‘Social media - Facebook: :market power and the health of democracy – by Piergiuseppe Fortunato

According to its former employee Frances Haugen, Facebook algorithms consciously amplify dangerous misinformation and privilege the most divisive content posted on the network. Such content is more frequently shared by users and foregrounding it maximises traffic on the platform—and so turnover.

This modus operandi, which became still more aggressive from 2018, is generating perverse incentives pushing even relatively moderate users to sharpen and polarise their content to obtain visibility. It is a Darwinian struggle for prominence which, given the rules of the game, leads to the survival of those users most fit for division and risks skewing public opinion and altering political outcomes. A recent working paper I co-authored shows that exposure to political information through ‘social media’ has been closely associated with the diffusion of divisive ideas in Europe in the last decade.

Read more at: ‘Social media’, market power and the health of democracy – Piergiuseppe Fortunato

EU Parliament to vote over sharing data with US - "EU Citizens fundamental right to data protection in jeopardy" says Commission

The European Parliament will today vote on new legislation which would give US authorities access to information about airline passengers.

MEPs meeting in Strasbourg will decide whether they will allow the US Department of Homeland Security to see data "routinely" collected by airlines including passenger names, addresses, credit card details and seat numbers.

Sensitive data such as a person's religious beliefs, sexual orientation and racial origin could also be used in "exceptional" circumstances.

The controversial Bill on Passenger Name Records (PNR) data would cover all flights to or from the US and under the proposed agreement US authorities would retain the data for up to 15 years.

The European commission’s own lawyers noted last year that the agreement is unlawful and expressed "grave doubts" that the deal would comply with the fundamental right to data protection.

For more EU to vote over sharing data - The Irish Times - Thu, Apr 19, 2012

Solidarity European style, or ‘when in a hole, stop digging’ - by Kassandra

If there is one thing that the Eurozone crisis has taught us, it is that financial markets are interesting beasts, prone to react quickly to remarks made by supposedly influential politicians. For the first year to year-and-a-half, European leaders were time and again taken by surprise when markets reacted unfavorably to contradicting statements, or, to use the word that could be found in the papers on a daily basis, to the cacophony in the EU. 

Many thought that markets were basically mentally unstable creatures that would overreact. In fact some - quite a few actually - Eurozone politicians started to believe in conspiracy theories that the markets were all out to kill the euro, and in this were helped by the American fifth column known as the rating agencies. 

The three major ones of these are all US based, so it was a sort of obvious choice. After all, when something goes wrong, the first reaction of people is - and believe me, politicians are people as well - to seek to blame someone else, preferably an outsider. 

Note EU-Digest: this report from New Europe certainly is a more positive story about Europe than those usually appearing in Murdoch owned publications around the world ( including the Wall Street Journal). Given Murdochs manipulations of the truth and other questionable activities, including infringement on personal rights to obtain stories, one can only wonder how long it will take before the law catches up with him?  

For more: Solidarity European style, or ‘when in a hole, stop digging’ | New Europe