Autumn books

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In one of my periodic attempts to impose order on my study I rounded up all the books I have been

  • reading
  • reviewing
  • need to read for work
  • want to read for pleasure

And, having done so, wondered about my sanity.

From the top down…

Zuckerberg’s ideology

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Facebook’s announcement that it will include Breitbart in its select list of ‘curated’ news sources speaks volumes. Charlie Wardle has an intelligent take on it in the New York Times:

Because Mr. Zuckerberg is one of the most powerful people in politics right now — and because the stakes feel so high — there’s a desire to assign him a political label. That’s understandable but largely beside the point. Mark Zuckerberg may very well have political beliefs. And his every action does have political consequences. But he is not a Republican or a Democrat in how he wields his power. Mr. Zuckerberg’s only real political affiliation is that he’s the chief executive of Facebook. His only consistent ideology is that connectivity is a universal good. And his only consistent goal is advancing that ideology, at nearly any cost.

Yep. The only thing he really cares about is growth in the number of users of Facebook, and the engagement they have with the platform. And the collateral damage of that is someone else’s problem. This is sociopathy on steroids.

Ratmobiles

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Now you really couldn’t make this up:

Researchers at the University of Richmond in the US taught a group of 17 rats how to drive little plastic cars, in exchange for bits of cereal.

Study lead Dr Kelly Lambert said the rats felt more relaxed during the task, a finding that could help with the development of non-pharmaceutical treatments for mental illness.

The rats were not required to take a driving test at the end of the study.

Facebook contradictions

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Proud announcement from Facebook:

Today, we removed four separate networks of accounts, Pages and Groups for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior on Facebook and Instagram. Three of them originated in Iran and one in Russia, and they targeted a number of different regions of the world: the US, North Africa and Latin America. All of these operations created networks of accounts to mislead others about who they were and what they were doing. We have shared information about our findings with law enforcement, policymakers and industry partners.

We’re constantly working to detect and stop this type of activity because we don’t want our services to be used to manipulate people.

To which Charles Arthur comments: “I thought manipulating people was basically the point.” Which it is. It’s just that apparently some kinds of manipulation are verboten. And of course, as Charles says, this is just the stuff they’re catching.