Amazon, Bing, Wikipedia make EU's list of 'Very Large' platforms Not to be outdone by the UK's copycat DMCC bill yesterday, European regulators have let the world know about the first few tech giants to make their super strictly monitored hitlist under its own antitrust regs, aimed at curtailing the power of Big Tech. In an announcement, the European Commission unveiled the first few …
Considering how hard MS tries to force Bing (and of course Edge) down people's throats, its market share is actually pitiful. I'd wager it's made up largely of people who don't know any better. (And I'm really glad they dropped their cringeworthy attempts to turn "Bing" into a verb.)
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https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_23_2413
More diligent content moderation, less disinformation:
Platforms and search engines need to take measures to address risks linked to the dissemination of illegal content online and to negative effects on freedom of expression and information;
Platforms need to analyse their specific risks, and put in place mitigation measures – for instance, to address the spread of disinformation and inauthentic use of their service.
So when Ursula von der Liar gives a briefing that Ukraine lost 100,000 officers, which the EU then deletes, reporting said statement will count as disinformation? Will asking questions or challenging narratives around the next (or even past/current) Covid policy count as 'disinformation'?
Today, the Commission also launched a call for evidence on the provisions in the DSA related to data access for researchers. These are designed to better monitor platform providers' actions to tackle illegal content, such as illegal hate speech, as well as other societal risks such as the spread of disinformation, and risks that may affect the users' mental health.
Go get'em Snopes! This part isn't in farce, yet, but it'll be interesting who gets to decide what constitutes 'disinformation', how this is 'fact checked', and what level of access 'researchers' will have, ie will they be allowed to identify users? If hate speech is illegal though, shouldn't proving and pursuing that be the job of existing law enforcement agencies?
But disinformation, censorship and the suppression of dissent is big news at the moment.
"clear information on why they are recommended certain information."
Seeing as the Great Twit has pretty much abandoned algorithms, and recommendations are based on whoever Elon likes and dislikes today (and swap around without warning tomorrow), I can't wait to see what they claim. Are there any actual penalties for the information being false, which it is likely to be under its current boss?
The VLOPs listed include many of the usual suspects, although Wikipedia was something of a surprise
Wikipedia shouldn't be too much of a surprise since it's become somewhat of a core service underpinning things like the Knowledge Panels in Google & Bing search results (which are pulled from some combination of Wikipedia and Wikidata). Consequently changes in Wikipedia can have outsize impacts on downstream services - which include VLOPS and VLOSEs.
@localzuk
I use the Wikipedia quite often and it's a gold mine of information, that is, for cold stable non political information.
Take for instance a thing like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siphon
it gets more risky and less reliable as soon as that information gets personal and is based upon opinions and affecting the way a topic is dealt with.
It's also often a good idea to compare the topics in several languages.
The Wikipedia could be miss used.
As they say, "information is power". So far so good, but why not have a look at it at times too.
@Lars
It is generally OK (ish) but can be poor on more obscure areas, as a few "editors" seem to pick particular more obscure areas as their personal fiefdom without necessarily having the appropriate expertise in the area.
Quite a few years ago (before she retired from academia) my partner was looking at Wikipedia pages in (some relatively niche) areas she taught (knowing some students would be looking at them as students like the easy option). The pages were full of errors of various levels, but a few were quite egregious e.g. referring to the "Victorian era" when the events described predated that. So she got me to make edits (just on the real "showstopper" mistakes, as I already had an account for editing Wikipedia).
A while later an editor reverted those changes, falsely claiming they were incorrect.
I was looking forward to some fun between a world authority in an area* & some random unknown wiki editor (as partner took my surname which was in my wiki username so was looking forward to the fun of casually mentioning that & throwing in a reference to some of her work as irrefutable supporting evidence) but unfortunately partner said she was not bothered about getting into edit battles, would just tell students to avoid Wikipedia as it was full of errors on the topics.
* Edits were in areas partner had authored / co-authored papers / books!
Should add that plenty of Wikipedia editors are good, conscientious & happy to be corrected if they have made errors (I'm friends with a few!) - but its the ones that are not that cause the reputational problems. Human nature being as it is, you focus disproportionately more on the bad experiences of Wikipedia than the good ones.
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