News that Facebook shared teens’ details with advertisers throws focus on firm’s ability to mine the data of its 2 billion users – and raises serious ethical questions

Leaked 2017 document reveals FB Australia's intent to exploit teens' words, images.

Deep learning algorithms are often trained on data from the web, and their biases are getting hard to ignore

Recent critiques of both the uses of and discourse surrounding big data have raised important questions as to the extent to which big data and big data techniques should be embraced. However, while the context-dependence of data has been recognized, there remains a tendency among social theorists and other commentators to treat certain aspects of the big data phenomenon, including not only the data but also the methods and tools used to move from data as database to data that can be interpreted and assigned meaning, in a homogenizing way. In this paper, we seek to challenge this tendency, and to explore the ways in which explicit consideration of the plurality of big data might inform particular instances of its exploitation. We compare one currently popular big data-inspired innovation — learning analytics — with three other big data contexts — the physical sciences, business intelligence and public health. Through these comparisons, we highlight some dangers of learning analytics implemented without substantial theoretical, ethical and design effort. In so doing, we also highlight just how plural data, analytical approaches and intentions are, and suggest that each new big data context needs to be recognized in its own singularity.

Ben Williamson argues that if kids need to learn to code, it should be for digital citizenship, not to become complicit with computational propaganda.

In the last few months I’ve had a lot of designers ask me “Where can I do good work?”And they don’t mean “good” as in quality. They mean…

The standard you walk by is the standard you accept. I'm not really crying for Uber employees; I'm intrigued that they're actually seeing consequences.

Weak sauce. Planning doesn't fix everything.

More thinking on predictive analytics.

Monica Bulger and Mikaela Pitcan interview Jade Davis about student privacy issues when they are assigned social media projects.

Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants…

The Long Read: The ability of statistics to accurately represent the world is declining. In its wake, a new age of big data controlled by private companies is taking over – and putting democracy in peril

This is the first FTC complaint involving lying bots—there will be more.

In 2012, I signed the Cost of Knowledge pledge, and stopped reviewing for, and publishing in, all Elsevier journals. In the four years since, I’ve adhered closely to this policy; with a coupl…