DTC

 Area 1: Content moderation is something that big social media and gaming platforms are focusing on, but they don't do most of the work themselves. They outsource it to low paid contractors outside the company. Some of the content is very traumatizing, and workers are exposed to a steady stream of unsavory images. Much of it is porn, but some includes images or videos of killings & self-harm or horrifying, traumatizing treatment of children. Social media sites aren't required to moderate content, as they aren't considered publishers, but they must keep their sites user friendly enough that people won't abandon them. Much of the work is done in low-wage U.S. states or increasingly in countries like the Philippines, where labor rates are even lower. These content mods number over 100,000 worldwide, dwarfing the full-time headcount at companies like Google and Facebook.  Area 2: Just reading about the topics that were traumatizing to moderators had my stomach turning a...

 Area 1: Ingrid Burrington covers the remote submarine cable termination in Point Arena, California . While it provides a high-speed internet link to Japan, the local town doesn't have access to that resource.   Connectivity to the town isn't supported by a business case that any of the big providers (AT&T most likely in this case) would sign off on; the $1M price tag wouldn't return on investment. Burrington's point that telecommunications generally follows conquest/empire is telling, as the locals are not in direct service of that aim. She points out that the private/commercial internet will likely never be universally accessible, and that only through local businesses and public co-ops can we ever hope it will. Area 2: This piece reminded me of the new New York City freeways championed by Robert Moses in the 1950s. They were not for the people whose neighborhoods they plowed under and divided. There were no on-ramps for the disrupted neighborhoods. The freeways w...

Area 1: Big article, lots to process. Here's what I noticed: Rashad Robinson makes a point about how a voice and visibility must not be confused with actual power, especially if marginalized folks are not in control of the platform. The power to tell an authentic story is critical.   Robinson comments about platform ownership and filter algorithms suppressing the voices of marginalized folks and the need of holding those platforms accountable. He talks about a study of the news and noted a 30-70% distortion rate "in terms of over-showing Black crime and under-reporting white crime."  And something like this will change peoples' perception of their communities and how suspiciously they view other people by race. Robinson also mentions how institutions do not give us the tools we need to be "good citizens in our democracy." Area 2:  Rashad Robinson's point about visibility vs power resounds with me. For example, I just got my new Outside magazine in the ma...

Remediating Social Media (Bridy) Area 1: The gist of Bridy's argument is that we should have net neutrality for network providers (common carrier) but not for the application layer, which is where users interact with content. This is where applications live, as well as social media sites, YouTube, etc. Network providers are not content aware; while they know the type of data (voice, video, text), then aren't necessarily looking at the actual content. A content agnostic legal approach for social media sites would allow fake news and hate speech to run rampant (more than it already is), even if it is not technically illegal. She mentions that machine learning and other automated tools have difficultly detecting context (pg 226). For example, a photo of a breast used for teaching cancer self-exams might be auto-flagged and would need a human to check the context. Area 2: One of the things that strikes me about this piece is Bridy’s mention of a “’net neutrality’ rule for social me...