2/
We hear a lot about Facebook as a platform for manipulation - using machine learning to bypass our critical faculties and trick us into believing things that are bad for us - but the real show is in Facebook's ability to target, not manipulate.
1/

2/
3/
4/
5/
6/
7/
8/
More from Cory Doctorow #BLM
There are lots of problems with ad-tech:
* being spied on all the time means that the people of the 21st century are less able to be their authentic selves;
* any data that is collected and retained will eventually breach, creating untold harms;
1/
* data-collection enables for discriminatory business practices ("digital redlining");
* the huge, tangled hairball of adtech companies siphons lots (maybe even most) of the money that should go creators and media orgs; and
2/
* anti-adblock demands browsers and devices that thwart their owners' wishes, a capability that can be exploited for even more nefarious purposes;
That's all terrible, but it's also IRONIC, since it appears that, in addition to everything else, ad-tech is a fraud, a bezzle.
3/
Bezzle was John Kenneth Galbraith's term for "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." That is, a rotten log that has yet to be turned over.
4/
Bezzles unwind slowly, then all at once. We've had some important peeks under ad-tech's rotten log, and they're increasing in both intensity and velocity. If you follow @Chronotope, you've had a front-row seat to the
* being spied on all the time means that the people of the 21st century are less able to be their authentic selves;
* any data that is collected and retained will eventually breach, creating untold harms;
1/

* data-collection enables for discriminatory business practices ("digital redlining");
* the huge, tangled hairball of adtech companies siphons lots (maybe even most) of the money that should go creators and media orgs; and
2/
* anti-adblock demands browsers and devices that thwart their owners' wishes, a capability that can be exploited for even more nefarious purposes;
That's all terrible, but it's also IRONIC, since it appears that, in addition to everything else, ad-tech is a fraud, a bezzle.
3/
Bezzle was John Kenneth Galbraith's term for "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." That is, a rotten log that has yet to be turned over.
4/
Bezzles unwind slowly, then all at once. We've had some important peeks under ad-tech's rotten log, and they're increasing in both intensity and velocity. If you follow @Chronotope, you've had a front-row seat to the
The numbers are all fking fake, the metrics are bullshit, the agencies responsible for enforcing good practices are knowing bullshiters enforcing and profiting off all the fake numbers and none of the models make sense at scale of actual human users. https://t.co/sfmdrxGBNJ pic.twitter.com/thvicDEL29
— Aram Zucker-Scharff (@Chronotope) December 26, 2018
20 years on, #BushVGore is back in our discourse - an election stolen by mobs at the polling places, a media blitz, and a Supreme Court at its most antidemocratic and antimajoritarian.
1/
We remember this as an election that the plutes stole, but it's also an election that the Dems gave to them. That's why we're talk about it now. There will be an attempt to steal next month's election. Will we surrender again?
2/
The last surrender led to a war being fought today by the children of the soldiers who were sent into battle on day one. It led to climate inaction, monopolistic concentration, erosions to our right to vote and to our right to protest.
3/
Thanks to that surrender, voter suppression was expanded and reinforced, leading to the election of a fumbling liar who got to appoint more SCOTUS judges in 3.5 years than all Democratic presidents did in the previous quarter
You may be wondering how the Dems surrendered in 2020. For a detailed account of what surrender looks like, read @rsgexp's @jacobin memoir of her time as an @AFLCIO organizer sent to Florida during the
1/

We remember this as an election that the plutes stole, but it's also an election that the Dems gave to them. That's why we're talk about it now. There will be an attempt to steal next month's election. Will we surrender again?
2/
The last surrender led to a war being fought today by the children of the soldiers who were sent into battle on day one. It led to climate inaction, monopolistic concentration, erosions to our right to vote and to our right to protest.
3/
Thanks to that surrender, voter suppression was expanded and reinforced, leading to the election of a fumbling liar who got to appoint more SCOTUS judges in 3.5 years than all Democratic presidents did in the previous quarter
If Amy Barrett is confirmed, Donald Trump alone will have appointed the same number of SCOTUS judges in 3-and-a-half years as Democratic presidents have appointed in the last 26 years.
— David Sirota (@davidsirota) October 13, 2020
So please -- stop being afraid to talk about court expansion. https://t.co/dZU97YhFWg
You may be wondering how the Dems surrendered in 2020. For a detailed account of what surrender looks like, read @rsgexp's @jacobin memoir of her time as an @AFLCIO organizer sent to Florida during the
More from Machine learning
Really enjoyed digging into recent innovations in the football analytics industry.
>10 hours of interviews for this w/ a dozen or so of top firms in the game. Really grateful to everyone who gave up time & insights, even those that didnt make final cut 🙇♂️ https://t.co/9YOSrl8TdN
For avoidance of doubt, leading tracking analytics firms are now well beyond voronoi diagrams, using more granular measures to assess control and value of space.
This @JaviOnData & @LukeBornn paper from 2018 referenced in the piece demonstrates one method https://t.co/Hx8XTUMpJ5
Bit of this that I nerded out on the most is "ghosting" — technique used by @counterattack9 & co @stats_insights, among others.
Deep learning models predict how specific players — operating w/in specific setups — will move & execute actions. A paper here: https://t.co/9qrKvJ70EN
So many use-cases:
1/ Quickly & automatically spot situations where opponent's defence is abnormally vulnerable. Drill those to death in training.
2/ Swap target player B in for current player A, and simulate. How does target player strengthen/weaken team? In specific situations?
>10 hours of interviews for this w/ a dozen or so of top firms in the game. Really grateful to everyone who gave up time & insights, even those that didnt make final cut 🙇♂️ https://t.co/9YOSrl8TdN

For avoidance of doubt, leading tracking analytics firms are now well beyond voronoi diagrams, using more granular measures to assess control and value of space.
This @JaviOnData & @LukeBornn paper from 2018 referenced in the piece demonstrates one method https://t.co/Hx8XTUMpJ5

Bit of this that I nerded out on the most is "ghosting" — technique used by @counterattack9 & co @stats_insights, among others.
Deep learning models predict how specific players — operating w/in specific setups — will move & execute actions. A paper here: https://t.co/9qrKvJ70EN

So many use-cases:
1/ Quickly & automatically spot situations where opponent's defence is abnormally vulnerable. Drill those to death in training.
2/ Swap target player B in for current player A, and simulate. How does target player strengthen/weaken team? In specific situations?