#algorithmic-transparency — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #algorithmic-transparency, aggregated by home.social.
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Opinion: Google Has Become Too Powerful for Democracy to Ignore
By Cliff Potts | WPS News Opinion
BAYBAY CITY, LEYTE, Philippines, August 3, 2026 — 0005 PhST
The question is no longer whether Google has become one of the most influential corporations in human history. That question has already been answered.
The real question is whether any democratic society should permit a single private corporation to exercise such sweeping control over how information is discovered, distributed, monetized, and preserved.
Google is no longer merely a search engine.
Through its parent company, Alphabet, Google controls the world’s dominant search platform, YouTube, the Android operating system, the Google Play Store, one of the largest digital-advertising operations in existence, the Chrome browser, major artificial-intelligence systems, mapping services, analytics, cloud infrastructure, and an extraordinary volume of information about its users.
Each of those operations is powerful on its own.
Combined under one corporate roof, they create a digital ecosystem capable of influencing who is found, who earns money, which businesses reach customers, which applications succeed, which publishers remain visible, and which voices effectively disappear.
That ownership structure creates the opportunity for abuse.
Google Search can reinforce Google advertising. Android can reinforce Google Search. Chrome can reinforce both. The Play Store can dictate the terms under which software developers reach mobile users. YouTube can determine which videos are recommended, which channels qualify for advertising revenue, and which publishers lose practical access to audiences they spent years building.
None of this requires a secret meeting in which executives decide to destroy one particular publisher.
A recommendation system can quietly stop recommending a channel. A search-ranking adjustment can bury a publication. An automated advertising classification can eliminate revenue. An account restriction can remove years of accumulated work.
The person or organization affected may receive little more than a generic notice—or no useful explanation at all.
That is an unacceptable amount of unaccountable power.
Breaking Up Google Is Not a Fringe Proposal
Calls for structural action against Google are not confined to activists, angry creators, or small publishers.
In 2024, a federal court found that Google had illegally maintained monopolies in general search services and general search-text advertising. During the remedies phase, the United States Department of Justice proposed measures that included forcing Google to divest Chrome and restricting its use of Android and other products to protect its search dominance.
The court ultimately rejected the proposed Chrome divestiture. Its final judgment instead prohibited certain exclusive distribution contracts, required Google to provide qualifying competitors with access to specified search and user-interaction data, ordered syndication opportunities for search results and advertising, and established continuing technical oversight.
Those remedies were significant, but the court’s decision not to order a breakup does not make structural separation an unreasonable idea. It confirms that divestiture was seriously proposed, litigated, and considered within an actual federal antitrust case—not invented in an internet comment section.
The Justice Department has also won a separate case in which a federal court found that Google unlawfully monopolized important parts of the open-web digital-advertising market. According to the Justice Department, Google’s conduct harmed publishers, competition, and ultimately the consumers who depend upon information distributed across the open web.
That finding should matter greatly to every independent news organization.
A company that controls advertising technology while also operating competing services does not occupy the position of a neutral intermediary. It participates in the same market it helps govern.
Google disputes allegations against it and continues exercising its legal rights in court. It is entitled to do so.
The public is equally entitled to question whether the company should continue controlling so many interconnected layers of the digital economy.
Europe Already Calls Alphabet a Gatekeeper
The European Union has formally designated Alphabet a digital “gatekeeper” under the Digital Markets Act.
The designation covers core services including Google Search, Google Play, Google Maps, Google Shopping, YouTube, Android, Chrome, and Alphabet’s online-advertising operations.
The term is appropriate.
These services do not merely compete within digital markets. They frequently determine how other businesses enter those markets, find customers, collect revenue, and survive.
The Digital Markets Act attempts to address that power before another decade-long competition case reaches its conclusion. Instead of relying exclusively upon punishment after damage has occurred, it places advance obligations and prohibitions upon companies possessing entrenched control over essential digital services.
That approach recognizes a basic problem with ordinary antitrust enforcement: by the time a case is investigated, tried, appealed, and remedied, smaller competitors may already be gone.
A fine imposed years later does not restore a publication that closed, a developer who abandoned an application, or a creator whose audience disappeared.
When financial penalties become routine operating expenses, governments must move beyond fines and consider structural remedies.
The Transparency Failure
I cannot honestly claim, without reliable supporting data, that most political creators affected by demonetization or reduced distribution are left-wing, progressive, or pro-democracy publishers.
Progressive creators have accused YouTube of unequal treatment.
Conservative creators have made the opposite accusation.
The available public information does not establish which political group experiences the greatest overall harm.
That absence of evidence does not clear YouTube.
It exposes the transparency problem.
Independent researchers cannot adequately determine whether YouTube’s enforcement is politically neutral because the company does not disclose enough channel-level information about recommendation reductions, monetization classifications, automated decisions, reversals, comparative enforcement, and the practical effects of its algorithms.
YouTube publishes extensive rules governing monetization and advertiser-friendly content. Those policies describe broad categories of material that may receive limited advertising or no advertising.
They do not necessarily tell an individual publisher why views dropped from thousands to hundreds and then to tens.
They do not reveal whether a channel stopped appearing in recommendations.
They do not explain whether an automated system changed its classification of the channel.
They do not demonstrate whether politically comparable channels received comparable treatment.
They do not provide the public with enough information to audit a system that helps determine what billions of people see.
That is the issue.
A system does not need to ban political speech outright to diminish it. It can simply stop showing that speech to people.
I Have Watched the Audience Disappear
This is not an abstract concern for me.
I have watched my own work receive thousands of views, then hundreds, and eventually numbers in the tens. That decline occurred while the company controlling distribution provided no intelligible explanation of what changed.
I cannot prove in a courtroom that Google or YouTube politically targeted Cliff Potts.
I can prove that an opaque, Google-owned system possessed the practical ability to withdraw access to an audience without explaining itself in any meaningful way.
That alone is a democratic problem.
It is also an antitrust problem.
Journalism, political commentary, music, education, and public advocacy increasingly depend upon privately operated systems that can alter distribution without notice. Publishers may technically remain free to speak while being denied any realistic opportunity to be heard.
Freedom of speech is not a legal guarantee of an audience.
But when one corporation has acquired extraordinary control over whether an audience can find that speech, elected governments have every right to investigate how that power is being exercised.
Break Apart the Conflicting Functions
The answer is not another vague request that YouTube “do better.”
The ownership structure itself must be examined.
Search should not reinforce advertising.
Advertising should not reinforce YouTube.
Android should not reinforce Search.
The Play Store should not reinforce every other Google business.
Chrome should not function as another mechanism for protecting Google’s position.
Artificial intelligence should not be allowed to absorb information from independent publishers, answer users directly, and then deprive the original publishers of the traffic required to survive.
Conflicting business functions should be separated.
Self-preferencing should be prohibited.
Recommendation and monetization systems should be independently audited.
Publishers and creators should receive meaningful explanations when distribution or revenue is materially restricted.
Appeals should be decided by accountable human reviewers rather than disappearing into another automated system.
Regulators should have access to the records necessary to determine whether enforcement is consistent, discriminatory, anticompetitive, or politically uneven.
Independent researchers should be permitted to study the effects of recommendation systems without depending entirely upon information selected and released by the company being examined.
When fines fail to change conduct, structural separation should remain available.
These are not attacks upon innovation.
They are protections against concentrated power.
Democratic societies regulate utilities, financial institutions, telecommunications systems, transportation networks, and other industries capable of affecting the public at enormous scale.
They should not exempt the corporations governing digital discovery merely because their control is exercised through algorithms instead of physical gates.
No private company should possess the practical ability to determine who is discovered, who is heard, who earns a living, and who quietly disappears from public view without meaningful explanation or independent oversight.
Google has become too powerful for democracy to ignore.
The only remaining question is whether democratic governments will act before that power becomes permanent.
Sources
U.S. Department of Justice: Department of Justice Prevails in Landmark Antitrust Case Against Google
U.S. Department of Justice: Department of Justice Wins Significant Remedies Against Google
U.S. Department of Justice: United States and Plaintiff States v. Google LLC
European Commission: Digital Markets Act Designated Gatekeepers
European Commission: The Digital Markets Act
YouTube: Channel Monetization Policies
YouTube: What Kind of Content Can I Monetize?
Contact Cliff Potts
Cliff Potts
Founder, Publisher & Editor
WPS News
Baybay City, Leyte, PhilippinesWPS News
WPS.NewsBluesky — Preferred Public Contact
WTFM.LOLOccupy 2.5
Occupy25.comCliff Potts
CliffPotts.orgCliff Potts is also the creator of Cliff Potts & the AI Rebellion, with music available on Spotify, iHeartRadio, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, TIDAL, Pandora, and other major streaming platforms worldwide.
For news, commentary, music, and ongoing projects, begin with WPS.News or contact Cliff publicly through Bluesky at WTFM.LOL.
#algorithmicTransparency #Alphabet #Android #antitrust #BigTechRegulation #Chrome #CliffPotts #Democracy #DepartmentOfJustice #digitalGatekeepers #DigitalMarketsAct #EuropeanUnion #Google #GoogleAdvertising #GoogleBreakup #GoogleMonopoly #GooglePlayStore #GoogleSearch #independentPublishers #journalism #politicalSpeech #recommendationAlgorithms #structuralSeparation #WPSNewsOpinion #YouTube #YouTubeDemonetization -
Opinion: Google Has Become Too Powerful for Democracy to Ignore
By Cliff Potts | WPS News Opinion
BAYBAY CITY, LEYTE, Philippines, August 3, 2026 — 0005 PhST
The question is no longer whether Google has become one of the most influential corporations in human history. That question has already been answered.
The real question is whether any democratic society should permit a single private corporation to exercise such sweeping control over how information is discovered, distributed, monetized, and preserved.
Google is no longer merely a search engine.
Through its parent company, Alphabet, Google controls the world’s dominant search platform, YouTube, the Android operating system, the Google Play Store, one of the largest digital-advertising operations in existence, the Chrome browser, major artificial-intelligence systems, mapping services, analytics, cloud infrastructure, and an extraordinary volume of information about its users.
Each of those operations is powerful on its own.
Combined under one corporate roof, they create a digital ecosystem capable of influencing who is found, who earns money, which businesses reach customers, which applications succeed, which publishers remain visible, and which voices effectively disappear.
That ownership structure creates the opportunity for abuse.
Google Search can reinforce Google advertising. Android can reinforce Google Search. Chrome can reinforce both. The Play Store can dictate the terms under which software developers reach mobile users. YouTube can determine which videos are recommended, which channels qualify for advertising revenue, and which publishers lose practical access to audiences they spent years building.
None of this requires a secret meeting in which executives decide to destroy one particular publisher.
A recommendation system can quietly stop recommending a channel. A search-ranking adjustment can bury a publication. An automated advertising classification can eliminate revenue. An account restriction can remove years of accumulated work.
The person or organization affected may receive little more than a generic notice—or no useful explanation at all.
That is an unacceptable amount of unaccountable power.
Breaking Up Google Is Not a Fringe Proposal
Calls for structural action against Google are not confined to activists, angry creators, or small publishers.
In 2024, a federal court found that Google had illegally maintained monopolies in general search services and general search-text advertising. During the remedies phase, the United States Department of Justice proposed measures that included forcing Google to divest Chrome and restricting its use of Android and other products to protect its search dominance.
The court ultimately rejected the proposed Chrome divestiture. Its final judgment instead prohibited certain exclusive distribution contracts, required Google to provide qualifying competitors with access to specified search and user-interaction data, ordered syndication opportunities for search results and advertising, and established continuing technical oversight.
Those remedies were significant, but the court’s decision not to order a breakup does not make structural separation an unreasonable idea. It confirms that divestiture was seriously proposed, litigated, and considered within an actual federal antitrust case—not invented in an internet comment section.
The Justice Department has also won a separate case in which a federal court found that Google unlawfully monopolized important parts of the open-web digital-advertising market. According to the Justice Department, Google’s conduct harmed publishers, competition, and ultimately the consumers who depend upon information distributed across the open web.
That finding should matter greatly to every independent news organization.
A company that controls advertising technology while also operating competing services does not occupy the position of a neutral intermediary. It participates in the same market it helps govern.
Google disputes allegations against it and continues exercising its legal rights in court. It is entitled to do so.
The public is equally entitled to question whether the company should continue controlling so many interconnected layers of the digital economy.
Europe Already Calls Alphabet a Gatekeeper
The European Union has formally designated Alphabet a digital “gatekeeper” under the Digital Markets Act.
The designation covers core services including Google Search, Google Play, Google Maps, Google Shopping, YouTube, Android, Chrome, and Alphabet’s online-advertising operations.
The term is appropriate.
These services do not merely compete within digital markets. They frequently determine how other businesses enter those markets, find customers, collect revenue, and survive.
The Digital Markets Act attempts to address that power before another decade-long competition case reaches its conclusion. Instead of relying exclusively upon punishment after damage has occurred, it places advance obligations and prohibitions upon companies possessing entrenched control over essential digital services.
That approach recognizes a basic problem with ordinary antitrust enforcement: by the time a case is investigated, tried, appealed, and remedied, smaller competitors may already be gone.
A fine imposed years later does not restore a publication that closed, a developer who abandoned an application, or a creator whose audience disappeared.
When financial penalties become routine operating expenses, governments must move beyond fines and consider structural remedies.
The Transparency Failure
I cannot honestly claim, without reliable supporting data, that most political creators affected by demonetization or reduced distribution are left-wing, progressive, or pro-democracy publishers.
Progressive creators have accused YouTube of unequal treatment.
Conservative creators have made the opposite accusation.
The available public information does not establish which political group experiences the greatest overall harm.
That absence of evidence does not clear YouTube.
It exposes the transparency problem.
Independent researchers cannot adequately determine whether YouTube’s enforcement is politically neutral because the company does not disclose enough channel-level information about recommendation reductions, monetization classifications, automated decisions, reversals, comparative enforcement, and the practical effects of its algorithms.
YouTube publishes extensive rules governing monetization and advertiser-friendly content. Those policies describe broad categories of material that may receive limited advertising or no advertising.
They do not necessarily tell an individual publisher why views dropped from thousands to hundreds and then to tens.
They do not reveal whether a channel stopped appearing in recommendations.
They do not explain whether an automated system changed its classification of the channel.
They do not demonstrate whether politically comparable channels received comparable treatment.
They do not provide the public with enough information to audit a system that helps determine what billions of people see.
That is the issue.
A system does not need to ban political speech outright to diminish it. It can simply stop showing that speech to people.
I Have Watched the Audience Disappear
This is not an abstract concern for me.
I have watched my own work receive thousands of views, then hundreds, and eventually numbers in the tens. That decline occurred while the company controlling distribution provided no intelligible explanation of what changed.
I cannot prove in a courtroom that Google or YouTube politically targeted Cliff Potts.
I can prove that an opaque, Google-owned system possessed the practical ability to withdraw access to an audience without explaining itself in any meaningful way.
That alone is a democratic problem.
It is also an antitrust problem.
Journalism, political commentary, music, education, and public advocacy increasingly depend upon privately operated systems that can alter distribution without notice. Publishers may technically remain free to speak while being denied any realistic opportunity to be heard.
Freedom of speech is not a legal guarantee of an audience.
But when one corporation has acquired extraordinary control over whether an audience can find that speech, elected governments have every right to investigate how that power is being exercised.
Break Apart the Conflicting Functions
The answer is not another vague request that YouTube “do better.”
The ownership structure itself must be examined.
Search should not reinforce advertising.
Advertising should not reinforce YouTube.
Android should not reinforce Search.
The Play Store should not reinforce every other Google business.
Chrome should not function as another mechanism for protecting Google’s position.
Artificial intelligence should not be allowed to absorb information from independent publishers, answer users directly, and then deprive the original publishers of the traffic required to survive.
Conflicting business functions should be separated.
Self-preferencing should be prohibited.
Recommendation and monetization systems should be independently audited.
Publishers and creators should receive meaningful explanations when distribution or revenue is materially restricted.
Appeals should be decided by accountable human reviewers rather than disappearing into another automated system.
Regulators should have access to the records necessary to determine whether enforcement is consistent, discriminatory, anticompetitive, or politically uneven.
Independent researchers should be permitted to study the effects of recommendation systems without depending entirely upon information selected and released by the company being examined.
When fines fail to change conduct, structural separation should remain available.
These are not attacks upon innovation.
They are protections against concentrated power.
Democratic societies regulate utilities, financial institutions, telecommunications systems, transportation networks, and other industries capable of affecting the public at enormous scale.
They should not exempt the corporations governing digital discovery merely because their control is exercised through algorithms instead of physical gates.
No private company should possess the practical ability to determine who is discovered, who is heard, who earns a living, and who quietly disappears from public view without meaningful explanation or independent oversight.
Google has become too powerful for democracy to ignore.
The only remaining question is whether democratic governments will act before that power becomes permanent.
Sources
U.S. Department of Justice: Department of Justice Prevails in Landmark Antitrust Case Against Google
U.S. Department of Justice: Department of Justice Wins Significant Remedies Against Google
U.S. Department of Justice: United States and Plaintiff States v. Google LLC
European Commission: Digital Markets Act Designated Gatekeepers
European Commission: The Digital Markets Act
YouTube: Channel Monetization Policies
YouTube: What Kind of Content Can I Monetize?
Contact Cliff Potts
Cliff Potts
Founder, Publisher & Editor
WPS News
Baybay City, Leyte, PhilippinesWPS News
WPS.NewsBluesky — Preferred Public Contact
WTFM.LOLOccupy 2.5
Occupy25.comCliff Potts
CliffPotts.orgCliff Potts is also the creator of Cliff Potts & the AI Rebellion, with music available on Spotify, iHeartRadio, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, TIDAL, Pandora, and other major streaming platforms worldwide.
For news, commentary, music, and ongoing projects, begin with WPS.News or contact Cliff publicly through Bluesky at WTFM.LOL.
#algorithmicTransparency #Alphabet #Android #antitrust #BigTechRegulation #Chrome #CliffPotts #Democracy #DepartmentOfJustice #digitalGatekeepers #DigitalMarketsAct #EuropeanUnion #Google #GoogleAdvertising #GoogleBreakup #GoogleMonopoly #GooglePlayStore #GoogleSearch #independentPublishers #journalism #politicalSpeech #recommendationAlgorithms #structuralSeparation #WPSNewsOpinion #YouTube #YouTubeDemonetization -
Una investigación de Amnistía Internacional y #AlgorithmicTransparency Institute y AI Forensics, demostró que esta situación podría estar dándose en este mismo momento en muchos hogares. Los datos no son hipotéticos, sino los resultados expuestos en el informe Empujados a la oscuridad: El feed “Para ti” de TikTok fomenta la autolesión y la ideación suicida, que denuncia cómo los algoritmos de recomendación de esta red pueden estar destrozando la salud mental de mucha personas menores de edad
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Una investigación de Amnistía Internacional y #AlgorithmicTransparency Institute y AI Forensics, demostró que esta situación podría estar dándose en este mismo momento en muchos hogares. Los datos no son hipotéticos, sino los resultados expuestos en el informe Empujados a la oscuridad: El feed “Para ti” de TikTok fomenta la autolesión y la ideación suicida, que denuncia cómo los algoritmos de recomendación de esta red pueden estar destrozando la salud mental de mucha personas menores de edad
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Investigación de Amnistía Internacional, #AlgorithmicTransparency Institute y #AIForensics demostró que esta situación podría darse en este mismo momento en muchos hogares. Los datos no son hipotéticos, sino los resultados expuestos en el informe Empujados a la oscuridad: El feed “Para ti” de TikTok fomenta la autolesión y la ideación suicida, que denuncia cómo los algoritmos de recomendación de esta red social pueden estar destrozando la salud mental de muchas personas menores de edad
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Technē without safety guardrails?
* "The public showdown between the Department of Defense and Anthropic began earlier this week after they entered into discussions about the military’s use of the company’s Claude AI system. But the talks broke down as both sides appeared to be unable to come to agreement over safety guardrails."
"US defense officials have pushed for unfettered access to Claude’s capabilities that they say can help protect the country, while Anthropic has resisted allowing its product to be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons systems that can kill people without human input." >>
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/27/trump-anthropic-ai-federal-agencies* The Pentagon strongarmed AI firms before Iran strikes – in dark news for the future of ‘ethical AI’ >>
https://theconversation.com/the-pentagon-strongarmed-ai-firms-before-iran-strikes-in-dark-news-for-the-future-of-ethical-ai-277198* Who decides when a machine kills? When private companies are enforcing ethical constraints and governments are not, something is very wrong >>
https://www.euractiv.com/opinion/who-decides-when-a-machine-kills/#ethics #OpenAI #BigTech #surveillance #AutonomousWeapons #ADM #war #KillerRobots #LAWs #Google #LLMs #Claude #Anthropic #transparency #accountability #AutomatedDecisionMaking #algorithms #AlgorithmicTransparency
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Technē without safety guardrails?
* "The public showdown between the Department of Defense and Anthropic began earlier this week after they entered into discussions about the military’s use of the company’s Claude AI system. But the talks broke down as both sides appeared to be unable to come to agreement over safety guardrails."
"US defense officials have pushed for unfettered access to Claude’s capabilities that they say can help protect the country, while Anthropic has resisted allowing its product to be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons systems that can kill people without human input." >>
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/27/trump-anthropic-ai-federal-agencies* The Pentagon strongarmed AI firms before Iran strikes – in dark news for the future of ‘ethical AI’ >>
https://theconversation.com/the-pentagon-strongarmed-ai-firms-before-iran-strikes-in-dark-news-for-the-future-of-ethical-ai-277198* Who decides when a machine kills? When private companies are enforcing ethical constraints and governments are not, something is very wrong >>
https://www.euractiv.com/opinion/who-decides-when-a-machine-kills/#ethics #OpenAI #BigTech #surveillance #AutonomousWeapons #ADM #war #KillerRobots #LAWs #Google #LLMs #Claude #Anthropic #transparency #accountability #AutomatedDecisionMaking #algorithms #AlgorithmicTransparency
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In addition, you can read this article providing an overview of French case law on the right to information regarding partially automated administrative decisions, written by an interdisciplinary team of researchers consisting of Luc Pellissier, Maxime Zimmer, Noé Wagener, and Philippine Ducros. #algorithmictransparency https://revuedlf.com/droit-administratif/lineffectivite-du-droit-dacces-a-linformation-sur-les-algorithmes-une-etude-empirique/
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In addition, you can read this article providing an overview of French case law on the right to information regarding partially automated administrative decisions, written by an interdisciplinary team of researchers consisting of Luc Pellissier, Maxime Zimmer, Noé Wagener, and Philippine Ducros. #algorithmictransparency https://revuedlf.com/droit-administratif/lineffectivite-du-droit-dacces-a-linformation-sur-les-algorithmes-une-etude-empirique/
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Just spent about an hour scrolling Mastodon. (Crazy Saturday night shenanigans). 😴
Clicked on a few things. Read an article. All good. 🤓
And I'm not angry at anything. ☺
Why aren't more media outlets here, I wonder? 🤔
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Just spent about an hour scrolling Mastodon. (Crazy Saturday night shenanigans). 😴
Clicked on a few things. Read an article. All good. 🤓
And I'm not angry at anything. ☺
Why aren't more media outlets here, I wonder? 🤔
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Many fights for #AlgorithmicTransparency focused on accessing code, but there’s more: Who builds these systems? Who are the providers? Are they independently evaluated? That’s why #AlgorithmRegisters are a key demand for accountability. So far, only France, Finland, the UK, Norway and Germany have official ones.
This week, #AutomatedSociety examines Europe's transparency laws; and how they fall short. Subscribe to our newsletter now: https://automatedsociety.algorithmwatch.org/#/en/
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Many fights for #AlgorithmicTransparency focused on accessing code, but there’s more: Who builds these systems? Who are the providers? Are they independently evaluated? That’s why #AlgorithmRegisters are a key demand for accountability. So far, only France, Finland, the UK, Norway and Germany have official ones.
This week, #AutomatedSociety examines Europe's transparency laws; and how they fall short. Subscribe to our newsletter now: https://automatedsociety.algorithmwatch.org/#/en/
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Ah, algorithmic transparency, what I told the European Parliament was the next step they should take after GDPR. Better six years late than never. Hey, maybe in another decade they’ll even consider implementing a General Data Minimisation Regulation (GDMR).
https://ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of-internet-regulation-at-the-european-parliament/
#regulation #EU #GDPR #GDMR #algorithmicTransparency #dataMinimisation https://mamot.fr/@davduf/113845060326024724
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Ah, algorithmic transparency, what I told the European Parliament was the next step they should take after GDPR. Better six years late than never. Hey, maybe in another decade they’ll even consider implementing a General Data Minimisation Regulation (GDMR).
https://ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of-internet-regulation-at-the-european-parliament/
#regulation #EU #GDPR #GDMR #algorithmicTransparency #dataMinimisation https://mamot.fr/@davduf/113845060326024724
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"While the Executive Branch pushes agencies to leverage private AI expertise, our concern is that more and more information on how those AI models work will be cloaked in the nigh-impenetrable veil of government secrecy. Because AI operates by collecting and processing a tremendous amount of data, understanding what information it retains and how it arrives at conclusions will all become incredibly central to how the national security state thinks about issues. This means not only will the state likely make the argument that the AI’s training data may need to be classified, but they may also argue that companies need to, under penalty of law, keep the governing algorithms secret as well.
As the memo says, “AI has emerged as an era-defining technology and has demonstrated significant and growing relevance to national security. The United States must lead the world in the responsible application of AI to appropriate national security functions.” As the US national security state attempts to leverage powerful commercial AI to give it an edge, there are a number of questions that remain unanswered about how much that ever-tightening relationship will impact much needed transparency and accountability for private AI and for-profit automated decision making systems."
#USA #CyberSecurity #Surveillance #AI #AlgorithmicTransparency
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"While the Executive Branch pushes agencies to leverage private AI expertise, our concern is that more and more information on how those AI models work will be cloaked in the nigh-impenetrable veil of government secrecy. Because AI operates by collecting and processing a tremendous amount of data, understanding what information it retains and how it arrives at conclusions will all become incredibly central to how the national security state thinks about issues. This means not only will the state likely make the argument that the AI’s training data may need to be classified, but they may also argue that companies need to, under penalty of law, keep the governing algorithms secret as well.
As the memo says, “AI has emerged as an era-defining technology and has demonstrated significant and growing relevance to national security. The United States must lead the world in the responsible application of AI to appropriate national security functions.” As the US national security state attempts to leverage powerful commercial AI to give it an edge, there are a number of questions that remain unanswered about how much that ever-tightening relationship will impact much needed transparency and accountability for private AI and for-profit automated decision making systems."
#USA #CyberSecurity #Surveillance #AI #AlgorithmicTransparency
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Landlords' usage of proprietary price-setting algorithms are the subject of several antitrust lawsuits by the feds and other jurisdictions nationwide.
How much has that impacted rental prices in #Chicago?
A great intro from my WBEZ colleagues Amy Qin and Angela Padejski:
https://www.wbez.org/data/2024/10/22/chicagos-rental-crisis-is-an-algorithm-rigging-the-system#Housing #RentalPrices #HousingAffordability #AlgorithmicTransparency #AlgorithmicAccountability
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Landlords' usage of proprietary price-setting algorithms are the subject of several antitrust lawsuits by the feds and other jurisdictions nationwide.
How much has that impacted rental prices in #Chicago?
A great intro from my WBEZ colleagues Amy Qin and Angela Padejski:
https://www.wbez.org/data/2024/10/22/chicagos-rental-crisis-is-an-algorithm-rigging-the-system#Housing #RentalPrices #HousingAffordability #AlgorithmicTransparency #AlgorithmicAccountability
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Happy to have co-signed this op-ed calling on the new 🇪🇺 College and 🇫🇷 government for techno-economic #regulation that drives towards openness, #decentralization and #AlgorithmicTransparency in #SocialNetworks.
https://aiforensics.org/algopluralism
I have observed how far-reaching the consequences of #SurveillanceCapitalism are, and @opentermsarchive is a tiny fraction of the answer. It is there to reinforce the capability to regulate and enforce regulation. Someone else, however, has to pull that trigger. -
Happy to have co-signed this op-ed calling on the new 🇪🇺 College and 🇫🇷 government for techno-economic #regulation that drives towards openness, #decentralization and #AlgorithmicTransparency in #SocialNetworks.
https://aiforensics.org/algopluralism
I have observed how far-reaching the consequences of #SurveillanceCapitalism are, and @opentermsarchive is a tiny fraction of the answer. It is there to reinforce the capability to regulate and enforce regulation. Someone else, however, has to pull that trigger. -
I want more transparency from web search results pages. Why were some keywords discarded? Why were others replaced with entirely different terms? Too often, I find myself staring at a list of results that bear no resemblance to the original query. Occasionally, I do find the substitutions useful — but more often than not, I don’t even see the connection between my search query and the results. #AlgorithmicTransparency #SERP #UX
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I want more transparency from web search results pages. Why were some keywords discarded? Why were others replaced with entirely different terms? Too often, I find myself staring at a list of results that bear no resemblance to the original query. Occasionally, I do find the substitutions useful — but more often than not, I don’t even see the connection between my search query and the results. #AlgorithmicTransparency #SERP #UX
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On 18 April 2023, the #EU inaugurated the new European Centre for #AlgorithmicTransparency. Its goal is to create a safer, more predictable and trusted #OnlineEnvironment.
Find out more 👉 https://europa.eu/!4mgj6F
🐦🔗: https://n.respublicae.eu/EU_opendata/status/1650832079394054144
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On 18 April 2023, the #EU inaugurated the new European Centre for #AlgorithmicTransparency. Its goal is to create a safer, more predictable and trusted #OnlineEnvironment.
Find out more 👉 https://europa.eu/!4mgj6F
🐦🔗: https://n.respublicae.eu/EU_opendata/status/1650832079394054144
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CW: Long thread/47
Dubal is interested in more than analysis, she wants action. She looks at the tactics deployed by gig workers, who have not taken all this abuse lying down. Workers in the UK and EU organized through Worker Info Exchange and the App Drivers and Couriers Union have used the #GDPR (the EU's privacy law) to demand "#AlgorithmicTransparency," as well as access to their data. In California, drivers hope to use similar provisions in the #CCPA (a state privacy law) to do the same.
47/
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CW: Long thread/47
Dubal is interested in more than analysis, she wants action. She looks at the tactics deployed by gig workers, who have not taken all this abuse lying down. Workers in the UK and EU organized through Worker Info Exchange and the App Drivers and Couriers Union have used the #GDPR (the EU's privacy law) to demand "#AlgorithmicTransparency," as well as access to their data. In California, drivers hope to use similar provisions in the #CCPA (a state privacy law) to do the same.
47/
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The EU's requirement for algorithmic transparency and the arrival of LLMs such as ChatGPT could bear very problematic offspring.
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The EU's requirement for algorithmic transparency and the arrival of LLMs such as ChatGPT could bear very problematic offspring.
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@carmeartigas I’m glad to see the move beyond just data protection to the second step I outlined in my talk to the European Parliament three years ago.
Here’s hoping we can move to step 3 also (data minimisation).
https://ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of-internet-regulation-at-the-european-parliament/
#algorithmicTransparency #dataMinimisation #surveillanceCapitalism #regulation #eu
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@carmeartigas I’m glad to see the move beyond just data protection to the second step I outlined in my talk to the European Parliament three years ago.
Here’s hoping we can move to step 3 also (data minimisation).
https://ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of-internet-regulation-at-the-european-parliament/
#algorithmicTransparency #dataMinimisation #surveillanceCapitalism #regulation #eu
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@carmeartigas Hi Carme, good to see a public figure from the government on the fediverse. Also, greetings from the past (I was working for you years ago!)
This is very good news for our country. Will this make Spain 🇪🇸 work harder to achieve said #AlgorithmicTransparency, and stop blocking attempts from the society to know how decisions are made?
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Spain 🇪🇸 has been selected to host the #EU Center for #AlgorithmicTransparency, supoorting the required supervision work for the Digital Services Act #DSA. https://social.network.europa.eu/@EU_Commission/109354307536627028
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Spain 🇪🇸 has been selected to host the #EU Center for #AlgorithmicTransparency, supoorting the required supervision work for the Digital Services Act #DSA. https://social.network.europa.eu/@EU_Commission/109354307536627028
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So here’s the interesting thing: we now know more about how Trump’s upcoming social network works than we do about Facebook, et al.
Of course, it doesn’t mean the source they publish is the code that’s running on their servers. (And, c’mon, this is motherfucking Trump we’re talking about here…) To ensure that you’d need independent audits. In fact, I don’t now how you could ensure compliance with AGPL without ongoing independent audits…