Author: The Conversation

“Hello,” says trumpeter Sydney Mavundla. “Greetings to you, sitting in your living room there on that red couch!” But Mavundla can’t see his audience. He’s talking through the “fourth wall” – the screen of a digital device – as he live streams a concert by his group from an empty studio out to the online world. As COVID-19 lockdown clamped down in early 2020, musicians everywhere began turning to live streaming as a potential alternative source of connection with audiences and earnings. But how realistic were those hopes? For South Africa, that’s what Digital Futures? – a just-published snapshot study of live streaming platforms –…

Detroit police wrongfully arrested Robert Julian-Borchak Williams in January 2020 for a shoplifting incident that had taken place two years earlier. Even though Williams had nothing to do with the incident, facial recognition technology used by Michigan State Police “matched” his face with a grainy image obtained from an in-store surveillance video showing another African American man taking US$3,800 worth of watches. Two weeks later, the case was dismissed at the prosecution’s request. However, relying on the faulty match, police had already handcuffed and arrested Williams in front of his family, forced him to provide a mug shot, fingerprints and a…

TikTok, a social media platform targeted at young mobile phone users, was the second-most downloaded app in the world in 2019. It was the most downloaded app in July 2020. It’s also become a geopolitical football. Owned by Chinese company ByteDance, TikTok has been banned by India along with 58 other Chinese-owned apps in July in response to escalating border tensions between the two countries. The Trump administration issued an executive order banning TikTok and Chinese-owned messaging platform WeChat from engaging in transactions in the United States beginning on Sept. 15. The company sued the Trump administration in August in response to the ban. As a political scientist who studies social media,…

The “infodemic” of misinformation about coronavirus has made it difficult to distinguish accurate information from false and misleading advice. The major technology companies have responded to this challenge by taking the unprecedented move of working together to combat misinformation about COVID-19. Part of this initiative involves promoting content from government healthcare agencies and other authoritative sources, and introducing measures to identify and remove content that could cause harm. For example, Twitter has broadened its definition of harm to address content that contradicts guidance from authoritative sources of public health information. Facebook has hired extra fact-checking services to remove misinformation that could lead to imminent physical harm.…

Throughout our lifetimes we consume, collate, curate, host and produce a staggering quantity of data – some by our own hand, some by others on our behalf, and some without our knowledge or consent. Collectively, our “digital footprints” represent who we are and who we were. Our digital legacies are immortal and can impact those we leave behind. Many of us take steps to secure our privacy while we’re alive, but there’s mounting evidence that we should be equally concerned about the privacy and security risks of our “data after death”. Reincarnation as data It might be tempting to think of…

In day-to-day life, you probably haven’t had someone yell at you, “Get back in the kitchen and make me a sandwich!” If you’re a woman who plays online video games, though, statements like this, and worse, are all too common. As COVID-19 has driven much of life online and fueled a boom in online gaming, harassment in these and other internet spaces has increased. Forty-one percent of computer and videogame players are female, down from 46% in 2019. Despite its digital nature, online harassment can have real-world consequences for victims, including emotional and physical distress. This has left online gaming companies and players scrambling for…

There has been a clash of clans in mobile gaming, with angry birds Apple, Google and Epic Games in a saga over in-app payments. Video game developer Epic’s massively popular “battle royale” game Fortnite was removed from Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store last week. Android players can still download the game directly via the Epic Games mobile app, but for Apple iOS users the decision means no new downloads. Currently installed versions of the game will still work, but iOS players will be unable to update the game and participate in the next season of Fortnite, beginning on August…

“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.” HAL’s cold, if polite, refusal to open the pod bay doors in 2001 A Space Odyssey has become a defining warning about putting too much trust in artificial intelligence, particularly if you work in space. In the movies, when a machine decides to be the boss – or humans let it – things go wrong. Yet despite myriad dystopian warnings, control by machines is fast becoming our reality. Algorithms – sets of instructions to solve a problem or complete a task – now drive everything from browser search results to better medical care. They…

We know Instagram is the most influential app when it comes to lifestyle and beauty trends. But recent research shows increasing numbers of people are also going to Instagram for their news. A report by the Reuters Institute found the use of Instagram for news has doubled across all age groups since 2018. It is now set to overtake Twitter as a news source in the coming year, with younger people in particular embracing Instagram for their news. What is ‘Insta’? Instagram is a social media platform where users post photos with captions, with an estimated one billion active users around the world. The Reuters report found Instagram reaches…

Individualistic western societies are built on the idea that no one knows our thoughts, desires or joys better than we do. And so we put ourselves, rather than the government, in charge of our lives. We tend to agree with the philosopher Immanuel Kant’s claim that no one has the right to force their idea of the good life on us. Artificial intelligence (AI) will change this. It will know us better than we know ourselves. A government armed with AI could claim to know what its people truly want and what will really make them happy. At best it will use…