Political activism is not failing because people are too busy watching cat videos online, but because of a fundamental collapse of citizen leverage on institutions of power like governments and corporations.
Zeynep TufekciRead
Automated gender analysis of my writings often marks me as male, probably because I write about technology, and also about war. But our algorithmic overlords are onto me: I mostly encounter three types of ads online: weight loss, beauty products, and online degrees from shady for-profits.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the limitations of algorithmic analysis in understanding gender and the nature of online advertising.
Zeynep Tufekci's quote highlights how automated gender analysis often misidentifies her as male due to her topics of interest, such as technology and war. This reflects a broader issue of how algorithms can misinterpret identity based on the content being produced, showcasing a disconnect between the creator's identity and the commercial landscape that targets specific audiences through ads that may not align with their actual interests.
In practice
In a discussion about the effects of algorithms on social media advertising.
Political activism is not failing because people are too busy watching cat videos online, but because of a fundamental collapse of citizen leverage on institutions of power like governments and corporations.
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You might be tempted to think that China has a Streisand-effect problem, in which trying to censor an event creates even more publicity. But that assumes the Chinese government doesn't understand the Streisand effect, and that can't be right, because if one government understands attention dynamics online, it's China's.
We could say we want the Web to reflect a vision of the world where everything is done democratically. To do that, we get computers to talk with each other in such a way as to promote that ideal.
When I climb into my car, I enter my destination into a GPS device, whose spatial memory supplants my own. I have photographs to store the images I want to remember, books to store knowledge and now, thanks to Google, I rarely have to remember anything more than the right set of search terms to access humankind's collective memory.
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Today, the smartphone in your pocket has a high-quality digital camera. Everyone - not just artists - is a photographer, and the explosion of photos taken annually proves it.
The only way to make software secure, reliable, and fast is to make it small.
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