wells santo @ homo luddites Profile picture
Critical race & algorithmic justice @UMSI. SSBM and anime hot takes. Link main! Pan/bi enby. she/he 🇹🇼🇮🇩🏳️‍⚧️
Apr 17, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
I'm extremely disappointed at how the executive producers of BEEF, which includes Ali Wong and Steven Yeun, have been handling the David Choe situation. The fact they've been close friends with him, cast him, and are now silent (or actively protecting) him is beyond angering. I've been trying not to engage in "discourse" too much on here lately, but I didn't want to be silent about this. It seems outlets aren't really talking about it, and folks who have spoken up about David Choe are being silenced, and that's not alright.
Mar 13, 2023 17 tweets 3 min read
i wish there was an option to tweet only to my mutuals (not just my twitter circle), because i want to be vulnerable with y'all, but the public (esp all these harassers) don't deserve access to that. but i have so much i want to say to the people i trust i'm not going to lock my account, but the harassment is continuing. and i've noticed folks are now in their own threads joking about threatening me. i'm not bothered by it as much as the fact that it's just tremendously appalling behavior & we deserve better
Mar 11, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
my top viral tweets were about elon musk being a fraud (back when folks were still pro-tesla) and awkwafina being anti-black (back when she was on the rise after the farewell)

so... yeah i'm just glad my takes aged well over all these year

but i still remember when folks loved the both of them

been a day 1 hater and i hope y'all never forget
Feb 23, 2023 11 tweets 2 min read
i've been wanting to do a project on the digital yellowface of vtubing for a while now, but felt it's far too dangerous to do (especially seeing some of the death threats and doxxing that some viewers engage in) there's been a lot of theorizing work around games and the gaming community, but i'd love to see more social science / media and cultural studies attention on vtubers, which imo is situated at the crosshairs of race, celebrity, performance, digital dualism, AI, and gender
Jan 18, 2023 7 tweets 2 min read
asian american discourse rn be like

A: damn white women are racist as hell
B: aCtUaLLy if you ask REAL asians in japan, no one cares about gwen stefani saying she's japanese
A: i was talking about the asian woman being stabbed to death in indiana by a white woman
B:
A:
B: what idk why but that article coming out invalidating asian americans and acting as if we're more concerned about gwen stefani at this EXACT moment when we're angry and grieving about the murder in indiana has got me messed up
Jan 17, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
do folks know when refurb macbook pro prices go down? now that the new m2 macbook pro ($1999 lowest price) is out, i'm thinking about finally getting the m1 macbook pro ($1539 lowest atm) even if i don't get it, i highly recommend getting a refurb for folks who are shopping for a new laptop. my uni has given me a m2 macbook air to use, and honestly i think the m1 mbp will be just fine compared to an m2 mbp. so it's definitely a better buy for the price imo
Jan 17, 2023 11 tweets 3 min read
and here's the thing: these tweets clearly aren't "for you" cause we're pretty much all seeing them. twitter's "for you" operates more like a "trending" page. been noticing all of us getting more and more generic, shared content, and it's made the experience so much worse. imo part of what's powerful about recommendation algorithms and huge social media platforms should be the fact that there's *discovery*. the algo should help us see stuff we haven't seen / things we can share with others, that might be new to them as well.
Jun 23, 2022 5 tweets 3 min read
"When one sees a racist tweet receive hundreds of thousands of interactions, is the platform the antagonist?" - @DocDre #FAccT22 "Any technical endeavor should properly begin by reflecting upon sociological and cultural understandings of that technology’s use and consequences" - @DocDre #FAccT22
Jun 23, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
Something that (initially) quietly happened this week that might need more attention: OpenAI's DALL-E (AI for image generation), which originally had a "no realistic faces allowed" policy has been changed to allow for the generation & sharing of faces.

Here's their official email about the policy change, and why they put the policy change in place (citing new "safety measures"). I don't know if this is enough, tbh.

Jun 23, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
Really excellent talk right now on "Automating Care: Online Food Delivery Work During the CoVID-19 Crisis in India" by Anubha Singh and Tina Park that looks at structural inequalities and power asymmetries in the notions of "care" that delivery apps employed during COVID #FAccT22 Gotta read this paper and revisit this talk when I have more time, because this critical analysis applied to the measures adopted by delivery platforms in India is just *chef's kiss*
Jun 22, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
Really powerful video at #FAccT22 right now about gig workers who had to deal with pay change algorithms at the start of pandemic & how a community-led audit helped them bargain this "black box".

They'll be releasing a public version of the video soon (keep your eyes peeled)! This work was led by folks at Coworker.org with gig workers at Shipt.

From the panel, it seems that they went to Shipt with a systematic review of the data around how their algorithms reduced workers' pay, but Shipt has denied this & things have not changed. #FAccT22
Jun 22, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
My high school (after I graduated) published a 'kill list' with names of Black students on it. NY Mag would probably write a spin article about how we should suspend our judgements about the model minority Asian kids who made that list. Yes, this really happened, and there was NOT enough backlash. It was made by certain students at the school, and in the years that followed, other students organized a racial justice coalition at the school to address it. But not sure what ended up happening.
Jun 22, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
Very cool paper from Terrence Neumann, Maria De-Arteaga, and Sina Fazelpour thinking about justice in misinformation detection systems that asks what "informational justice" looks like, esp. for different stakeholders who interact with information claims. #FAccT22 Huge example here. NYTimes conducted a data labelling experiment, where Native American students labelled this image of Residential Schools with tags such as genocide and cultural elimination. A leading algorithm labelled it "crowd, audience, and smile". Holy crap, #FAccT22
Jun 22, 2022 10 tweets 5 min read
Being shown now at #FAccT22! The production quality on this paper video is so good 🥺 A must-watch for those interested in this growing area of AI auditing Video is also moving at light speed 😅 so I haven't been able to take notes, catch the video, and tweet about it.

Some highlights:
* Client confidentiality prevents second-party auditors from sharing data about the audits
* Auditing regulation: ...there are few
#FAccT22
Jun 22, 2022 6 tweets 4 min read
On #fuckthealgorithm, @g8enjamin: "resisting the algorithm is really resisting the *use* of algorithms" #FAccT22 On the use of #fuckthealgorithm, folks using it "viewed the algorithm as this local of complex sociotechnical issues, not trying to compress it into a technical object" #FAccT22

spectacular tracing of algorithmic resistance with this hashtag by @g8enjamin
Jun 22, 2022 12 tweets 5 min read
Very interesting keynote panel at #FAccT22 now about management tools ('bossware') that reduce worker's autonomy and give power to employers.

Thinking about products that are often marketed for productivity, but used in unintended ways. Dr. Negron mentions that this tech can be weaponized by companies; for example, they're used by places like Amazon and Whole Foods to understand where there's a connection between workers that could lead to unionizing (!!). #FAccT22
Jun 21, 2022 6 tweets 2 min read
Some examples of how researchers have tried to align NLP systems with defined values, followed by Dr. Fung's proposition. #FAccT22

We know the first examples don't work, and I'm *really* curious what critical folks working on NLP and LLMs think about this talk right now 🤔 Image Definitely did not expect that this talk would lean on the trolley problem so much (and framing ethics as strictly either deontological or utilitarian).
Jun 21, 2022 5 tweets 2 min read
Just realizing now that there's an excellent panel from @VinhcentLe and @thecxphan from @Greenlining about community investment & AI, specifically with a focus on the Town (Oakland!!).

#FAccT22 folks at the conference irl should check it out! I'm not sure if this session is being recorded, but this is a great talk about working with local communities & grassroots CBOs. I've seen a lot of people at the conference ask about how to engage marginalized communities, and I'd like to point folks towards this session!
May 17, 2022 15 tweets 4 min read
So today, GrubHub offered $15 off orders from 11am to 2pm in NYC, which got thousands of customers to order free meals within that time window.

The issue? They didn't tell restaurants & delivery workers they were doing this. Giving folks $15 off is great! But it's a serious problem when you time-limit it, because that means you're forcing users to all order at the same time. Take a moment to consider why this might not be a good thing... especially if understaffed restaurants aren't made aware.
May 17, 2022 6 tweets 2 min read
Yammer lives on as Microsoft Teams, which I think is still going strong in 2022! Some friends prefer it over Slack, actually 🤔

Pour one out for HipChat, which had endless downtime and bugs, but was pretty popular in many workplaces before Slack totally swept it. 😭 Here's an interesting story: I had been using Slack since 2015, but it's easy for some of us to think it's always been around. When I was interviewing with companies and PhD programs in 2016, I asked if they used Slack for team comms. Majority had never heard of it or used it!
May 16, 2022 5 tweets 1 min read
One thing that has particularly been difficult for me with the pandemic + solo contracting: I'm not seeing or talking to folks as often. I'm not sharing space with my community as often. The isolation has been very real, and Twitter hasn't been enough. I'm *really* bad at reaching out to folks, and I hate forced social Zoom calls as much as the next person, but it would be *really* nice to have a group coffee chat / commiseration / complaining session with some folks right about now.