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The Woman Whose Phone 'Misdiagnosed HIV' (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report on BBC about a woman in Kenya, who downloaded a prank app that noted that she has HIV simply by "analyzing her fingerprint." While many people would have not trusted an app for such kind of diagnosis in the first place, and some would have figured that something is amiss about the app, the story tells the tale of people who are increasingly finding it hard to deal with the technological advances they see. From the report: Esther sells water on the side of the road in Kenya for a few dollars a day. She also owns a smartphone and ownership of such a device should, according to most of the received wisdom, empower its owner. But in fact it did quite the opposite for her when she acquired an app. It claimed to diagnose HIV simply by analysing her fingerprint on the touch screen. When researchers met her at her roadside workplace, she was worried. "She did not know if it was true and she was panicking," said researcher Laura de Reynal, who worked on a year-long study into the experiences of first-time smartphone users in Kenya. "And she wasn't the only one, there were others that came to us worried about this app and those were just the ones that were willing to speak out." The app was in fact a prank and anyone reading the comments on Google's Play Store would have seen that. However, many first-time smartphone users in Kenya get hold of apps via a friend's Bluetooth connection, rather than downloading them via the net, in order to save data. But the prank would not have been apparent via a Bluetooth share. "People are not able to understand the limits of the technology," said Ms de Reynal. "They think, because it was on a smartphone, it seems real and credible."
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
I also don't think this woman should be criticized. When I see the stupid things people who have grown up with technology do (as opposed to growing up dirt poor in Africa), she's no worse off than they are.
The smartphone did "empower her." It turns out that life does not work in dichotomies the way binary thinkers assume it must because, for whatever reason, that is all they can see. Did this new tool result in a net loss of capabilities for her? No, it just introduced a nasty unintended side effect based on her ignorance and a particular method of app distribution.
well, this sort of machine is seen in films and on TV (think: Star Trek, ...), obviously all of Star Trek is not true, but which bits are and which are not? Then there is an X Prize competition to make a Medical tricorder, so think before you laugh at her.
Someone once said that any technology advanced enough will appear as magic to someone who isn't used to it. (I'm sure if I weren't lazy I could google-fu who said that).
There are places around the world where economics and science dictated they skipped over the computer generation. They went straight from disconnected villages to smart phones. A lot of the tech and what can and can't be done with it was never learnt. The lady in the summary wasn't necessarily gullible, or stupid, nor did she believe the phone was "magic" I'm sure. However, how the phone worked was probably almost magical, with an unexplained technology she couldn't fathom how it might work.
Going from simple life to smart phone life, it's easy to see how someone can be fooled by what exactly is possible.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
This was the most interesting part of the article (ignore the "Firefox operating system" error):
This is a great reminder of why I won't donate to moz://a.
Instead of spending money to improve Firefox, which badly needs some real improvement, moz://a squandered money researching the gullibility of third-worlders.
With Firefox now only around 5% of the browser market, and having only 0.03% (yes, a very small fraction of just 1%!) of the mobile browser market, wasting money on nonsensical "research" like this is the very last thing they should be doing.
Moz://a won't be able to have any influence on how third-worlders use the Internet if these third-worlders are using Chrome or some other non-Firefox browser. Since most third-world Internet users use a mobile device, Firefox's 0.03% of the market already means they're irrelevant.
Improving Firefox's performance, and reducing its memory usage, would be a lot more beneficial for these third-worlders than doing more "research" like this into their gullibility.
Part of the problem is in order to get trusted software, you need to have some sort of review process like the Apple Store, where only approved software is placed in, while this is good to make sure harmful or just bad taste software doesn't get placed in. It also creates a freedom issue, because like the Apple Store perfectly valid apps get rejected just because it may affect someones sensibilities, or step into Apples domain and they don't want to compete with your app.
The HIV app is in Bad Taste to a point that could be considered dangerous, but that would require a judgement call, which is faulty.
Just like passengers making jokes about having dangerous material in the airline terminal.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I've had a smartphone for years. I'm an IT professional in a first-world country. And even I have difficulty at times discerning what's legit and what's not. Spammers are getting better and better, and if it weren't for the fact that I use a unique email address for every company with which I do business (something not accessible to the vast majority of computer users), I'm not sure that I wouldn't have been taken in a time or two.
This is an interesting sociological issue, and I think it's likely to get much worse before it gets any better, if it ever does get better.
It seems we've gone full circle from browser hijacks with computer virus scares, to apps with human virus scares.
Gives new meaning to 'the more things change, the more they stay the same'.
They should say Android phone and not smartphone. Android's competition has built in safeguards against malicious apps.
Thanks for wrapping up the story of "Rent"
bickerdyke
Well, she'll "understand the limits of the technology" a lot more now. That's how humans learn: through experience.
You would probably appreciate "Avenue Q".
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
"They think, because it was on a smartphone, it seems real and credible."
This is no different from "but I have seen it on TV, so it must be true.
Or any media that has been invented. The most memorizeable instance is probably the panic during "War of the Worlds"
bickerdyke
I'm sorry that you feel so insecure about your own intellect.
Uh, this goes in your mouth. This one goes in your ear. And this one goes in your butt.
All right, so that'll be... this many dollars.
In all seriousness, this really has little to do with technology.
Into the 1990s and even the 2000s we've seen numerous outbreaks of "Genital Retraction Syndrome" in various African nations.
In essence, these outbreaks are cases of mass hysteria where people mistakenly think that their genitalia are shrinking or even being "stolen".
This is how the Wikipedia article currently describes it:
Unlike AIDS, this is something that men who think they're affected can check for themselves. All that a man needs to do is check if his penis is still present, and that its size is remaining consistent.
Even without cell phones and technology, we'd still see misdiagnoses in Africa, even when this misdiagnosis can easily be proven to be wrong or nonsensical like in the cases of "Genital Retraction Syndrome".
App development is probably the only kind of development more lowly than web development. It doesn't take skill, just knowing whatever backwards system (they all are) you're building an app on. Good developers have an options of what to work on, and none of them choose a platform with extreme limitations, lack of control over content, massive privacy concerns, or a generally shit development environment. Most certainly none would choose Java or Window Universal.
The only way to avoid this happening again is to have a government fake apps investigation department to save stupid people from themselves. Sort of like what's proposed for "fake news".
Congrats, you win the dumbest comment of the day award.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I know of well paid americans that would do the exact same stupid mistake. Most of them get their computer infected with malware by being that uneducated.
The problem is to safely and correctly use technology requires a high level of education that most people do not get. Most degree holders in the USA are dumb as a box of rocks when it comes to technology.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The problem is that is that giving people technology does not make them smarter. While certainly tech can be used for the purposes of education, it can not replace education. This is a chronic problem with people of all sorts. People in power want an ignorant populace because they are easier to control. People sitting in a different country with education can't understand why their magic bullets never hit a target. Lastly, the ignorant populace does not know any better and nobody will educate them.
The only people innocent are the ignorant masses.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Pretty sure this has less to do with direct access to the Play Store and more to do with people from the third world, who for all intents and purposes view technology as magic, getting access to smart phones. And who was the friend who shared the app with her? One would think that friends would be even better sources for information on an App that they use and have on their phone than the play store's faceless reviews.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Is allowing morons to use technology. It's the source of virtually every issue on Earth, and the solution is simple: if someone can't demonstrate the knowledge required to design and build a thing they shouldn't be allowed to utilize that thing.
Cool, get back to us when you've figured out how you teach someone how to design and build a device that they're not allowed to use.
I'm sorry that you feel so insecure about your own intellect.
Certainly not in contrast to someone who would use an argument such as that.
Hmm - yes - you made me blow coffee through my nose.
In app purchase, straight from the diagnostic app!
It's about more than "simple minded people occasionally getting confused." Before we started "helping" the third world with food and resources there were millions of starving impoverished people suffering under brutal social structures. Now there are billions of starving impoverished people suffering under brutal structures effective enough to bubble over into the civilized world. It may sound harsh, but letting them starve is a mercy as the growth rates mean there will be billions if not trillions more suffering over multiple generations while dragging the rest of the world with them vs 1 generation which starves once and is done. There is nothing good about helping people in a way which leads to suffering of a greater number of people, it's just evil.
Ah, the old "developing countries need running water, not computers" trope. Is this /. myth ever going to die? Look at how India's economy has been transformed by embracing the tech industry and get a clue about how things work.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Wow, amazing argument, I have become convinced by your superior rhetorical skills.
The last millenium of technological and economic progress has been driven by specialization. Instead of everyone having to learn how to grow crops, hunt for food, dig a well, weave clothes, build a home, etc. we've all specialized. One person learns how to grow crops. He sells it to someone who hunts (or grows) livestock. Who hires someone to dig a well. Who buys clothes pre-made by someone else. Who hires people to build their home. Because each individual can concentrate on a small field of human knowledge, we've been able to increase the depth of knowledge in those specific fields by leaps and bounds - much faster than when everyone was a generalist who had to know how to do everything.
A side effect of this specialization is that everyone is pretty ignorant of fields they did not specialize into. To poke fun of people for not knowing as much as you in your chosen specialization is very immature, small-minded, and hypocritical. This app is basically the equivalent of jocks beating up nerds for being bad at sports. Or your friend who is hip with fashion telling you that the bowtie is back in style and you should totally wear it to the frat party. It's a mean-spirited prank which tries to cast as stupidity the ignorance via specialization that is essential to a modern functional society. Shame on the tech guys who thought this would be funny.
Seriously, I would say 1000 hours of social work for the "nice" person that wrote this and, say, 100M fine for Google to allow this in the app-store in the first place would be a good first step. Not everybody gets a good education when they grow up, and it usually not not their own fault. This also has nothing to do with IQ. Camouflage it a bit better and you find supposedly educated people fall for the most obviously stupid things. Examples: Religion, Trump promises, Erdogan promises, human-like AI, etc.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
...so you're suggesting that taking a person from roughly a 15th century existence and handing them a smartphone doesn't immediately make them a sophisticated, worldly Western-world consumer?
Well hell, why didn't someone say that before?
-Styopa
I didn't fail to consider it. I'm just not stupid enough to buy the simplistic idea that it's a one-size-fits-all solution.
I don't believe you. Nor does, I imagine, anyone else. I would suggest you look up the Dunning-Kruger effect, as the mere fact that you are making these claims leads me to believe that you actually know relatively little about fabrication, otherwise you would realize how outlandish they sound.
People assumed they can trust companies like Google and Apple to protect them from false information. And that the government might actually protect them from fraud, as they have done for generations before.
But now, we've suddenly decided that the Internet and App stores are the wild west. And caveat emptor is the new religion of Internet business.
It's all bullshit though, and it's bound to come crashing down .
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Except there are dozens of readily accessible examples working in different ways.
Sure there are, and of course they're applicable to all technology and practical to implement and enforce. But I wouldn't know them. They go to another school. In Canada.
How did this app get on any appstore to begin with?
Now that most jocks are addicted to their smartphones, nerds are going to get their own back
**Life is too short to be serious**
Some people should not have computers;
Others obviously should not have smartphones
Even others, supposedly educated, have the tools but do not know how to interpret them, and the biggest offenders are IT people.
It is a shame that common sense seems to go out of the window for the majority when people start using technology; some people would not believe such a tale if they heard it from a stranger, however they believe in everything they hear in some shady email or site; some people would not expose their private bits on the supermakert, yet we already heard of the fappening with Holywood trash....and I bet it wont be the last time.
Anyone well informed enough to know that a smartphone can't diagnose an illness just finds them stupid and useless, and anyone NOT well informed enough could be caused great distress.
And anyone who reads slashdot knows that the only real use for these apps are as ad or viral vectors. So why not just eliminate such apps from the market?
Honestly, while it isn't possible for a smartphone to do a quick-and-dirty disease assessment from a fingerprint, I wouldn't be surprised if mobile devices in the future come with attachments or accessories that could do blood analysis or more given the right software.
I'd imagine that a device that takes a sample and sends it to a medical professional for diagnosis isn't that far in the future at all, if it doesn't already exist.
She should learn from it (fake apps exist) and be empowered by the "ownership of such a device".
she should also learn that "get hold of apps via a friend's Bluetooth connection" was a bad idea. It's just like spread HIV from person to person but with an app. OH Wait a minute...
So you're saying we shouldn't allow you to use technology?
and they will make a call...
Give an ignorant third worlder a phone, and they'll use it to beat a monkey to death
They aren't tricorders, yet...