Considering the rate of change in this field, what would be beneficial to learn for people who don't actually get to use machine learning in their day to day job? I'd love to dive in and learn more about machine learning but I don't want to waste time learning something that will be totally irrelevant in a couple years.
"Progressive" is marketing term backed by a shaky ideology that has been totally twisted to serve the powerful.
Eric Holder for example was hired for big money by Uber to push the narrative that background checks for Uber drivers is discriminatory against minorities, never mind that lack of background checks exposes women (especially women of color) to a lot of danger from sex offenders.
Another example is in my own city of Seattle, Comcast for years has been successfully advocating against broadband competitors and one of their "arguments" is that building out higher speed internet in high income areas will cause inequity that will affect minorities in poorer neighborhoods. By "progressive" logic this makes perfect sense but it's obvious that it's simply a powerful company blocking out competition.
You can't really "make your own platform" though. Ultimately the ISPs could shut down access to any website they don't think their customers should have access to. The only recourse would be for the censored to somehow construct their own physical internet infrastructure, which was so difficult and costly the first time that it was highly subsidized by the government.
And do you honestly think you should have the right to determine what elections should be considered "harmful" enough to shut down others speech? There is a wide range of opinion short of the alt-right but in the same direction that could be shut down too, for instance apparently a majority of white people think there is racism against now (https://www.npr.org/2017/10/24/559604836/majority-of-white-a...). Do you think this opinion is so wrong that it should be silenced from the public forum? Do you think it would even be possible to do so?
I think eroding free speech rights, especially in a time of increasing political extremism, will only make such tragedies more possible, not less. How long until extremists in power figure out a way to use the newly acceptable restrictions on speech in their favor? What happens if there is another 9/11 under Trump when freedom of speech has been sidelined? Can Trump then pressure companies to ban Muslims and political opponents off of the internet entirely "until we can figure out what the hell is going on"? Accurately predicting how loss of freedom will affect future tyranny is like accurately predicting the stock market, it just isn't going to happen.
That wasn't the point of my comment. Yes 1A only applies to government censorship, however the SC clearly view access to the internet and social media as necessary for full exercise of 1A rights. It's now on the legislature to actually write the laws that would grant free speech rights to internet users.
It isn't wire-tapping if they block you from accessing the wire to begin with. Forcing the phone companies to carry your speech over their wires is compelling speech across their property which should be against their 1A rights if you're correct. However, it clearly has been ruled not to violate their rights.
> A website ban isn't even remotely the same thing as a legal sanction.
The Supreme Court seemed to have very different take (Packingham v. North Carolina):
"Social media allows users to gain access to information and communicate with one another on any subject that might come to mind. With one broad stroke, North Carolina bars access to what for many are the principal sources for knowing current events, checking ads for employment, speaking and listening in the modern public square, and otherwise exploring the vast realms of human thought and
knowledge. Foreclosing access to social media altogether thus prevents users from engaging in the legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights."
What makes them private? They're operated on the phone company's lines and by talking on their lines you're compelling them to carry certain speech. The logic that states private communication carriers have an unlimited right to ban what they want to on their networks leads to the conclusion that "private" phone calls can be censored.
For better or worse foreign and domestic terrorist speech is treated separately. If ISIS was a domestic terrorist organization afaik they would have 1A rights.
Experience seems to indicate the opposite I think. The danger of niche mobs and/or terrorism is very real and scary, but losing our freedoms in order to address these perceived dangers is always far worse. For all the fear the "alt-right" has generated, exactly how many people have been come to harm because of them? They probably number in the dozens, which is a terrible tragedy but ultimately is that worth losing our fundamental rights? I personally don't think it is.
I find it far fetched that all of this is down to a massive conspiracy. Certainly there are actors that do this but they seem to just be amplifying by some small amount preexisting trends.
CAPTCHAs are easily gamed too. Just throw whatever CAPTCHA you're trying to solve on a porn website and once someone fills it out simply have the bot copy over the response. This has been done for some time now.
Brilliant. Twitter gets let off the hook by appearing to be "doing something" and people who charge for followers get a revenue boost by this new form of planned obsolescence. Twitter users get screwed by either getting caught up in the purges or having to pay even more money to bot creators to inflate their numbers, likely pricing many out of the market. Seems like a good time to short Twitter stock...
If society devolves into a tit-for-tat game of disenfranchising the "other team" we're in for a lot of trouble. And yes that includes shutting down your opponents on "private" platforms.
Freedom is a double edge sword. Some people use their freedom to elevate themselves, others are free to fail. In the West we treat an disinclination to handle freedom responsibly as either a moral failing (the right) or reject the possibility that failing to handle freedom can have anything to do with one's character at all and thus inequality must be blamed on external forces (the left). The truth is it is not necessarily a moral failing to handle freedom irresponsibility and handling freedom irresponsibly very likely has a lot to do with someone's personality.
I don't think we should lose sight of the fact that many human users are being caught up these "purges". I lost my twitter account because they determined I was a "bot" somehow. I didn't want to give them my phone number to prove that I was a human so I ended up having to make another account. Social media has become incredibly toxic in the past few years with hate speech and the self-proclaimed social justice heroes who think banning anyone for wrong-think is necessary to "save Democracy". The whole thing is a mess.
I'm thinking that a lot of this perceived difference is that taking a political stance is much more natural on social media than previously in real life. Before you would have to care enough to find some place to set your soap box or buy a printing press. The crazies definitely were there but there were also a large segment of the population that would have gladly espoused whacky beliefs but didn't have the motivation and/or resources to do so. Now, proclaiming that the earth is flat takes about 10 minutes of account setup online. I'm just not convinced that it really matters as much as people think it does.
I am still hopeful that the hand wringing about social media is overblown. Flat earthers for example I believe are in two camps: the genuine loonies that have always been with us in small numbers and the large number of people who just want to pretend to have whacky beliefs for the entertainment value of holding them (think people who believe in crystal healing and such). As dissatisfying as it is, freaking out about people who hold beliefs for entertainment is counter productive.
We also have to remember that discourse waxes and wanes in tone. Throughout the 1800s for example it wasn't uncommon for massive brawls to take place between what were essentially political gangs. Think of the brawls we see today between antifa and right wing groups. Also the 70s saw literally thousands of bombings in NYC by far left groups. Its probable that due to political realignment and inevitable shifts in technology we're going to see this going forward. The most important thing we can all do is keep faith in our fundamental freedoms, like freedom of speech.
I doubt this would help. Judging by my Facebook feed Americans are perfectly capable of vicious, polarized discourse without foreign influence. In fact this may backfire as it would allow the hateful in society to have more of a right to preach on these platforms as no one would be able to accuse them of being foreign trolls. Its probable that this level of discourse is here to stay and that the previous elevated, comparably "civilized" discourse was a result of broadcast media and its top-down structure.
I'm curious what people would propose we do about this? What if it turns out that doctors of the same ethnic group treat their co-ethnics better, even if it isn't conscious? I fear the conclusion people will draw is just a new form of segregation in every area of life.