Un libro, IF THEN di Jill Lepore, racconta come nell’America di Kennedy e dei primi super computer grandi come una stanza, un’azienda ha immaginato di ordinare gli americani in 480 diverse categorie e promuovere messaggi politici su misura.
What seemed frightening and even immoral fifty years ago we now mostly take for granted. We shouldn’t. Facebook places its billions of customers into many more than 480 categories, based not on voluntary surveys but on pervasive surveillance. Machine-learning techniques intuit cultural “affinities” and political preferences. The algorithms sort users by location, education level, languages, financial standing, property ownership, occupation, age, gender, sexual preference, and relationship status. They track almost everything you buy, read, or watch. Facebook knows who is connected to, related to, and interested in whom.
I commentatori dell’epoca si scandalizzarono. Nessuno si scandalizza di come Facebook permetta la stessa categorizzazione, in modo estremamente più … Continua a leggere