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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.
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.
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.
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.
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 like the idea. I propose we call it the Ministry of Truth.
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.
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
It's called the USPTO. That's working out really well, isn't it?