Re: [kictanet] KICTANet Digest, Vol 166, Issue 8
Good day Mr Muite, On the question of big brother, no one is fit or should have the say and/or control of a population greater than all the Southern hemisphere + India >= 3 Billion people! In the first place we have unquestionably learnt that polarising or things that make us angry are the most engaging. The motivation/interests of social media companies is to simply keep as many eyeballs, Monthly Active Users (MAU's), glued to screens so they can push as many #ads. #FaceBook especially sucks at local content moderation. As indicated earlier Kenya has 42 languages. Just imagine the size of teams that would be required the whole of Africa? They lean to "Machine Learning" to solve the problem which generally sucks as they want to maximize shareholder value by having less number of employees. Scott Galloway has an excellent presentation from 2017 illustrating this from "The Four" - *https://youtu.be/GWBjUsmO-Lw?t=2234 <https://youtu.be/GWBjUsmO-Lw?t=2234>.* Staring @ 37:14 #FaceBook sucks at moderating in English. In Arabic, it's a disaster - *https://restofworld.org/2021/facebook-is-bad-at-moderating-in-english-in-ara... <https://restofworld.org/2021/facebook-is-bad-at-moderating-in-english-in-arabic-its-a-disaster/>* I have read reports that attribute the magnitude of #Myanmar and now #Ethiopia's mess to lack of content moderation - *https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/25/business/ethiopia-violence-facebook-paper... <https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/25/business/ethiopia-violence-facebook-papers-cmd-intl/index.htm>* l FacaBook AI moderation sucks because moderation at scale is impossible - *https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211020/13270147784/facebook-ai-moderatio... <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211020/13270147784/facebook-ai-moderation-continues-to-suck-because-moderation-scale-is-impossible.shtml>* Leave alone civil societies, can a gov'ts get data of it's own country? Now that #FaceBook is on the war path using their arsenal of Copyright, Terms of Service & Computer and Misuse Acts, they claim they want to prevent another #Cambridge Analytica by quashing all research efforts even where the user has permitted a plugin/extension in their own volition(It is important to note that any data/metadata you add or is created in your usage of many services is not your own!). Well, they lost that privilege when they let them do it earlier. An excellent Twitter Thread by Cory Doctorow -* https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1374785763779375104?s=20 <https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1374785763779375104?s=20>* The EFF has an excellent piece on questions to ask, what to demand of content moderation and the U.S election -* https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/10/content-moderation-and-us-election-wha... <https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/10/content-moderation-and-us-election-what-ask-what-demand>* As seen in the recent #USA election will the #Algorithm be cut back for safety during the Kenyan electioneering period next year? I see only one solution. Null route or drop all packets to and from Social sites that could care less at the eXchange points. In fact start doing so from the New Year! The cleaver/intelligent learn from the mistakes of others. Also, those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it. Yours Kindly, Adrian ---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Benson Muite <benson_muite@emailplus.org> To: kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke Cc: Bcc: Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2021 16:25:07 +0300 Subject: Re: [kictanet] Regulating hate speech and incitement to violence during elections in Kenya An interesting piece that raises the question of who should be assigned the role of Big Brother[1]?
Part of the problem is that many local agencies have poor mechanisms of updating and alerting the public, for example through their own websites. Obtaining information through convenient social media platforms becomes the norm without any fallback references.
This list is an example of a space for open constructive discussion under local control. More such spaces are needed.
A critical and informed citizenry are the long term solution, but even with an informed citizenry, information overload makes propagation of fear, uncertainty and doubt easy.
Attached image modified from[2] and available under licensi ya sanaa huru!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Brother_(Nineteen_Eighty-Four) [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1984-Big-Brother.jpg
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Polarising content is not addictive in every society: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaoice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(bot) We should also be developing natural language processing tools to support our own languages rather than expecting others to do that for us - not just for hate speech, but also positive uses such as ensuring good grammar and spelling, voice assistants etc. South Africa has made multilingualism an important part of its culture, and Tanzania has really promoted Kiswahili (almost all government websites are bilingual). Somalia, being mostly a mono-lingual country has made great efforts in language promotion having a Regional Somali Language Academy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Somali_Language_Academy - note the last sentence in this article "As of August 2017, there is no representation for the Somali-speaking community in Kenya". Rwanda also being a mostly monolingual country has also made great efforts in language promotion, see for example https://www.ralc.gov.rw/index.php?id=2 . In Kenya, central government websites and official interaction is almost always in English, Kiswahili is hard to find despite being an official language, even our Katiba: https://constitutionnet.org/sites/default/files/kenya_swahili_constitution_o... is only easily officially available in English: http://www.kenyalaw.org/kl/fileadmin/pdfdownloads/Constitution/ In comparison for Tanzania we have https://www.tanzania.go.tz/egov_uploads/documents/KATIBA%20YA%20JAMHURI%20YA... and for South Africa: https://justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/pdf.html Not a single county government website includes the dominant language(s) of the region - this is one way to create corpora from which natural language processing tools can be built, as well as to ensure employment opportunities for people with good language skills. We have however made great progress in radio, and some progress in TV in having information and discussion in a number of languages, so maybe locally grown social media and local internet content will follow, especially if it can be monetized and compete fairly. Our languages and cultures also have positive consequences, though it seems they are most visibly use to mobilize voting blocks. Penye nia pana njia. On 12/13/21 2:46 PM, Adrian Teri via KICTANet wrote:
Good day Mr Muite,
On the question of big brother, no one is fit or should have the say and/or control of a population greater than all the Southern hemisphere + India >= 3 Billion people!
In the first place we have unquestionably learnt that polarising or things that make us angry are the most engaging. The motivation/interests of social media companies is to simply keep as many eyeballs, Monthly Active Users (MAU's), glued to screens so they can push as many #ads.
#FaceBook especially sucks at local content moderation. As indicated earlier Kenya has 42 languages. Just imagine the size of teams that would be required the whole of Africa? They lean to "Machine Learning" to solve the problem which generally sucks as they want to maximize shareholder value by having less number of employees. Scott Galloway has an excellent presentation from 2017 illustrating this from "The Four" - _https://youtu.be/GWBjUsmO-Lw?t=2234 <https://youtu.be/GWBjUsmO-Lw?t=2234>._Staring @ 37:14
#FaceBook sucks at moderating in English. In Arabic, it's a disaster - _https://restofworld.org/2021/facebook-is-bad-at-moderating-in-english-in-ara... <https://restofworld.org/2021/facebook-is-bad-at-moderating-in-english-in-arabic-its-a-disaster/>_
I have read reports that attribute the magnitude of #Myanmar and now #Ethiopia's mess to lack of content moderation - _https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/25/business/ethiopia-violence-facebook-paper... <https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/25/business/ethiopia-violence-facebook-papers-cmd-intl/index.htm>_l
FacaBook AI moderation sucks because moderation at scale is impossible - _https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211020/13270147784/facebook-ai-moderatio... <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211020/13270147784/facebook-ai-moderation-continues-to-suck-because-moderation-scale-is-impossible.shtml>_
Leave alone civil societies, can a gov'ts get data of it's own country? Now that #FaceBook is on the war path using their arsenal of Copyright, Terms of Service & Computer and Misuse Acts, they claim they want to prevent another #Cambridge Analytica by quashing all research efforts even where the user has permitted a plugin/extension in their own volition(It is important to note that any data/metadata you add or is created in your usage of many services is not your own!). Well, they lost that privilege when they let them do it earlier.
An excellent Twitter Thread by Cory Doctorow -_https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1374785763779375104?s=20 <https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1374785763779375104?s=20>_ __ The EFF has an excellent piece on questions to ask, what to demand of content moderation and the U.S election -_https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/10/content-moderation-and-us-election-wha... <https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/10/content-moderation-and-us-election-what-ask-what-demand>_
As seen in the recent #USA election will the #Algorithm be cut back for safety during the Kenyan electioneering period next year?
I see only one solution. Null route or drop all packets to and from Social sites that could care less at the eXchange points.
In fact start doing so from the New Year!
The cleaver/intelligent learn from the mistakes of others. Also, those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.
Yours Kindly, Adrian
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Benson Muite <benson_muite@emailplus.org <mailto:benson_muite@emailplus.org>> To: kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke <mailto:kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> Cc: Bcc: Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2021 16:25:07 +0300 Subject: Re: [kictanet] Regulating hate speech and incitement to violence during elections in Kenya An interesting piece that raises the question of who should be assigned the role of Big Brother[1]?
Part of the problem is that many local agencies have poor mechanisms of updating and alerting the public, for example through their own websites. Obtaining information through convenient social media platforms becomes the norm without any fallback references.
This list is an example of a space for open constructive discussion under local control. More such spaces are needed.
A critical and informed citizenry are the long term solution, but even with an informed citizenry, information overload makes propagation of fear, uncertainty and doubt easy.
Attached image modified from[2] and available under licensi ya sanaa huru!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Brother_(Nineteen_Eighty-Four) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Brother_(Nineteen_Eighty-Four)> [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1984-Big-Brother.jpg <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1984-Big-Brother.jpg>
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participants (2)
-
Adrian Teri -
Benson Muite