When we say that "an algorithm is biased" we usually mean, "biased people made an algorithm." This explains why so much machine learning prediction turns into phrenology.

1/

The Democrats are at least two parties. The progressive wing of the party (which is by no means unified) and the finance wing of the party, which is also the party leadership.

1/

During the leadership race, the progressive wing was represented by @SenSanders and @SenWarren; the former wants to minimize the role of markets in our lives, the latter wants to redeem markets by regulating them. It's a distinction with a difference, but I donated to both.

2/

Both wings of the party have prominent representatives in Congress; Sandersism are most visibly associated with @AOC (whom I donated to) and Warrenism is embodied by @RepKatiePorter (likewise), who was also one of Warren's law school proteges.

3/

Porter is a force of nature. She is infamous - and celebrated - for her brutal, no-holds-barred questioning of both corporate and administration witnesses, using a white-board to pin them down and eviscerating any attempts at bullshittery.

4/

This isn't just about getting facts into the record (though, she is SO GOOD at getting facts into the record!), it's also about effecting change, like when she single-handedly cornered the CDC's chief into guaranteeing universal, free covid

One of the arguments for permitting monopolies is that they are "efficient." That's the logic under which Universal was allowed to acquire Comcast and NBC - the "vertical integration" would make all three companies better and we'd all reap the benefit.

1/

It turns out that there are DISeconomies of scale, what Brandeis called "the curse of bigness" and really, the Universal-NBC-Comcast octopus is a poster child for that

Comcast has just informed its subscribers that they are at risk of losing access to "Bravo, CNBC, E!, Golf Channel, MSNBC, Olympic Channel, Oxygen, Syfy, Telemundo, Universal Kids, NBC Universo, USA Network and NBC Sports

That is, Comcast has warned its customers that Comcast might not license its channels to Comcast anymore.

This is a "carriage dispute" - a dispute over how much the cable operator will pay the broadcaster. It's a common dispute to have.

4/

But in this case, Comcast's dispute is over the accounting fiction of how much one division of a vertical monopolist will nominally charge another to access its products.

5/

When they write the history of this era, one of the strangest chapters will be devoted to Uber, a company that was never, ever going to be profitable, which existed solely to launder billions for the Saudi royals.

1/

From the start, Uber's "blitzscaling" strategy involved breaking local taxi laws (incurring potentially unlimited civil liability) while losing (lots of) money on every ride. They flushed billions and billions and billions of dollars down the drain.

2/

But they had billions to burn. Mohammed bin Salman, the murdering Crown Prince of the Saudi royal family, funded Softbank - a Japanese pump-and-dump investment scheme behind Wework and other grifts - with $80B as part of his "Vision 2030"

Vision 2030 is a scheme to diversify Saudi wealth away from hydrocarbons by attempting to establish monopolies that will allow the family to control entire sectors of the global economy.

4/

These schemes are longshots, and the fallback position is to unload failed monopolies - with staggering debt-overhangs - on investors who've been suckered with the promise that really big piles of shit surely have a pony buried underneath them somewhere.

5/

When it's railroading time, you get railroads.

When the railroads turn into the personal satrapies of rail-barons, you get trustbusters.

A couple decades ago, it was online service time. We had the users, the telcoms systems, the computers, the modems, so we got platforms.

1/

We had that, but we lacked something important: effective antimonopoly enforcement. Lax merger laws allowed companies with access to capital markets to buy out or neutralize all their competitors, so we got monopolies.

Right on schedule, we're getting digital trustbusters.

2/

Now, some people aren't technically sophisticated, but they do understand a lot about competition law. That's how you get meat-and-taters antitrust proposals like @amyklobuchar's #CALERA, which address the structural problems with antitrust

Klobuchar's bill is hugely important. The reason we have monopolies is that we stopped enforcing anti-monopoly law 40 years ago. Monopoly isn't a tech problem, it's everywhere from sneakers to glass bottles to pro wrestling to candy to

Klobuchar's CALERA doesn't just seek to apply antitrust law to tech - it also explicitly restores the pre-Reagan basis for fighting monopolies: we fight monopolies because they concentrate power and corrupt our politics. All monopolies are guilty unless proven otherwise.

5/

As the Qanon prophecies fail and the cult-members struggle to resolve their cognitive dissonance, it's a good time to revisit the history of paranoid, conspiratorial political movements in American history - the "paranoid style" that has dominated since the Revolution.

1/

After all, the very first skirmishes of the US war of independence were based on a conspiracy theory: that the levy on tea was a prelude to a sellout of the colonists to transnational mercantalist interests. US politics have always been conspiratorial.

2/

I found @zacharykarabell's @politico history of the Know Nothing party especially useful, as it tells the story of what happens when surging, paranoid, fractious political movements

The American Party was a secret 19th century organization founded on a conspiracy theory: that Irish immigrants were secretly planning a takeover of the US on behalf of the Pope.

4/

Users: hey can you get rid of the Nazis please

Twitter: ok sure, we've changed the stars to hearts for likes

Users: no no, zero Nazis please

Twitter: yep we're getting rid of Vine

Users: nah hey, what about the Nazis

Twitter: ok ok fine, no more likes

Really though, if you had to ask any average user what were the main things leading to a bad "quality of debate" on this bad website, the tiny little heart symbols would not exactly be at the top of most people's lists

Two years ago on a weekend, I built a tool to make it easier to evaluate Twitter accounts. Since then 36590 people used it to analyze 55390 different Twitter accounts.

Over the last months @mmkaradeniz and I made a new version. We launched it last night:

@accountanalysis doesn't use machine learning or AI „magic“. Instead of telling users if an account is authentic or not, it helps them to evaluate the accounts themselves.

It visualizes the different features (date, time, type, app, etc.) of Tweets to make them interpretable. /1

@accountanalysis The core concept is still the same, but it looks much better and is easier to operate. Not only for the users, but us developers as well. Enabling us to continuously roll out new features in the future.

Side-by-side screenshots of the old and new version. /2

@accountanalysis Some people had questions what different charts displayed and how they could be interpreted. There are now explanations for all charts, that can be toggled on and off at any time. /3

@accountanalysis The selected/retrieved Tweet count moved to the top to make it clear that not all Tweets of an account are analyzed. 3200 is the API limit by Twitter. It's possible to get more through the Premium API, but I don't think people would pay $100+ for the analysis of one account. /4

Last weekend, I made a threat on the ongoing #SocialMedia shutdown in Uganda and some implications on the future of #internet & Uganda's #digital agenda.

The thread attracted a lot of engagement and questions. Tonight, I will share some final thoughts on the subject. (1)

Conceptually, social media sites are the largest on-boarding platforms for internet users in Uganda. Notably, Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram & Snapchat attract the highest internet traffic- which drives demand for other platform services e.g Google and Zoom recently.

So- when we talk about an "open internet", we mean the FULL resources of the internet. Any encumberance on selected applications has ripple effects across the entire network thus jeorpadizing standardization of internet/data transmission which is essential for innovation & growth

Furthermore, shutdowns hinder network interoperability (technical ability to plug/link one digital product or service into another product or service). Interoperability is the heart of the "Internet of things" eg business, devices, networks, services, e-govt, integration etc #IoT

Because the internet is a global resource, shutdowns enhance a digital divide (the gap between demographics and regions that have access to modern ICTs, and those that don't or have restricted access). Ironic that 3rd world countries have the highest number of shutdowns globally.

An apostle was addressing his own members
If not for technology, you wouldn't be privy to his discussion with his members
He was sharing with them within the context of their understanding of his message, nature, and personality how he thrived in the middle of a season of casting

down
He mentioned what he achieved and even though it might sound like a boast, he was not boasting to you
He was boasting to his church members and as such, you cannot call it a boast
A father does not need to boast to his children and a shepherd surely does not need to boast to

his sheep
Newspapers needed a scandal and felt the message of the apostle was the right fit in their quest to get eyeballs
You read it and you began to insult the apostle
You, the son of a dog from Abatan refuse dump decided to drag an apostle on Twitter
Do you understand what it

means to be an apostle?
The angels working with an apostle are innumerable, they do not only work at his command, but they also work at his behest!
They are entrusted with the duty of ensuring that the Lordship of his office is respected by both spiritual and mundane entities

In the days of Jesus, many of the Pharisees and religious leaders treated his words and actions the same way many of the gutter bred stone casters with 100 Naira data and stolen or London used phone treated the words of the apostle
Jesus warned them at the time that they were