What you see here is the last week’s worth of links and quips I have shared on LinkedIn, from Monday through Sunday.
For now I’ll post the notes as they appeared on LinkedIn, including hashtags and sentence fragments. Over time I might expand on these thoughts as they land here on my blog.
2023/09/04: Possible Meta changes due to DSA
I wrote a little something on how Meta might change its service to meet the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA):
“Possible Meta changes in the EU: paying for privacy?”
2023/09/06: Call of Content Moderation
On the one hand, content moderation on a large-scale platform calls for some amount of AI-based automation. On the other hand, AI is ill-suited for cases that require nuance. How do you strike a balance?
Activision’s taking the right approach here: the AI will flag potentially problematic cases, while a human will be involved for enforcement.
“AI-powered hate speech detection will moderate voice chat in Call of Duty” (Ars Technica)
However, at the moment, AI detection systems are notoriously fickle and can produce false positives, especially with non-native English speakers. Given variations in audio quality, regional accents, and various languages, it’s a tall order for a voice-detection system to work flawlessly under those conditions. Activision says a human will remain in the loop for enforcement actions: […]
Further, Activision says that Call of Duty’s voice chat moderation system “only submits reports about toxic behavior, categorized by its type of behavior and a rated level of severity based on an evolving model.” Humans then determine whether they will enforce voice chat moderation violations.
2023/09/10: Low-cost, high-value risk management
How would you like an easy, dirt-cheap way to ward off a ton of reputation risk? Here you go:
Keep track of your domains.
That’s it. Seriously. You can set a monthly reminder to check your domain registrar. Or you can track your domains in a spreadsheet and note which renewals are coming up.
- “What if we just wait for the reminder e-mails from our domain registrar?” You can do that, too! But remember that e-mails get lost and addresses change as people move on.
- “What about acquisitions?” Company domain names are business assets. As such, they should be tracked and itemized as part of an acquisition. Make sure the target company has noted this, then add those names to your spreadsheet as the deal closes.
- “What if we’re linking to someone else’s site?” When possible, use a (company-managed) link shortener. If the target URL ever changes, it’ll be a snap to update it.
This reminder was brought to you by an incident at Lidl. The grocery chain had to recall packages of some “Paw Patrol”-themed merch in the UK:
“En Angleterre, Lidl rappelle des biscuits « Pat’Patrouille » affichant un lien vers un site pornographique” (Le Monde)
(Here’s a link to English-language coverage in TechCrunch: “Lidl recalls Paw Patrol snacks after website on packaging displayed porn”)
The reason? A manufacturer’s website, listed on the package, pointed to some materials that weren’t quite kid-friendly. It looks as though the manufacturer’s domain registration had lapsed and some squatters moved in to ride the wave of traffic.