The Machines are Going to Kill Us

Many people may, by now, heard of Facebook allowing its very powerful apparatus to be used by Aryan Supremacists to recruit followers:

"Want to market Nazi memorabilia, or recruit marchers for a far-right rally? Facebook’s self-service ad-buying platform had the right audience for you. 

Until this week, when we asked Facebook about it, the world’s largest social network enabled advertisers to direct their pitches to the news feeds of almost 2,300 people who expressed interest in the topics of “Jew hater,” “How to burn jews,” or, “History of ‘why jews ruin the world.’

Nice, huh?  And Facebook's explanation for that?

"After we contacted Facebook, it removed the anti-Semitic categories — which were created by an algorithm rather than by people"

Well, that's great- we now, apparently, have anti-Semitic machines.  I guess we are supposed to forget that these "algorithms" i.e. software, were created by people who apparently didn't care if they were benefiting from marketing to neo-Nazis.  No one is to blame, because the machines did it.

I'm sure that this argument will soon be extended into many areas of our lives.  After all, if you kill someone with a gun, you are not responsible because the machine did it, right?




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