Making sense of our connected world
“The idea that algorithmic decisions are not yet regulated is wrong”
Should machines make important decisions in HR management and administration? Who is responsible for ensuring that these decisions are taken fairly – and how do we prevent discriminatory structures from being algorithmically perpetuated?
More important than ever! Social Platform Governance during and after the 2020 US Presidential Election
The 2020 US Presidential Election has shown that practices of social platform governance and content moderation decisions are more crucial than ever. While the transparency of these algorithmic systems remains low, they might crucially affect public opinion formation of the electorate and need to be therefore more accessible and better understood by researchers and policymakers.
Security in Cyberspace: Workshop Insights
Analysing security in cyberspace can encompass a variety of topics. The workshop under scrutiny touched upon some of them, providing valuable insights for society and, ultimately, relevant ideas for building up better relationships among “cyber-actors”.
Same same but (not so) different
Anonymization is advertised as a solution for privacy concerns, while machine learning is portrayed as dangerous and evil – but those operations have more in common than widely assumed. We want to find out what, and more importantly, why that is.
Don’t break up Facebook, make it more transparent
The fever pitch over Big Tech’s market dominance culminated with a contentious US Congressional hearing a few months ago. While Google, Apple and Amazon may require new onerous regulation, Facebook’s just desserts are something it fears more than divesting itself from its strategic purchases or having to jump through insane regulatory hoops: mandated transparency.
Making Technology Great Again: How to Use Ethics to Save Digitalisation
Can your refrigerator order milk for you but refuse to give you a second ice cream? Should your self-driven car drive with you into a tree instead of over a…
Surveillance
The state monitors its citizens, Internet companies monitor their users – and finally we monitor ourselves and each other. Who is monitoring whom and why? What positive effects can surveillance have and when does it become a danger for a democratic society? Questions like these were posed by students of the Humboldt University of Berlin in the seminar “Tracing Surveillance – On the Trace of Surveillance” led by HIIG researcher Thomas Christian Bächle. In the contributions to this dossier they discuss their views on state and economic power and surveillance technologies.
How COVID-19 impacts digital technologies
The current lockdown is boosting online activity – everything is increasingly shifting to the digital sphere. In this dossier we ask if, how and why the Corona pandemic will affect key subjects of digital technologies. What does this mean for the regulation of content on digital platforms? How is Covid-19 activating the digital society? How does it transform our online culture? How safe are tracing apps? What lessons can be learned regarding cyber security? Busy times for our researchers!
