The Facebook Papers

Just some of the revelations about how Facebook operates:

Facebook fails to moderate harmful content in developing countries

When a pair of Facebook researchers created a dummy account in 2019 to test how users in Kerala, India, experienced the social media site, they found a staggering amount of hate speech, misinformation and calls for violence on the platform. “I’ve seen more images of dead people in the past three weeks than I’ve seen in my entire life total,” the researcher wrote.

Facebook AI struggles with non-English languages

A document showed that in 2020, the company did not have screening algorithms to find misinformation in Burmese, the language of Myanmar, or hate speech in the Ethiopian languages of Oromo or Amharic.

Facebook labeled election misinformation as “harmful, non-violating” content

“Harmful but non-violating”? Really?

Facebook was aware that maids were being sold on its platform

Apple threatened to remove Facebook and Instagram from its app store over the issue, but changed course after the social media giant removed 1,000 accounts linked to the sale of maids from its platform.

Facebook internally debated removing the Like button

When asked why Facebook hasn’t made Instagram safer for children, Haugen said during her testimony that the company knows “young users are the future of the platform and the earlier they get them the more likely they’ll get them hooked.”

https://time.com/6110234/facebook-papers-testimony-explained/

Otterly adorable

Singapore cleaned up its pollution problems and they get a so-cute reward!

Pollution and deforestation drove away Singapore’s otter population in the 1970s. But as the country cleaned up its waters and reforested land in recent years, otters came back in full force, integrating into urban spaces and learning to navigate one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities. Today, to the chagrin of some and the joy of others, the island is home to more than 10 otter romps, or families.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/singapore-otters-wildlife/2021/10/22/9e85c3ac-2afd-11ec-b17d-985c186de338_story.html

Venezuela cuts six zeros from currency

This is the third time Venezuela’s socialist leaders have lopped zeros off the currency. The bolivar lost three zeros in 2008 under the late President Hugo Chávez, while his successor, current President Nicolás Maduro, eliminated five zeros in 2018….

Under the old system, a two-liter bottle of soda pop could cost more than 8 million bolivars — and many of those bills were scarce, so a customer might have to pay with a thick wad of paper.

So one modern peso equals (fourteen zeros, 100,000,000,000,000) a hundred trillion 2008 pesos. They are doing something wrong. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/venezuela-new-currency_n_6156fc79e4b050254231f042

The Pandora Papers: Hiding illicit wealth in the US

Where are people — including dictators, money launderers, billionaires who want to hide taxable assets — hiding their money? In South Dakota:

The documents — more than 11.9 million records from 14 offshore entities, including law and wealth-management firms — illuminate a hidden world that has allowed government leaders, a monarch, billionaires and criminals to shield their assets.
The Post decided to join this project because we felt certain that the breadth of records obtained by the ICIJ would shine a light on aspects of the international financial system that have operated with little or no oversight. A similar but narrower ICIJ investigation, known as the Panama Papers and published in 2016, revealed hidden wealth that ignited protests in several countries, forcing two world leaders from power.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/03/about-pandora-papers-investigation/