that dominate our experience operate upon us. Yet commercial companies -a recent phenomenon- now systematically manage our image of algorithms and the information we receive about them. Algorithms themselves, rather than just the companies that operate them, have become the subject of mass marketing claims. To make this clear, I analyze a variety of visual and multimedia depictions of algorithms. I begin by reviewing a variety of historical and contemporary attempts to represent algorithms for novices in educational settings, and then I compare these to recent commercial depictions. I will conclude with a critique of current trends and a call for a counter-visuality that can resist them."

Seeing the Sort: The Aesthetic and Industrial Defense of “The Algorithm” // http://median.newmediacaucus.org/art-infrastructures-information/seeing-the-sort-the-aesthetic-and-industrial-defense-of-the-algorithm/

“ This work is an act of political protest by means of bringing transparency to the surveillance and biometric techniques used today. These DATA-MASKS give form to an otherwise invisible network of control and identification systems and make their... “ This work is an act of political protest by means of bringing transparency to the surveillance and biometric techniques used today. These DATA-MASKS give form to an otherwise invisible network of control and identification systems and make their... “ This work is an act of political protest by means of bringing transparency to the surveillance and biometric techniques used today. These DATA-MASKS give form to an otherwise invisible network of control and identification systems and make their...

This work is an act of political protest by means of bringing transparency to the surveillance and biometric techniques used today. These DATA-MASKS give form to an otherwise invisible network of control and identification systems and make their effect on our identities tangible and visible.

This research has resulted in the production of a series of 3D printed face masks which were algorithmically evolved to satisfy facial recognition algorithms. It is important to understand the the goal of creating these masks isn’t to defeat facial recognition or provide something undetectable, simply covering your face with your hand will do that. Rather, my goal is to show the machine what it’s looking for, to hold a mirror up to the all-seeing eye of the digital-panopticon we live in and let it stare back into its own mind.

These masks are shadows of human beings as seen by the minds-eye of the machine-organism. These DATA-MASKS are animistic deities brought out of the algorithmic-spirit-world of the machine and into our material world, ready to tell us their secrets, or warn us of what’s to come. These masks are intended for use in acts of protest, poetry, civil disobedience, and shamanistic ritual by the citizens of our global village as it becomes further blanketed by techno-sphere.

DATA-MASKS - Sterling Crispin

Facial recognition, genetic algorithms, 3d printed masks 

2013-present 

http://www.sterlingcrispin.com/data-masks.html