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On this edition of The Web This Week, lawmakers were dissatisfied with Instagram's (in)action following the Facebook Files revelations, Twitter encountered some unexpected challenges to its content moderation efforts, and Amazon Web Services also had a breakdown.
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Adam Mosseri testifies before Congress - This week, the Instagram chief appeared before a US Senate subcommittee on consumer protection, where lawmakers grilled him on leaked internal research that showed Instagram had a toxic effect on some teenagers.
A day before his appearance, the company announced a new “take a break” feature aimed at making it harder for users to fall down rabbit holes that could be harmful to their mental health. During his hearing, he also said that Instagram was working to bring back the chronological feed, rather than the algorithm-ranked feed it currently shows. Mosseri, however, refused to commit to permanently ending the paused plans to create an under 13s version of the platform, stating he remained “proud of the platform’s efforts to keep young people safe.”
Lawmakers were not impressed by these features nor by what was termed “a lack of commitment” to solving the issues raised ➤ The New York Times
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Amazon, interrupted - On Tuesday, Amazon's cloud services were disrupted, temporarily knocking out major streaming platforms, a wide range of apps and Amazon.com during peak Christmas shopping season.
This is the second outage of a major internet service this quarter — AWS supplies nearly a third of all cloud computing services used by companies online — and is yet another example of how market dominance can prove disastrous for users ➤ Reuters
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US- and UK-based victims of the genocide of Rohingya Muslims sue Facebook - In the complaint, they state that the social media network’s negligence facilitated the genocide, highlighting its algorithms’ amplification of hate speech and its failure to take down inflammatory posts as factors ➤ The Guardian
Unintended consequences - Far-right extremists exploited Twitter’s new private media policy by attempting — and succeeding — to get the accounts of anti-extremists who uploaded photos from hate rallies suspended. The platform has been criticised over the vague wording of the policy, which lets private individuals request the removal of photos or videos of themselves, because of the ramifications it could have on journalists or other users who have a legitimate reason for posting others’ photos online. ➤ The Verge
Overhauling the reporting system - Meanwhile, the platform also announced that it is testing changes to the way it handles reported tweets, so that a person reporting a tweet doesn’t have to choose from a list of pre-selected descriptions of rule violations, and instead, will be asked what happened in a “symptoms-first” approach to gather more complete information ➤ The Verge
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Percentage of female drivers for ride-sharing apps in South Africa who said security is the top reason why they do not drive more hours ➤ Quartz Africa
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Spotify Wrapped - This week, social media was abuzz with endless discussion over what has now become an annual end-of-year tradition. For Kelly Pau, this obsession reveals the extent to which algorithms have become integrated into the way we conceive of ourselves in digital consumer culture ➤ Vox
The reward for a privacy breach is a patent? - Despite its controversial business practices and a recent fine from the British independent data privacy authority, ClearviewAI is set to receive a US patent for its facial recognition technology. This tech has previously been denounced by critics as a violation of privacy, and it may negatively impact minority communities ➤ Gizmodo
Perpetuating bias - Speaking of algorithms harming minority communities, The Markup and Gizmodo co-published an investigation showing how PredPol, a prominent crime prediction software deployed by police departments across the US, mostly avoided Whiter neighbourhoods and targeted Black and Latino neighbourhoods ➤ The Markup
AI for therapy - Researchers are using artificial intelligence to learn more about how therapy works by examining the language therapists use with clients, in the hopes that It could lead to more people getting better, and staying better ➤ MIT Technology Review
Ethical AI - Following the launch of her new institute, Timnit Gebru writes that for AI to be truly ethical, its research must be independent from big tech ➤ The Guardian
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“Only when we change the incentive structure will we see technology that prioritises the wellbeing of citizens – rather than a continued race to figure out how to kill more people more efficiently, or make the most amount of money for a handful of corporations around the world.”
Timnit Gebru, Founder and executive director of the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) | The Guardian
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Web Foundation in the News
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Commitments made by Facebook, Google, TikTok and Twitter to tackle online abuse on their platforms following The Web Foundation’s Tech Policy Design Lab on online gender-based violence were mentioned in an article by Quartz Africa on the safety of Africa’s female gig workers.
The Web Foundation Gender Research Manager Radhika Radhakrishnan was recognised in the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics – 2022 list.
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