Posts tagged Washington Post
Something really is wrong on the Internet. We should be more worried. The Washington Post

“Something is wrong on the internet,” declares  trending in tech circles. But the issue isn’t Russian ads or Twitter harassers. It’s children’s videos.

The piece, by tech writer James Bridle, was published on the heels of a report from the New York Times that described disquieting problems with the popular YouTube Kids app. Parents have been handing their children an iPad to watch videos of Peppa Pig or Elsa from “Frozen,” only for the supposedly family-friendly platform to offer up some disturbing versions of the same. In clips camouflaged among more benign videos, Peppa drinks bleach instead of naming vegetables. Elsa might appear as a gore-covered zombie or even in a sexually compromising position with Spider-Man.

The phenomenon is alarming, to say the least, and YouTube has said that it’s in the process of implementing new filtering methods. But the source of the problem will remain. In fact, it’s the site’s most important tool — and increasingly, ours.

YouTube suggests search results and “up next” videos using proprietary algorithms: computer programs that, based on a particular set of guidelines and trained on vast sets of user data, determine what content to recommend or to hide from a particular user. They work well enough — the company claims that in the past 30 days, only 0.005 percent of YouTube Kids videos have been flagged as inappropriate. But as these latest reports show, no piece of code is perfect

Read More
Can we talk about the gender pay gap? By Xaquín G.V., Washington Post

The median salary for women working full-time is about 80 percent of men’s. That gap, put in other terms, means women are working for free 10 weeks a year.

... you started working for free 15 hours ago

Well, that is a little blunt — there are gradients on that difference. The pay gap varies depending on the occupation, working hours, education attainment, experience, and geography.

Read More
Words ascribed to female economists: 'Hotter,' 'feminazi.' Men?: 'Goals,' 'Nobel.' - The Washington Post

In 1970, the economics department at the University of California at Berkeley hired three newly minted economics PhDs from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Two - both men - were hired as assistant professors. But a woman, Myra Strober, was hired as a lecturer, a position of inferior pay and status and no possibility of tenure. When she asked the department chairman why she was denied an assistant professorship, he put her off with excuses. She kept pressing him until he gave a frank answer: She had two young children; the department couldn't possibly put her on the tenure track.

So Strober took another offer. In 1972, she became the first female economist at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. "They didn't know what to make of me," she said. The faculty retreat, which had been held every year at a men's club, had to be moved. There were jokes about putting a bag over her head so they could keep going to the club.

"It was like trying to run a race with one of your legs tied behind you," Strober said of the culture.

Read More
How Silicon Valley's sexism affects your life - Washington Post

It was a rough week at Google. On Aug. 4, a 10-page memo titled "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber" started circulating among employees. It argued that the disparities between men and women in tech and leadership roles were rooted in biology, not bias. On Monday, James Damore, the software engineer who wrote it, was fired; he then filed a labor complaint to contest his dismissal.

We've heard lots about Silicon Valley's toxic culture this summer - venture capitalists who proposition female start-up founders, man-child CEOs like Uber's Travis Kalanick, abusive nondisparagement agreements that prevent harassment victims from describing their experiences. Damore's memo added fuel to the fire, arguing that women are more neurotic and less stress-tolerant than men, less likely to pursue status, and less interested in the "systemizing" work of programming. "We need to stop assuming that gender gaps imply sexism," he concludes.

Like the stories that came before it, coverage of this memo has focused on how a sexist tech culture harms people in the industry - the women and people of color who've been patronized, passed over, and pushed out. But what happens in Silicon Valley doesn't stay in Silicon Valley. It comes into our homes and onto our screens, affecting all of us who use technology, not just those who make it.

Read More