Transición hacia una Internet censurada. Y mientras, en el cortijo...

[Lego]

No es por relanzar el debate de la IA. Es que he visto un artículo en ZH y me ha entrado la sospecha de que igual la Cospe es un bot obsoleto. Y Pablo Iglesias un replicante.

El artículo relaciona esta noticia del otro día

Turing Test breakthrough as super-computer becomes first to convince us it's human

Eugene Goostman, a computer programme pretending to be a young Ukrainian boy, successfully duped enough humans to pass the iconic test

A programme that convinced humans that it was a 13-year-old boy has become the first computer ever to pass the Turing Test. The test — which requires that computers are indistinguishable from humans — is considered a landmark in the development of artificial intelligence, but academics have warned that the technology could be used for cybercrime.

Computing pioneer Alan Turing said that a computer could be understood to be thinking if it passed the test, which requires that a computer dupes 30 per cent of human interrogators in five-minute text conversations.


Eugene Goostman, a computer programme made by a team based in Russia, succeeded in a test conducted at the Royal Society in London. It convinced 33 per cent of the judges that it was human, said academics at the University of Reading, which organised the test.

It is thought to be the first computer to pass the iconic test. Though other programmes have claimed successes, those included set topics or questions in advance.

A version of the computer programme, which was created in 2001, is hosted online for anyone talk to. (“I feel about beating the turing test in quite convenient way. Nothing original,” said Goostman, when asked how he felt after his success.)

The computer programme claims to be a 13-year-old boy from Odessa in Ukraine.

"Our main idea was that he can claim that he knows anything, but his age also makes it perfectly reasonable that he doesn't know everything," said Vladimir Veselov, one of the creators of the programme. "We spent a lot of time developing a character with a believable personality."

The programme's success is likely to prompt some concerns about the future of computing, said Kevin Warwick, a visiting professor at the University of Reading and deputy vice-chancellor for research at Coventry University.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/computer-becomes-first-to-pass-turing-test-in-artificial-intelligence-milestone-but-academics-warn-of-dangerous-future-9508370.html


con esta otra:

How Advanced Socialbots Have Infiltrated Twitter
Automated bots can not only evade detection but also gather followers and become influential among various social groups, say computer scientists who have let their bots loose on Twitter.




If you have a Twitter account, the chances are that you have fewer than 50 followers and that you follow fewer than 50 people yourself. You probably know many of these people well but there may also be a few on your list who you’ve never met.

So here’s an interesting question: how do you know these Twitter users are real people and not automated accounts, known as bots, that are feeding you links and messages designed to sway your opinions?

You might say that bots are not very sophisticated and so easy to spot. And that Twitter monitors the Twittersphere looking for, and removing, any automated accounts that it finds. Consequently, it is unlikely that you are unknowingly following any automated accounts, malicious or not.

If you hold that opinion, it’s one that you might want to revise following the work of Carlos Freitas at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil and a few pals, who have studied how easy it is for socialbots to infiltrate Twitter.

Their findings will surprise. They say that a significant proportion of the socialbots they have created not only infiltrated social groups on Twitter but became influential among them as well. What’s more, Freitas and co have identified the characteristics that make socialbots most likely to succeed.


These guys began by creating 120 socialbots and letting them loose on Twitter. The bots were given a profile, made male or female and given a few followers to start off with, some of which were other bots.

The bots generate tweets either by reposting messages that others have posted or by creating their own synthetic tweets using a set of rules to pick out common words on a certain topic and put them together into a sentence.

The bots were also given an activity level. High activity equates to posting at least once an hour and low activity equates to doing it once every two hours (although both groups are pretty active compared to most humans). The bots also “slept” between 10 p.m. and 9 a.m. Pacific time to simulate the down time of human users.

Finally, they were set up to follow one of three different groups of humans. The first consisted of 200 people randomly selected from the Twitter stream, the second was 200 people who regularly post tweets on a specific topic in this case software development, and the final group consisted of 200 software developers who were all socially connected to each other on Twitter.

Having let the socialbots loose, the first question that Freitas and co wanted to answer was whether their charges could evade the defenses set up by Twitter to prevent automated posting. “Over the 30 days during which the experiment was carried out, 38 out of the 120 socialbots were suspended,” they say. In other words, 69 percent of the social bots escaped detection.

The more interesting question, though, was whether the social bots can successfully infiltrate the social groups they were set up to follow. And on that score the results are surprising. Over the duration of the experiment, the 120 socialbots received a total of 4,999 follows from 1,952 different users. And more than 20 percent of them picked up over 100 followers, which is more followers than 46 percent of humans on Twitter.

Freitas and co also monitored the Klout score of each of their social bots to see how they fared. (Klout is an online service that measures the influence of Twitter accounts, giving them a score between 0 and 100). “We find that the socialbots achieved Klout scores of the same order of (or, at times, even higher than) several well-known academicians and social network researchers,” they say.

The team also teased apart the data to find out what factors contributed to the success of the bots. Unsurprisingly, activity level is important and the more active bots achieved greater popularity in their social networks. That’s expected since more active bots are more likely to be seen by others (although they are also more likely to be detected by Twitter’s defense mechanisms).

More surprisingly, the socialbots that generated synthetic tweets (rather than just reposting) performed better too. That suggests that Twitter users are unable to distinguish between posts generated by humans and by bots. “This is possibly because a large fraction of tweets in Twitter are written in an informal, grammatically incoherent style, so that even simple statistical models can produce tweets with quality similar to those posted by humans in Twitter,” suggest Freitas and co.

The groups that the socialbots were set up to follow also had a major effect. The group of socially connected software developers produced the fewest followers while the group of randomly chosen software developers generated the highest number of them.

Gender also played a role. While male and female bots were equally effective when considered overall, female social bots were much more effective at generating followers among the group of socially connected software developers. “This suggests that the gender of the socialbots can make a difference if the target users are gender-biased,” say Freitas and pals.

That’s an interesting piece of work. It suggests that the Twittersphere may be more vulnerable to automated attack than previously thought.

It’s a finding that may have significant implications for certain types of groups on Twitter. In recent years a number of services have arisen to measure interest and opinion among Twitter users on a wide variety of topics, such as voting intention, product sentiment, disease outbreaks, natural disasters and so on.

The worry is that automated bots could be designed to significantly influence opinion in one or more of these areas. For example, it would be relatively straightforward to create a bot that spreads false rumors about a political candidate in a way that could influence an election.

So the work of Freitas and co is a wake-up call for Twitter. If it wants to successfully prevent these kinds of attacks, it will need to significantly improve its defense mechanisms. And since this work reveals what makes bots successful, Twitter’s research team has an advantage.

The trick will be to spot social bots and exclude them without mistakenly excluding human users in the process. That will be no easy task.

But with an estimated 20 million fake Twitter accounts already set up, Twitter’s researchers have plenty of data to work with.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1405.4927 : Reverse Engineering Socialbot Infiltration Strategies in Twitter

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/527746/how-advanced-socialbots-have-infiltrated-twitter/

[wanderer]

The worry is that automated bots could be designed to significantly influence opinion in one or more of these areas. For example, it would be relatively straightforward to create a bot that spreads false rumors about a political candidate in a way that could influence an election.

¿La preocupación???  Si más hay que considerarlo una bendición: la gente que se quiera cagar en tutti quanti, que se deje de chorradas de mensajes amenazantes (y/o de vanagloria en su desgracia, caso de haberla) en la cuenta del pajarraco de tal o cual politicastro; sencillamente, se crea disimuladamente su bot flamer style y lo deja correr.

Y después. que denuncien al bot si pueden... 

[Currobena]

Frank Church’s mid-1970s investigation into the FBI’s spying shockingly found that the agency had labeled half a million US citizens as potential “subversives,” routinely spying on people based purely on their political beliefs. (The FBI’s list of targets ranged from Martin Luther King to John Lennon, from the women’s liberation movement to the anti-Communist John Birch Society.)” “On the contrary, mass surveillance is a universal temptation for any unscrupulous power. And in every instance, the motive is the same: suppressing dissent and mandating compliance.”
“At the turn of the twentieth century, the British and French empires both created specialized monitoring departments to deal with the threat of anticolonialist movements.”
“The ability to eavesdrop on people’s communications vests immense power in those who do it. And unless such power is held in check by rigorous oversight and accountability, it is almost certain to be abused. Expecting the US government to operate a massive surveillance machine in complete secrecy without falling prey to its temptations runs counter to every historical example and all available evidence about human nature.”

Extracto de un libro sobre espionaje a la población y las tácticas para desacreditar a los que lo denuncian. Muy interesante.


http://www.simoleonsense.com/snowden-the-nsa-and-the-u-s-surveillance-state/

[Currobena]

Los verdaderos piratas de las leyes de ¿propiedad? intelectual.

Intellectual property law is complex and varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but, roughly speaking, creative works can be copyrighted, while inventions and processes can be patented. In each case the intention is to protect the value of the owner's work or possession.
For the most part, mathematics is excluded by the Berne convention of the World International Property Organization (WIPO). An unusual exception was the successful patenting of Gray codes in 1953. More usual was the carefully timed Pi Day 2012 dismissal by a U.S. judge of a copyright infringement suit regarding Pi, since "Pi is a non-copyrightable fact."
Pi Period
In January 2014 the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted Brooklyn artist Paul Ingrisano a trademark on his design consisting of the Greek letter Pi followed by a period. It should be noted here that there is nothing stylistic or in any way particular about Ingrisano's trademark; it is simply a standard Greek Pi letter followed by a period. That's it: Pi period.  No one doubts the enormous value of Apple's partly eaten apple or the MacDonald's arch. But Pi.?
We live in an era of aggressive patent trolling by vulture patent firms. There is vast amount at stake. Think of the current smartphone-patent wars and the sometimes-successful patenting of life forms. Additionally, it is often cheaper for a firm to pay than to go to court. A vague patent can be a "nice little earner," and even established firms such as Microsoft and Apple therefore go patent trolling. Other firms are more willing to "open source" some of their intellectual property, such as, for example, Tesla's announcement that it will open some of its patents to help spur the electric automobile industry.
What Happened Next?
To underscore that he means business, Ingrisano, through his lawyer, Ronald Millet, sent a letter to Zazzle.com, a Pi novelty company, demanding that they "mmediately cease and desist" their "unlawful" usage of the Pi trademark or "any confusingly similar trademark," and, within 14 days:

• Provide an accounting of all sales of any products containing their trademark.
• Provide an inventory of all relevant products.
• Disclose any other uses, electronic or print, that have been made of the trademark.
• Provide an account of the date when the Pi trademark was first incorporated into their products, a list of all known links to Zazzle's webpage, and a list of third parties who offer such products.

The letter threatened attorney's fees and "treble money damages." The full text of the letter is available here.
Implied in the letter is the plaintiff's position that "any confusingly similar trademark" includes the Pi symbol itself, without the period, since none of the products offered by Zazzle features a Pi followed by a period. Indeed, according to a report in Wired, Ingrisano's attorney Millet has asserted that many items for sale by Zazzle "clearly have a pi sign and look similar enough that folks out there might confuse it with products that my client also sells."
Zazzle responded by temporarily banning all garments featuring the Pi symbol, which involved "thousands of products," according to the Wired report. But two days later, after being flooded with complaints, Zazzle restored the products. Millet is consulting with Ingrisano as to their next step.
Along this line, it is amusing to note that a Pi design is featured by the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) as a finalist for its 2014 T-Shirt Contest (and the design includes one formula that one of the present authors was instrumental in discovering). Will MAA be challenged as well?
The Smiley Face
This spat is reminiscent of a dispute over the "smiley face" between litigants Walmart Stores and SmileyWorld, a London-based company that registered rights to the smiley face many years ago on behalf of Franklin Loufrani. The dispute was finally settled in June 2011, under undisclosed (but likely quite expensive) terms.
Unlike the Pi case, no one has argued that the smiley face has scientific significance! But the case does demonstrate that such disputes must be taken seriously. Moreover, the smiley face is a defined and recognizable image, and Loufrani explicitly makes no attempt to stop the use of it in email as plain text, such as .
Pi in Modern Mathematics and Science
The Pi. trademark, and the aggressive actions taken by the trademark holder, may seem amusing and are certainly unfortunate for Zazzle and its owners, employees and customers.
But much more is at stake here. If Ingrisano and his attorney prevail in their legal actions, this would mean, in effect, that anyone who uses the Pi symbol in any context would live under the threat that they might receive a similar "cease and desist" letter, with the threats of significant financial loss. This would be an unmitigated disaster for modern mathematics and science.
It is not the slightest bit an exaggeration to say that Pi is the most important irrational constant of modern mathematics. Each year the Pi symbol appears in thousand of published books and in tens (possibly hundreds) of thousands of technical papers, not just in books and papers related to geometry but in fields as diverse as statistics and quantum physics.
In fact, the numerical value of Pi (expressed in binary digits) is contained in every smartphone ever produced, since the computations performed to process wireless signals (using the "fast Fourier transform") inherently involve Pi.
Pi appears in several guises in the equations of quantum physics and therefore is central to semiconductor electronics. Pi even arises in GPS technology, since the frequency of clock signals broadcast by GPS satellites must be adjusted according to the formulas of Einstein's general relativity, the equations of which involve Pi.
The mind reels at the thought that the authors of every mathematical, scientific or engineering paper that uses a Pi symbol must live under a cloud of worry that they too might be accused of "trademark violation" by including Pi symbols in their articles. And can we really not put Pi on our posters and T-shirts?
Also, if Pi is placed under a cloud of trademark violation, what is next? The letter e, the base of natural logarithms, which is almost as ubiquitous as Pi? The "sigma" summation sign (another Greek letter)? The integral sign?
What to Do
Unlikely? Perhaps. But to even approach such a path, to place even a glimmer of doubt or worry into the workings and communications of modern science, would be an unmitigated disaster. No precedent even remotely approaching this scenario must be tolerated by the scientific community. Must the American Mathematical Society or the International Mathematical Union trademark all mathematical symbols -- including 5! --  as logos and release them under a general public license?
No, the best solution is simply to rescind the Pi. trademark and block any future attempts at trademarking mathematical symbols. There definitely are precedents for such action, including the June 2014 action by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to cancel the Washington Redskins' registration of their image, which was ruled as disparaging to Native Americans. Surely the needs of the worldwide mathematical and scientific community to use standard notation free from trademark worries is an equally compelling justification.

Este intento de saqueo continuo acabará destruyendo la civilización si no se para. Estos son los verdaderos piratas de nuestros tiempos.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-h-bailey/can-pi-be-trademarked_b_5513392.html

[saturno]

Parafraseando:

Must the Programmers Worldwide Society(*) or the International Open Source Union(*) trademark all source code   -- including $(), coma or [] --  as logos and release them under a general public license?

No, the best solution is simply to rescind the Source Code copyrigth and block any future attempts at copyrigth-marking source code.

 

Exactamente. Que lo digan los matemáticos ahora es como un guiño de nostalgia

Asimilar el código fuente, la formulacion de un algoritmo, a una obra protegida,
ése fue el atentado que se cometió hace mucho tiempo

Después, ya de nada  sirven los gurús que te embelesan diciendo que "quieren tu libertad" o darte "licencia de  libertad".

Aunque el señor deje vagar a los siervos por sus posesiones y estos canten a la libertad, ya nada pueden cambiar y todos saben que son siervos para siempre, y que nada hay para ellos más allá de los lindes.




(*) Todo parecido con la realidad es pura casualidad.

[Currobena]

El gobierno español permite a la NSA espiarnos:

A shortlist of other countries potentially involved in the RAMPART-A operation is contained in the Snowden archive. A classified presentation dated 2013, published recently in Intercept editor Glenn Greenwald’s book No Place To Hide, revealed that the NSA had top-secret spying agreements with 33 third-party countries, including Denmark, Germany, and 15 other European Union member states:
  For any foreign government, allowing the NSA to secretly tap private communications is politically explosive, hence the extreme secrecy shrouding the names of those involved. But governments that participate in RAMPART-A get something in return: access to the NSA’s sophisticated surveillance equipment, so they too can spy on the mass of data that flows in and out of their territory.
The partnership deals operate on the condition that the host country will not use the NSA’s spy technology to collect any data on U.S. citizens. The NSA also agrees that it will not use the access it has been granted to collect data on the host countries’ citizens. One NSA document notes that “there ARE exceptions” to this rule – though does not state what those exceptions may be.
According to Snowden, the agreements that the NSA has in place with its partners are lax and easily circumvented. In a statement to the European parliament in March, he used Denmark and Germany as examples to describe how the NSA had effectively established what he called a “European bazaar” for surveillance.
“An EU member state like Denmark may give the NSA access to a tapping center on the (unenforceable) condition that NSA doesn’t search it for Danes, and Germany may give the NSA access to another on the condition that it doesn’t search for Germans,” Snowden said.
“Yet the two tapping sites may be two points on the same cable, so the NSA simply captures the communications of the German citizens as they transit Denmark, and the Danish citizens as they transit Germany, all the while considering it entirely in accordance with their agreements.”

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/06/22/nsa-gathers-all-communications-everywhere/

[Saturio]

Una pregunta para quién quiera contestar.

¿Somos el único país del mundo con IXPs terruñísticos?

Catalunya Neutral Internet Exchange (CATNIX), Barcelona
Nap de las Americas (Terremark), Madrid
España Internet Exchange (ESPANIX), Madrid
Galicia Neutral Internet Exchange (GALNIX), Santiago de Compostela
Punto Neutro Vasco (EuskoNIX), San Sebastián

Si es así, ¿Qué narices significa (si es que significa algo)?
Aunque mi ignorancia es enorme, no deja de sorprenderme que los terruños se hayan interesado en aportar infraestructura internetera.

ESPANIX es, por lo que creo entender, de la AUI.

[Lego]

El Gobierno pide a Europa que sea delito el 'adiestramiento pasivo'
Incluirá en el Código Penal la entrada reiterada de un individuo en foros 'yihadistas'


El Gobierno solicitará a Europa que incluya el denominado «adiestramiento pasivo» o autoadiestramiento entre los delitos que deben ser perseguidos para luchar contra el terrorismo. Se trataría de otorgar categoría delincuencial a la entrada reiterada en foros o webs desde las que se imparten doctrinas radicales. En realidad, el principal objetivo de esta iniciativa legislativa es el yihadismo.
[...]

http://www.elmundo.es/espana/2014/06/25/53aa7d7c268e3ed2488b456c.html

[Itzhak Perlman]

Una pregunta para quién quiera contestar.

¿Somos el único país del mundo con IXPs terruñísticos?

Catalunya Neutral Internet Exchange (CATNIX), Barcelona
Nap de las Americas (Terremark), Madrid
España Internet Exchange (ESPANIX), Madrid
Galicia Neutral Internet Exchange (GALNIX), Santiago de Compostela
Punto Neutro Vasco (EuskoNIX), San Sebastián

Si es así, ¿Qué narices significa (si es que significa algo)?
Aunque mi ignorancia es enorme, no deja de sorprenderme que los terruños se hayan interesado en aportar infraestructura internetera.

ESPANIX es, por lo que creo entender, de la AUI.

No. En realidad, es común que los países tengan un IXP nacional, y luego, varios regionales.

[Taliván Hortográfico]

Supongo que lo dice porque Daniel Barringer, el geólogo, se arruinó buscando mineral de hierro en el "Meteor Crater" al suponer, erróneamente, que un cráter de kilómetros de diámetro tenía que haber sido hecho por el impacto de una masa de mineral de varios millones de toneladas, y no por una relativamente pequeña, del tamaño de una casa. ¿Me equivoco?



(Nunca he visto mal en hacerle a la gente las cosas accesibles) 

[Saturio]

Creo que las plataformas digitales jamás ganaron dinero en España.
Imagínense, entonces, lo que puede valer eso por mucho que se integre en servicios de internec.

La compra por parte de telefónica puede ser simplemente su colaboración al rescate de Prisa. Porque rescatar prisa es lo que toca.

En España los intereses corporativos rara vez tienen que ver con mercados, tendencias...Si intentamos explicar esos movimientos como acciones estratégicas de mercado nos parecen sandeces. La estrategia subyacente es realmente salvar el culo, mantener el tinglado. Que no se caiga prisa, que no afecte a la banca...

 

[Taliván Hortográfico]

Gracias a @fesja descubro hoy un espeluznante estudio firmado y entregado por entre otros autores Adam D. I. Kramer parte del  Core Data Science Team de Facebook, departamento que no sabía ni que existía y cuyo nombre pone los pelos como escarpias.

El estudio trataba de demostrar si las emociones positivas y negativas se contagian a través de una red social del mismo modo que en la vida real. Para llevar a cabo el estudio, en 2012 los autores manipularon el “News feed” o página de inicio de Facebook de forma que determinados usuarios estaban expuestos a más historias con tono negativo mientras que otro grupo disfrutaba de temas positivos. Los resultados fueron aplastantes:

We show, via a massive (N = 689,003) experiment on Facebook, that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. We provide experimental evidence that emotional contagion occurs without direct interaction between people (exposure to a friend expressing an emotion is sufficient), and in the complete absence of nonverbal cues.

El contagio se producía y aquellas personas expuestas a unas emociones concretas eran más propensas a escribir positiva o negativamente en función del grupo al que pertenecían. Más allá de las conclusiones que harán las delicias de cualquier community manager, este estudio es uno de los mejores ejemplos del modo “Gran Hermano” de Facebook. No hace falta exagerar, la noticia en sí misma demuestra no sólo el poder de Facebook para hacer estudios sociológicos sino el poder de Facebook para controlar la información y en consecuencia las emociones de sus usuarios.



Si la historia te parece poco ética, ilegal o te genera angustia (nah, los dos sabemos que probablemente te la pinfle) no te preocupes que todo está en las condiciones de uso de Facebook. Concretamente en la sección qué hacemos con tu información:

… para operaciones internas, incluidos la solución de problemas, el análisis de datos, la investigación, el desarrollo y la mejora del servicio

Dentro del estudio hay un párrafo que me llamó especialmente la atención:

It is important to note that this content was always available by viewing a friend’s content directly by going to that friend’s “wall” or “timeline,” rather than via the News Feed. Further, the omitted content may have appeared on prior or subsequent views of the News Feed. Finally, the experiment did not affect any direct messages sent from one user to another.

El poder del News Feed y el algoritmo de selección de noticias de Facebook es tremendo. De verdad que me encantaría saber cuántas personas reorganizan las historias por “muéstrame las últimas en lugar de las más populares” o van al perfil de un amigo porque “misteriosamente” hace tiempo que no sale nada suyo en su página de inicio.

Hay que recordar que por ejemplo dentro de las páginas de fans, las actualizaciones se muestran sólo a un porcentaje de los seguidores a no ser que pagues/promociones. Este porcentaje originalmente estaba en el 16% pero cada vez hay más estudios reseñando su caída.

Será que hoy estoy de cumpleaños y me siento endemoniadamente viejo pero recuerdo el auge de los lectores RSS donde seleccionabas las web que te interesaban y cuentas personales que te apetecía leer y eras tú el que mandaba. Ahora ni mandan los que publican (tienen que pagar y no todos pueden pagar) ni mandan los que leen porque un algoritmo es el que decide lo que es interesante para ti.

Este estudio demuestra el poder de ese algoritmo para alterar la percepción de las personas del mismo modo que las búsquedas de Google generan cada vez más cámaras de eco donde uno encuentra sólo aquello con lo que se siente cómplice.

Los algoritmos que supuestamente evitan la infoxicación son nuevos códigos genéticos ¿cuánto dinero cuesta manipularlos?

http://www.blogoff.es/2014/06/29/facebook-y-sus-ratas-de-laboratorio/

[bluebeetle]

Explicaciones de uno de los autores del experimento del caralibro

OK so. A lot of people have asked me about my and Jamie and Jeff's recent study published in PNAS, and I wanted to give a brief public explanation. The reason we did this research is because we care about the emotional impact of Facebook and the people that use our product. We felt that it was important to investigate the common worry that seeing friends post positive content leads to people feeling negative or left out. At the same time, we were concerned that exposure to friends' negativity might lead people to avoid visiting Facebook. We didn't clearly state our motivations in the paper.

Regarding methodology, our research sought to investigate the above claim by very minimally deprioritizing a small percentage of content in News Feed (based on whether there was an emotional word in the post) for a group of people (about 0.04% of users, or 1 in 2500) for a short period (one week, in early 2012). Nobody's posts were "hidden," they just didn't show up on some loads of Feed. Those posts were always visible on friends' timelines, and could have shown up on subsequent News Feed loads. And we found the exact opposite to what was then the conventional wisdom: Seeing a certain kind of emotion (positive) encourages it rather than suppresses is.

And at the end of the day, the actual impact on people in the experiment was the minimal amount to statistically detect it -- the result was that people produced an average of one fewer emotional word, per thousand words, over the following week.

The goal of all of our research at Facebook is to learn how to provide a better service. Having written and designed this experiment myself, I can tell you that our goal was never to upset anyone. I can understand why some people have concerns about it, and my coauthors and I are very sorry for the way the paper described the research and any anxiety it caused. In hindsight, the research benefits of the paper may not have justified all of this anxiety.

While we’ve always considered what research we do carefully, we (not just me, several other researchers at Facebook) have been working on improving our internal review practices. The experiment in question was run in early 2012, and we have come a long way since then. Those review practices will also incorporate what we’ve learned from the reaction to this paper.

https://www.facebook.com/akramer/posts/10152987150867796

Otro artículo al respecto:

La dudosa ética de hacer experimentos psicológicos con tus usuarios

A través de una publicación en un journal científico, titulada “Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks“, hemos sabido que al menos un investigador del Core Data Scientist Team de Facebook, Adam D. I. Kramer, ha participado en un experimento que muchos considerarán aterrador: la manipulación del estado de ánimo de los usuarios de Facebook mediante el filtrado intencionado de las actualizaciones en su muro.

La situación es la siguiente: durante una semana en enero de 2012, un total de casi setecientos mil usuarios de Facebook fueron, sin mediar consentimiento alguno de su parte, sometidos a un experimento psicológico: las actualizaciones de sus amigos que aparecían en sus muros fueron intencionadamente filtradas para mostrar de manera mayoritaria estados en los que predominaban palabras o connotaciones positivas, mientras otro grupo lo fue con palabras o connotaciones fundamentalmente negativas. Al cabo de la semana, se evaluó hasta qué punto esos usuarios tenían una probabilidad más elevada de compartir actualizaciones con tonos respectivamente positivos o negativos.

El experimento es sencillo: comprobar el nivel de influencia que la información compartida en su entorno social virtual ejerce sobre el estado de ánimo. Tan sencillo como esto:

    Emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading them to experience the same emotions as those around them (…) This research demonstrated that (i) emotional contagion occurs via text-based computer-mediated communication; (ii) contagion of psychological and physiological qualities has been suggested based on correlational data for social networks generally; and (iii) people’s emotional expressions on Facebook predict friends’ emotional expressions, even days later.

Pero indudablemente, y dicho por la propia editora de la revista que aprobó su publicación, resulta también profundamente inquietante. Jugar a programador de estados de ánimo, con personas. Setecientas mil personas manipuladas durante una semana para lograr que su estado de ánimo tuviese un componente más negativo o positivo. Algunos de los afectados podrían, posiblemente, ayudados por un calendario y por su propia timeline en Facebook, tratar de recordar aquella semana de enero de 2012, tratar de asociarla con otros eventos que tuvieron lugar en su vida personal, y pensar que, en efecto, estaban siendo condicionados por Facebook, que la red estaba tratando de influir en su estado de ánimo.

Algo que, por otro lado, nos permite imaginar infinitas posibilidades más: ¿por qué no generar artificialmente estados de ánimo de determinados tipos entre los usuarios para, por ejemplo, hacer que tengan una mayor propensión a adquirir productos o servicios, a contratar un seguro de vida, a irse de viaje? ¿Para cuándo un estudio que demuestre que si saturamos el muro de un usuario con actualizaciones sobre viajes de todos sus amigos, conseguimos que se vaya corriendo a contratar un viaje él mismo? Y ya que estamos, ¿le ponemos precio y lo comercializamos a las aerolíneas y cadenas de hoteles? ¿Por qué no generar estados de ánimo par tratar de influir en los resultados de unas elecciones? ¿Cómo puede afectar un estado de ánimo predominantemente positivo o negativo en los ciudadanos que se acercan a votar a un colegio electoral?

Con este experimento, Facebook cruza una línea roja que muchos, sin duda, van a considerar completamente inaceptable: la de la experimentación con sus propios usuarios. Todas las empresas que reciben datos de sus usuarios analizan esos datos, y habitualmente, además, dan difusión a muchos de sus hallazgos. Analizar datos producidos de manera espontánea o generados por un factor externo independiente es algo que a muy pocos va a molestar: que se pueda ver hasta qué punto ha influenciado lo compartido por los usuarios en una red una noticia buena o mala, o incluso cuestiones directas y personales. Si este experimento hubiese tenido lugar seleccionando usuarios que de manera natural estuviesen sometidos a una mayoría de actualizaciones positivas o negativas en su muro, no tendría personalmente ningún problema con él. Es el componente de manipulación, de filtrado voluntario, el que me incomoda profundamente, el que me lleva a ver a Facebook como un enorme manipulador, como la empresa que tiene una puerta de entrada a nuestro cerebro, que puede llegar a ser capaz de programarnos, de producir un efecto en nuestro estado de ánimo… y lo que es mucho peor, que no solo tiene esa facultad, sino que además va y la utiliza.

Tras una constatación así, Facebook merecería que todos sus usuarios le diesen la espalda. No es de recibo que por el simple hecho de utilizar una plataforma para compartir voluntariamente determinados aspectos de tu vida con tus amigos, te encuentres de repente y sin tu conocimiento sometido a un experimento manipulador de tu estado de ánimo. Es completamente inaceptable, y debería determinar no solo que toda la cadena de mando que aprobó este experimento fuese inmediatamente despedida, sino que se llevase a cabo una rigurosísima auditoría que tratase de determinar qué otros experimentos han sido realizados por la compañía, como quién audita a una especie de Dr. Mengele. Y si eso lo pienso yo, que en principio soy un científico inclinado a justificar la investigación y una persona que tiende a tener una opinión generalmente positiva sobre Facebook y sobre otras empresas que intentan plantear herramientas innovadoras, no quiero ni pensar cómo se sentirán todos aquellos que de manera natural tienden a tener una visión pesimista o escéptica.

El experimento de Facebook incide en esas percepciones: ahora, cualquier usuario de la red social tiene todo el derecho del mundo a imaginarse manipulado, a pensar que está participando en otro experimento, a verse como un conejillo de indias con su cerebro en manos de otro científico loco. Completamente inaceptable y gravísimo, independientemente de lo que diga la legalidad y los términos de servicio de la compañía. Quien haya autorizado o participado en esto, tiene un serio problema de valores. Y de ética.

ACTUALIZACIÓN: ya hay reacciones, desde una disculpa/justificación del autor del estudio en Facebook, hasta apoyos al concepto de A/B testing. Ninguna de ellas me convence por el momento. Sigo pensando que estuvo mal, y que no es en modo alguno justificable.

(This article is also available in English in my Medium page, “Facebook crosses the line into mind control territory“) Reproducido del blog de Enrique Dans

http://www.internautas.org/html/8366.html

[Saturio]

We felt that it was important to investigate the common worry that seeing friends post positive content leads to people feeling negative or left out. At the same time, we were concerned that exposure to friends' negativity might lead people to avoid visiting Facebook. We didn't clearly state our motivations in the paper.

Vamos, que lo que querían saber era a quién tenían que banear, ningunear, hacer menos visible o en todo caso animar a que cambiase su tono posteador.

[Oslodije2]

http://www.diarioinformacion.com/vida-y-estilo/tecnologia/2014/07/04/policia-implantara-dni-30-nuevas/1521521.html

La Policía implantará el DNI 3.0 y nuevas apps para móviles
El documento de identidad incorporará la tecnología sin contactos NFC para integrarlo con los smartphones

El director general de la Policía, Ignacio Cosidó, ha dicho que el DNI 3.0 supondrá un paso decisivo en el ámbito de la Seguridad Inteligente, al que se sumarán nuevas aplicaciones para dispositivos móviles para localizar comisarías de Policía o enviar señales de emergencia.

Cosidó, que ha clausurado en Carrión de los Condes (Palencia) el Curso Internacional Policía 3.0: Seguridad Inteligente, ha anunciado que en breve se presentarán nuevas aplicaciones para dispositivos móviles.

Aplicaciones que servirán para localizar comisarías de Policía, gestionar la cita previa para el documento nacional de identidad o el pasaporte, o para enviar señales de emergencia.

Pero también, ha dicho que se va a dar un paso decisivo en el entorno de la Seguridad Inteligente con la utilización del nuevo DNI electrónico.

Una nueva versión de más fácil uso, que incorpora la tecnología sin contactos NFC para integrarlo con los teléfonos móviles, de forma que funcione al aproximarlo a un dispositivo móvil.

Además el DNI 3.0 aprovechará la tecnología de la nube y estará en consonancia con las novedades adoptadas en el marco europeo para la identificación electrónica, ofreciendo las mismas garantías sin necesidad de un soporte físico, ha asegurado.

El objetivo es aumentar la información contenida en su chip, además de sus usos y convertirlo en una herramienta segura de trafico de información.

Cosidó ha destacado también la puesta en marcha de la Comisaría Virtual para que los ciudadanos puedan poner las denuncias a través de internet de forma telemática.

Pasos que se van dando dentro del Proyecto Policía 3.0 puesto en marcha en 2013 y que en el horizonte de 2015 pretende haber dotado a España de una Policía "del futuro".

Así es como van a obligar, de aquí a 5 años, a utilizar Internet con un DNI: si lo haces desde un móvil ya te rastrean de sobra y si lo haces desde cualquier otro lado, tendrás que acercar el DNI a un lector a distancia.

Menos mal que la gente no tiene ni puta idea de lo que es el cloud computing, sino no les haría ninguna gracia que sus datos personales del DNI circulen por ahí... aunque bueno, siguen todos en facebook después de confirmarse que es una herramienta de la NSA, seguramente les daría igual aunque lo supieran