Misinformation on WhatsApp – A Coronavirus Catalyst
“Breaking News: Scientists discover inhaling steam is a cure for coronavirus.” A few weeks ago, this message appeared on my phone’s screen. It was a forwarded message on WhatsApp from a relative in India. A quick Google search revealed that
Mitigating Misinformation
In the words of the World Health Organization’s director-general, the world is currently fighting not only a pandemic, but also an “infodemic.” Approximately 46,000 tweets per day were linked to inaccurate information in March 2020 alone. With anger and anxiety
We have the tools for privacy. Why don’t we use them?
Your data isn’t private, even if it’s anonymous. In 2006, AOL publicly released 20 million anonymized search logs. That same year, Netflix released 100 million anonymized movie ratings of its users. In both cases, researchers were able to re-identify the
What Social Media is Feeding Us
You’re sitting in your room, browsing your favorite website. A Buzzfeed Tasty video sits at the top of your feed, and the thumbnail intrigues you, so you spend a few minutes watching the creation of French Toast Roll-Ups 4 Ways.
Preventing Aggressive Ignorance – The A.I. We Don’t Think About
When UNC professor Zeynep Tufekci began watching Donald Trump rallies on YouTube, she noticed something odd. [1] YouTube began recommending and auto-playing extremist content—white supremacist videos, Holocaust denials, etc. In 2015 Twitter began sorting its timeline by algorithmically-determined “relevance” rather
An Undergraduate Account of the Real World Crypto Symposium 2020
Alfred Lerner Hall, where Real World Crypto 2020 took place. The Real World Crypto Symposium (often abbreviated as RWC) is an annual, 3-day conference for applied cryptography research organized by the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR). It strives to bring
Urban Planning for Cyberspace
The home screen on my iphone is grayscale with white light reduced. Almost like a kindle. When I look at the screen, no app stands out. Each is an identically shaped, boring gray blob. They are so indistinguishable that I
What We Talk About When We Talk About Fake News
Early last year in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, WhatsApp users received posts warning of the impending arrival of a gang of child-abducting criminals. Soon thereafter, a mob convened and dragged an elderly woman, Rukmani, along with her family