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Wolfie Christl Profile picture
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28 Apr, 7 tweets, 2 min read
"FB is seeking 230 immunity ... to discriminate based on age/gender when deciding which financial ads to show users"

Thread:
I guess, discrete targeting based on age and gender is just the tip of the iceberg as compared to Facebook's ML-based targeting/optimization stuff.

The best way to fix the latter is to ban FB (and G) from utilizing comprehensive real-time behavioral data for automated targeting.
In other news today:

"Facebook allowed ... to target children with ads on gambling, alcohol and extreme weight loss"
theguardian.com/technology/202…
Facebook: "We have significant measures in place to review all ads before and after they run"

I call bs. FB does not (want to) police its commercial panoptic sort technology in any adequate way, nor does Google.
FB "offered the page the ability to advertise to approximately 740,000 Australian children aged between 13 and 17 ... they were able to advertise to teens under 18 with interests in alcohol, smoking and vaping, gambling, extreme weight loss, fast foods and online dating services"
Anyway, addressing targeting based on discrete categories such as age, gender or 'weight loss' is just scratching the surface.

Facebook's automated optimization mechanisms based on comprehensive data and ML will find+target the same groups without using any of those categories.
The best (or only) way to address this is to limit how large online platforms, especially services that are core digital infrastructure, can use comprehensive real-time data for purposes like behavioral advertising (including attribution) and personalization for profit at large.

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More from @WolfieChristl

Wolfie Christl Profile picture
21 Apr
Final version of the European Commission's proposal for an AI regulation:
digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/pro…

Eventually, the three main EU bodies (council, parliament and commission) will have to agree on a common version of the text #lobbyingwar #kickoff
"Many of the most harmful uses are not prohibited - like predictive policing, uses of AI for migration control, biometric categorisation"

Thread by EDRi's @sarahchander and @ellajakubowska1 addressing problems from a civil/digital rights perspective:
Most "systems that could inflict serious economic harm are treated negligently. Strikingly the proposal ignores most economic harms", and "the ban of #DarkPatterns ... has largely disappeared".

Problems from a consumer protection perspective:
Read 4 tweets
Wolfie Christl Profile picture
20 Apr
"Obviously Brussels is full of lobbyists, think tanks and people who never disclose that they are working for the companies. The gatekeepers are the law firms"

Interview with @TomValletti, former chief economist at the European Commission: thecounterbalance.substack.com/p/the-european…
"The GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) have acquired more than 1,000 firms in the past 20 years, and zero of those transactions have been blocked - and 97 percent were not even assessed by anybody. These are extreme, ridiculous numbers"
"these think tanks, like the Global Antitrust Institute [at George Mason University], and the International Centre for Law & Economics, they are funded by the Koch brothers, by the Googles and the Facebooks, they don’t disclose, and they basically brainwash generations of judges"
Read 6 tweets
Wolfie Christl Profile picture
18 Apr
Zalando setzt für 5000 Beschäftigte ein Ratingsystem ein, bei dem sich alle gegenseitig bewerten und dann als Low/Good/Top Performer eingestuft werden.

Die Berliner Datenschutzbehörde hat das System laut Jahresbericht nach Änderungen für zulässig erklärt.
datenschutz-berlin.de/fileadmin/user…
Einerseits gut, dass die Behörde damit zumindest einige krasse Probleme entschärft hat.

Andererseits werden hier m.E. die Limitierungen des Datenschutzrechts als Instrument zu Eindämmung einseitiger betrieblicher Gestaltungsmacht sichtbar.
"Nach wie vor haben Beschäftigte, die weder als Bewertete noch als Bewerter*innen an dem Bewertungssystem teilnehmen wollen, keine Nachteile zu befürchten"

Kann es diese Freiwilligkeit, die mir eine Grundprämisse der Einschätzung der Behörde zu sein scheint, im Betrieb geben?
Read 12 tweets
Wolfie Christl Profile picture
15 Apr
"Banning us, the small adtech firms, from harvesting and linking data on billions across 1000s of companies without people's knowledge will benefit big tech, so you shouldn't"

"Banning us, the small food producers, from selling toxic food will benefit big food, so you shouldn't"
"Banning us from providing toxic food will kill competition, innovation and small businesses. Big food also provides toxic food, and they can easily afford to comply with regulations or shape them how they see fit or delay the enforcement, while we, the small producers cannot."
"So, the solution is clearly to allow both small and big food provide toxic food."
Read 4 tweets
Wolfie Christl Profile picture
12 Apr
…without explanation, the investigator changed the priority level on the escalation from "high" to "low"

Essential read on how FB just does not care about the world, because business goals. Breathtaking irresponsibility. Huge creds to the whistleblower.
theguardian.com/technology/202…
FB has control over global debate and social relationships at an unprecedented scale.

It's disastrous that FB only cares if cheap, very visible or otherwise in its self interest. And it's disastrous that FB has this kind of control, without any democratic accountability, at all.
"It’s not for threat intel to investigate fake engagement"

"I don’t think Honduras is big on people’s minds here"

"we prioritize stopping the most urgent and harmful threats globally. Fake likes is not one of them"

"I wish resources were unlimited"
(w $54.86bn in cash on hand)
Read 7 tweets
Wolfie Christl Profile picture
8 Apr
The large number of breaches shouldn't lead to the conclusion that data protection doesn't matter anymore, quite the contrary.

It shows that making the legitimacy to use personal data dependent on the functioning of technical measures or privacy self-management is totally over.
Of course, orgs must care about security, and they must be liable for not doing so. But there will always be shady actors who will use dirty data for shady purposes.

In any case, we need to make sure that legit entities cannot legally use dirty data without risking everything.
Regulating how entities can legally use/process personal data is basically what the EU data protection regime is about. Enforcing it requires bureaucratic procedures from documenting data processing to audits to general deterrence etc.

Like with dirty money, there are pitfalls.
Read 5 tweets

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