- The Software That Shapes Workers’ Lives
Despite such labor-saving shortcuts, using sap is not easy. As the class proceeded, I felt as though I, too, were falling behind on an assembly line. Every task was more complicated than I’d imagined, with a seemingly endless variety of settings to configure; I struggled to keep the various interlocking systems arranged in my head. (It didn’t help that I sometimes clicked through sap with one hand while participating in my daughter’s craft projects with the other.) Over time, though, I started to understand the dynamics of the system as a whole. Log in to PeopleSoft, or a similar human-resource management system, and you only have access to certain modules—the ones relevant to your particular job. The same is true in sap. Most of the time, the work of supply-chain management is divided up, with handoffs where one specialist passes a package of data to another. No individual is liable to possess a detailed picture of the whole supply chain. Instead, each S.C.M. specialist knows only what her neighbors need.
https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/the-software-that-shapes-workers-lives
- Facebook backtracks after removing Warren ads calling for Facebook breakup
A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the ads had been taken down but said the company is in the process of restoring them.
“We removed the ads because they violated our policies against use of our corporate logo,” the spokesperson said. “In the interest of allowing robust debate, we are restoring the ads.”
Warren swiped at Facebook over the removal, citing it as evidence the company has grown too powerful.
“Curious why I think FB has too much power? Let’s start with their ability to shut down a debate over whether FB has too much power,” she tweeted. “Thanks for restoring my posts. But I want a social media marketplace that isn’t dominated by a single censor.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/11/facebook-removes-elizabeth-warren-ads-1216757
- Is facial recognition technology too powerful?
- ‘Captain Marvel’ Shows How the Culture War Is Making User Reviews Useless
Culture war review bombing is nothing new. We saw it happen with the Red Hen restaurant after the owner asked President Trump’s press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave, and people used Yelp as a battleground to try to defend or destroy the establishment. Yelp has guidelines in place that require users to “describe a firsthand consumer experience, not what someone read in the news,” a spokesperson told me at the time of the Red Hen review bombing—but it takes days or a week to review and clean up a Yelp page that’s been review-bombed.
Steam, despite absolutely fumbling on what should be obvious content moderation issues and ignoring the presence of hate groups on its platform, was an early platform to seriously attempt to address the problem of review-bombing. Players have to purchase and play a game for at least 20 minutes before they can review it, reviews show how long a player spent with a game, and Steam shows users if there’s a spike in negative reviews, which helps them spot bad faith review brigades. These are helpful features, but even with these measures in place, Steam is not immune to review bombing.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qvymxq/captain-marvel-rotten-tomatoes-user-review-bombing
Photo by Dalelan Anderson on Unsplash