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Facebook ad blocker safeguards limit political transparency campaigns
Facebook's efforts to protect user data are creating some headaches for attempts to improve accountability for political ads. The Guardian has learned that at least a few political ad transparency campaigns, including those from ProPublica and WhoTargetsMe, have lost some of their ability to monitor Facebook ads. The social network has been clamping down on web plugins like ad blockers that could potentially swipe data, and its changes have broken the functionality of research tools that need the info to show where ads are really coming from.
Google Search will highlight data journalism to fight fake news
Data journalism, which brings stories to life by showing facts in a visual way, is a key in the fight against fake news. Working with news sites and publishers, Google is bringing that information front and center to consumers in its Search results. Now, when you Google specific subjects like a non-profit's expenses for a given year, it'll show specific tabular data right at the top of the page ahead all other results.
Facebook apologizes for its moderation 'mistakes'
With over 2 billion users and counting, policing Facebook is an increasingly difficult task. The unenviable job rests on the shoulders of a 7,500-strong team of content moderators (alongside the site's algorithms), who scour through tons of unsightly posts, ranging from violent terrorist material to images of child abuse. Unsurprisingly, they don't always get it right (in part due to Facebook's ambiguous guidelines). And so, yet another report of hateful material slipping through the site's cracks has emerged, this time from ProPublica.
Facebook job ads are being used to filter out older applicants
Facebook's targeted ad tools have landed it in hot water again. Dozens of companies are placing recruitment ads restricted to select age groups on the social network, according to a joint investigation by ProPublica and The New York Times. They include Verizon, Amazon, Goldman Sachs, Target and Facebook itself, among others. Legal experts are questioning whether the practices are lawful, specifically whether they abide with the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, which forbids bias against people 40 or older in hiring.
Google and ProPublica help journalists cover local elections
ProPublica and Google's News Lab are teaming up to help journalists, especially at the local level, report on all things related to elections. The Election Databot, which launched during the 2016 general election, will now offer up data on every race from the Alabama senate race through to the 2018 midterms. The portal for each event will broadcast a firehose of relevant news stories, search trends for the candidates and even broadcast FEC spending data.
New York City ordered to share code for DNA evidence software
Many attempts to open up access to software in the justice system have fallen flat. Advocates in New York, however, have just scored a significant victory. A federal judge has publicly unsealed the source code for DNA analysis software previously used in New York City's crime lab, Forensic Statistical Tool, after ProPublica motioned for its disclosure. There are concerns that the software may have sent innocent people to prison by incorrectly determining that a suspect's DNA was likely to be part of a mix of genetic material (such as the handle of a gun). Public access to the code could theoretically catch flaws in the methodology and clear someone's name.
Google has targeted ads based on hate speech, too
Yesterday, ProPublica released a report on its investigation into the sorts of ad categories Facebook makes available to advertisers. It found that the website allowed it to target ads to users based on categories like "Jew hater" and "How to burn jews" among other antisemitic options. Today, BuzzFeed reports that Google has a similar problem.
Watson is helping heal America's broken criminal-sentencing system
The American criminal-justice system's sentencing system is among the fairest and most equitable in the world ... assuming you're wealthy, white and male. Everybody else is generally SOL. During the past three decades, America's prison population has quadrupled to more than 2.3 million people. Of those incarcerated, 58 percent are either black or Latino (despite those groups constituting barely a quarter of the general US population). The racial disparity in America's justice system is both obvious and endemic, which is why some courts have started looking for technological solutions. But can an artificial intelligence really make better sentencing recommendations than the people who designed it? We're about to find out.
Google uses machine learning to help journalists track hate
Hate crimes have sadly existed long before last weekend's tragic events in Charlottesville, Virginia but tracking them has been difficult. To help fix that, the Google News Lab has partnered with ProPublica, the New York Times, BuzzFeed News, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the University of Miami's School of Communications on the Documenting Hate News Index. Machine learning is used to pull locations, names and events from some 3.000 news stories published since this February into an easy-to-navigate feed of articles.
Federal regulators crack down on social media abuse in nursing homes
According to a ProPublica report released late last year, documented cases of nursing home employees sharing abusive or degrading images of their residents on social media are on the rise. To combat the problem, federal health officials from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which regulates nursing homes and assisted living facilities, have now asked state health departments to enact policies that prohibit employees from taking or sharing demeaning photos of residents.
The Dark Web has its first major news publication
The Dark Web has a nasty reputation (and deservedly so) but perhaps investigative news publication ProPublica being the first major media organization on the anonymized version of the internet can change that a bit. The reasoning? "We don't want anyone to know that you came to us or what you read," ProPublica's web developer Mike Tigas told Wired. The idea is that the publication wants to ensure that people reading its Pulitzer-winning work are safe in places like China where censorship reigns supreme. Or that anonymous sources or leakers can read the articles they provided information for without fear of being caught.
Frontline investigates the cause of cell tower deaths tonight (video)
You probably don't give much thought to the towers that blanket us with wireless signals and the technicians that climb up them, almost constantly, to upgrade the equipment. The PBS investigative journalism series, Frontline, does and tonight on your local PBS HD affiliate the findings from their investigation of the numerous fatalities will premier -- check out the embedded preview and then the local listings for specific time and channel. Who's to blame, what can be done to prevent it and more will be covered, as well as discussed via an online chat with the film's producers on Wednesday the 23rd at 1PM ET, with one of our very own moderating the panel. Feel free to leave questions for the producers and then join us tomorrow via the embedded chat after the break.
