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Drupal Creator Floats an "FDA For Data and Algorithms"
jeffengel writes: When Facebook's news feed and Google's search bar have the power to influence voter decisions, is it time for government oversight? That's what Dries Buytaert, creator of Drupal and co-founder of Acquia, is proposing: an "FDA for data and algorithms." The move would aim to boost transparency, but it also raises tough questions. What exactly would such an agency be tasked with monitoring, and what would its penalties look like? Would it wield too much power, pushing the U.S. closer to China levels of information control? Buytaert is pitching the idea as part of a broader push for a more open Web that reduces the dominance of a handful of platforms.
What country, or state, or city gets to decide truth? The entire proposition is absurd; people need to be educated to understand that all media outlets are biased rather than trying to have some government agency decide what bias is acceptable.
... Most people don't understand how the system workss because our politics is fake. The vast majority of the electorate is not living in reality because of mass indoctrination. First, our brains are much worse at reality and thinking than thought. AKA we can be manipulated to believe things against our interest. Science on reasoning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ
"Intended as an internal document. Good reading to understand the nature of rich democracies and the fact that the common people are not allowed to play a role."
Crisis of democracy
http://trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis_of_democracy.pdf
http://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Democracy-Governability-Democracies-Trilateral/dp/0814713653/
Democracy Inc.
http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-Inverted-Totalitarianism/dp/069114589X/
We're looking for disinformation control.
It wouldn't be the first time this has arisen in history. There are rules in place already on how traditional TV/News outlets provide election candidate coverage.
"Buytaert is pitching the idea as part of a broader push for a more open Web that reduces the dominance of a handful of platforms."
So, to state this plainly, the plan is to get the government involved to make the marketplace more open to other competitors.
Sure, that's gonna work out real well. Morons.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
How about first, we get some (more) regulation for internet privacy?
Product managers will love dealing with 7 year testing timelines.
Testing aside, what a ridiculous way to kill innovation.
The original concept of the internet was something like "fault tolerance through decentralization". There would be no single thing for a war to take out that could destroy the whole network.
In the years since, we have backed further and further away from that concept. The internet is now simply broken if you block all of Google's IP ranges. Too many sites depend on things they load from Google, and they just won't work. Most people's email would stop working. Without 2 or 3 sites like Facebook and Twitter, most people would now be clueless about how to communicate with their family and friends on the internet. To much of the world, those sites ARE "the internet".
But the solution to this is not yet another central authority. The solution is education. We need people to realize that giving too much authority to anybody, whether it's a government "information minister", or Facebook and Google, is a bad idea. We need control to move back to smaller units of granularity, where just a few sites can no longer exert such a huge level of control over what people are permitted to say and over those people's "view of reality".
Centralization IS the problem. Having even more centralization will not help.
If we hand that over to the Feds, don't you think THEY wouldn't use it MORE? I mean, come on people. These idiot liberals and their gigantic government oversight bullshit is the REASON why we're where we are. We need LESS centralization, not more.
Bet that stupid douche votes straight party Democrat.
Instead of an "FDA for Data and Algorithms", I would recommend a non-government testing agency instead. Many of these exist already (think UL, "consumer reports", or European "notified bodies"). This requires that the industry agree on certain testing standards, and post on their websites when the algorithms have been certified. This could bring a lot of benefits without the drawbacks of government control.
The "FDA for Data and Algorithms" sounds a lot like the Data Inspection Board that we have in Sweden.
Every organisation over here (corp or non-profit) that keeps a record of personal information needs to be approved and registered with the agency. The agency performs inspections to see that the organisations comply with current laws.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Rick Perry is thinking, "Oh crap, that's yet another agency I have to remember to kill at debates."
Table-ized A.I.
how about securing Drupal's codebase before releasing it?
my lawn: get off it!
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Drupal, nuff said. This guy has no right to talk about anything related to computer science.
If this ever became reality, probably the "FDA" would very quickly become the Encryption Oversight Agency, which is probably not at all what the proposer has in mind.
Data and algorithms would be too expensive for Americans to afford. In any case, the data and algorithms available in Europe and Asia would be so much better than ours that there would be "Internet tourism" overseas to take advantage of them.
Years ago, before Google and Facebook, before the internet, before email, before faxes, before television, before radio, there were newspaper empires that had total control over the news and strongly influenced voter decisions in politics. So what's different?
I can't say I really expected more from the guy that created Drupal the bloated, barely working POS.
I like the idea. I propose we call it the Ministry of Truth.
He is willing to like show his face?
Isn't it funny how the dumbest ideas raise the toughest questions?
The only "FDA" sort of thing we need is to prevent moronic ideas get publicity. You want to do something useful, how about slimming down your bloatware CMS first?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
...I'm not sure its creator would want to admit to it in public.
Ignoring whether or not we think a government could do manage and police the algorithms, any measuremtent system for measuring websites, or corporation long term profitability or even employee performance should be kept secret otherwise it will be gamed.
Now here's an even worse idea. This guy loses good-sense awards. Not that it might not have popularity among people who have no idea about how things should work. Fifty percent of ideas seem good if you only pay attentention to first-order effects.
This is absolutely fucking risible. The Firefox CEO dude got drummed out of his company for doing something far less dangerous and insidious. This asshole should be blackballed from tech completely for even proposing this.
Hello Slashdot. My name is Cooresh Ascellan, Commssioner of the newly created FDA for data and algorithms proposed by Dries Buytaert of Drupal. Ironic it is that our panel has determined Joomla's data and algorithms to be superior to Drurpal's, and so order Drupal be taken off the net and all distribution of it shall cease punishable by fine and prison.
Careful what you wish for Dries Buytaert. You might just get it, dumbass.
Isn't this what the National Institute of Standards and Technology supposedly does?
Because that worked out.
The FDA is a poor role model. Its purpose is to protect the food and pharmaceutical industries from consumers, not the other way around.
An FDA for data and algorithms would decree that non-backdoored encryption would be a dangerous drug and/or poison.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Every organization needs to enforce data integrity but I don't know if the government is the right motivator for this. At best it can be the purview of the US SEC, where corporations can report their obedience, or not, to data integrity guidelines. I guess someone has to demand responsibility and it won't be the corporations advocating change.
What about Canada, where research wasn't published unless the government liked it? What about the USA under bush, where 50% of research in 'disliked' fields had to prove the opposite result? The opportunity for indirect censorship is very high.
It's called the USPTO. That's working out really well, isn't it?
What we need is competition and probably decentralization in news, search, communications, and social networking tools such that no single entity or group is in control of the masses eyeballs. Unfortunately the laws which held this in check have disappeared. It use to be that no one could own more than a certain number of radio stations/news papers/etc in a particular area. This gave us a more diverse set of opinions. The system may not have worked that well still, but it was better in some ways. What we need to do is break up the United States federal government. I want to be able to move to a state like New Hampshire which will give me the liberties I desire. Unfortunately the federal government is getting in the way of those who wish to obtain more liberty and freedom. At the same time socialists and other groups run into a problem as well. They face opposition to socialist policies which make them harder to get passed and implemented in sane ways. I'm actually for covering everybody, but not for the stupid system we have now which requires everybody to pay middlemen in order to obtain 'tax breaks'. I'm willing to surrender such social benefits for the sake of zero government. There is nothing stopping a liberty-friendly state's citizens from setting up there own social welfare programs independent of the government. That seems like a much better idea than what we have no where a significant chunk of our incomes are forcefully taken and placed into the hands of capitalists. I' for capitalism, but only when government stays out of it.
CyberUL already has to build up safety standards, wouldn't that also cover algorithm usage? In particular, statistical algorithm usage?