The End of Crowdsourcing
With Russian bots on Twitter, the attack on Rotten Tomatoes scores, the deluge of fake comments sent to the FCC, and even attacks on a DARPA Network Challenge, I think 2018 is the beginning of the end for crowdsourcing.
There are two problems to solve, the first is that some of these systems are trying to extract a signal from noisy data, and it only takes a small number of bad actors to intentionally inject a strong signal into that data stream and overwhelm the real signal.
The second problem is simply identity on the web. It’s 2018 and it’s still true that on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.
I think I’ll just keep updating this post with events throughout the year.
- Dec 5 - YouTube set to hire 10,000 moderators in a bid to get rid of inappropriate content
- Jan 17 - Facebook pivoting away from “engagement”
- Feb 9 - Facial Recognition Is Accurate, if You’re a White Guy
- Feb 12 - Unilever threatens to pull ads from Facebook and Google
- Feb 28 - News in a disintegrating reality: Tow’s Jonathan Albright on what to do as things crash around us
- March 10 - YouTube, the Great Radicalizer