Laura Kalbag @laura@mastodon.laurakalbag.com

@alfonsomunozpomer I’ve not looked into it recently, but I suspect they’ll say it’s “anonymised” (which is problematic in itself)

@andyhoyland no, I think it’s very kind. Thanks!

@saper @aadil thanks, that’s fantastic!

@UnclearFuture I think those people would be naïve to label you as such. I’m in absolute agreement, it’s why I spend all my working hours trying to make things a bit different.

@cyprian thanks! I’m positive because we’re working to try to change it, and I’ve got to have hope for that. And I meet a lot of people who care about making things better, so that helps too!

Also featuring some Mastodon love, of course! ❤️

Also including a festive sprinkling of Site.js, which is making my development life much easier.

https://sitejs.org

I wrote an ode to personal websites for one of my faves,
24ways. Featuring inspiring (and rights-respecting) websites from people whose work I love and respect.

https://24ways.org/2019/its-time-to-get-personal/

“[W]hat Spotify calls ‘streaming intelligence’ should be understood as surveillance of its users to fuel its own growth and ability to sell mood-and-moment data to brands.”loca

https://thebaffler.com/downstream/big-mood-machine-pelly

“This [(Spotify Unwrapped)] is the steady wearing down of defenses, the slow transformation of corporate creepiness into cultural complacency, that allows rampant high-tech surveillance to progress.”

https://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2019/12/06/who-listens-to-the-listeners/

Another video of me speaking has gone up today! 8 Unbelievable Things You Never Knew About Tracking at ffconf. I felt really lucky to be invited to such a (deservedly) legendary event so tried to cover all the things I always want to say to other devs:

https://youtu.be/WkeGGNdOv4g

I’m really grateful for the work the Accessibility Scotland team put into their event and again in making the talks accessible online. I wrote this talk especially for the event, because these are the things that keep me awake at night.

Accessible unethical technology: https://noti.st/laurakalbag/9GG02Z/accessible-unethical-technology

“We need to de-exoticize these users if we are going to genuinely have a healthy global digital culture. They need to be humanized, understood, and kept in mind when designing inclusive platforms. The internet is a critical public resource that is meant for all users—and that includes the world’s poor.”

https://qz.com/1669754/tech-companies-misunderstand-the-next-billion-internet-users/

”A central promise of [artificial intelligence] is that it enables large-scale automated categorisation… This ‘promise’ becomes a menace when directed at the complexities of everyday life.”

https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/11/26/ai-thinks-like-a-corporation-and-thats-worrying

Can’t write anything without it turning into an overdramatic existential crisis. Is that redundant? Why am I even writing this? Who am I to write this? Whyyyyyy?

“The advancement of robotics, AI, and other ‘futuristic’ technologies has ushered in a new era in the ongoing struggle for representation of people with disabilities in large-scale decision-making settings.”

https://www.citylab.com/perspective/2019/11/autonomous-technology-ai-robot-delivery-disability-rights/602209/

“The technology behind the internet is not incompatible with our rights, but the business model Facebook and Google have chosen is.”

Yep, that’s Amnesty International saying that.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/11/google-facebook-surveillance-privacy/

“In short, if left unaddressed, conscious or unconscious emotional bias can perpetuate stereotypes and assumptions at an unprecedented scale.”

https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-risks-of-using-ai-to-interpret-human-emotions

“By rooting out bias in technology, these Black women engineers, professors and government experts are on the front lines of the civil rights movement of our time.”

https://www.essence.com/feature/these-black-women-are-fighting-for-justice-in-a-world-of-biased-algorithms/