Facebook employee uses access to stalk women

[QuarksandLeptons]

Senior engineer at Facebook using insider information to stalk women online.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/02/facebook-engineer-fired-alleged-stalker-tinder

This story is unsettling as it adds to the evidence that social media platforms seem to attract misogynistic men as their employees. This coupled with the fact that said social media platforms shape public opinion is a very worrying phenomenon for women’s rights and representation.

I’m not saying this one weird man could shape and influence much on his own but with a tech culture that seems to embrace incel type men, the influence could be further reaching.

Like the Cambridge Analytica scandal proved, platforms like Facebook have powers over public discourse that no private corporation should have. Voting in Trump & influencing Brexit are obvious cases but it seems a core contingent of misogynistic men working for these companies may also be shaping as influencing regressive and violent attitudes towards women.

Even if they are not deliberately doing that, I certainly suspect it is a direct result of their lack of diversity, their desire to classify and group people to improve advertising revenue and the ability of the platforms to reflect and amplify things.

Machine learning systems reflect the biases of the people who program them.

Machine learning systems reflect the biases of the people who program them.

Perfectly put!

I was staked for a year or so and am still occasionally by a systems engineer working for one of largest social media platforms. Apple escalation team involved for 6 months and said it was worse case of cyber stalking they had come across in this part of the world.

This is a guy who stalked me for posting about male violence and cluster B personality disorders. I don't know him.

Actually this has reminded me that I do need to do something about this - stalker in USA and police worse than useless.

Holy Crap woman that's brutal! And it's still happening occasionally?!

How can the police be at Linda's and posie's doors immediately about posting truths/self defence, and yet this has been happening to you for over a year with no repercussion? This is insane!

@TotallyLibrarianPoo - thank you for the acknowledgement - it's heartening when people understand the enormity of what I dealt with.

Holy Crap woman that's brutal! And it's still happening occasionally?!

Yes it was - extremely. I had never been stalked before and it taught me a thing or two. And of course I get the dangerous one :( I handled him well, all things considered, but it was horrible and made me ill. I keep saying I'm gonna write a book about his MO as he used many accounts and platforms - and posted stuff so only I knew it was him.

He makes me laugh now when he appears (maybe my gallows humour or the memories so horrible or the thought he is still so obsessed…..)

How can the police be at Linda's and posie's doors immediately about posting truths/self defence, and yet this has been happening to you for over a year with no repercussion? This is insane!

Yep I came to experience how useless the police are - they go for low hanging fruit - they won't take on cyberstalking as too labour intensive (in other words they don't have skills and aren't prepared to consider other options like using safe cyber people to investigate). Apple Security told me they are very frustrated at the lack of international law - there isn't any effectively across most of cyber space - and these predator types know that. It made me realise I was in the equivalent of The Wild West - lawless effectively - having to rely on an odd deputy or too who were all in the pay of the Ranch Owners. I was on my own as thousands of women find every week. And the police will only deal with stuff in their own country normally, unless children are involved.

How they can justify investigating vexatious complaints against Posie and Linda is anybody's guess- they should have better things to do. WE need our own police force (women) imo.

The tech business is full of misogynistic men, being stalked every so often is a way of life for women working in it 😢

The tech business is full of misogynistic men, being stalked every so often is a way of life for women working in it 😢

Sounds unacceptable - do you mean irl or cyberstalking?

Just read your update @womanformallyknownaswoman
What a complete and utter bastard! I'm very sorry that happened to you

Mostly irl, were talking about an approx 3 decade span for me (not all the same stalker fortunately and there are gaps with no stalking going on) cyberstalking has a shorter history than that

@TotallyLibrarianPoo

Awww thanks @womanformallyknownaswoman

womanformallyknownaswoman How absolutely grim. I'm so sorry some jerk has been putting you through that.

The news about the Facebook engineer surprises me not the littlest bit.

Article here, but this is just a UK one – plenty more from the US: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/30/misogyny-tech-ceremony-women-digital-entrepreneur-awards

Thx PerkingFaintly

Yep I agree - the USA is so regressive re tech culture. I read about Twitter office dos where they're modelled on frat parties - yawn….

This US article is long, and focussing more on career-limiting bias than the hardcore end of this behaviour like stalking and threats of sexual violence, but it's all part of the same picture.

Why Is Silicon Valley So Awful to Women?
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/why-is-silicon-valley-so-awful-to-women/517788/

Machine learning systems reflect the biases of the people who program them.

God yes. This is such a good point. DH brought this up the other day actually when we were talking about news bias on social media. The algorithms that display news etc on your social media are not driven by quality, fact checked sourcing or truth index, they’re driven effectively by ‘goadiness.’ A story that’s attracted loads of comments on an extremist website for example could be promoted over a factually checked version from a reputable news source.

It’s why the news bias on sites like FB was so controversial in the elections.

Indeed. ProPublica's been doing a lot of work on this. Series here: www.propublica.org/series/machine-bias

Eg
How We Analyzed the COMPAS Recidivism Algorithm
www.propublica.org/article/how-we-analyzed-the-compas-recidivism-algorithm
Our analysis of Northpointe’s tool, called COMPAS (which stands for Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions), found that black defendants were far more likely than white defendants to be incorrectly judged to be at a higher risk of recidivism, while white defendants were more likely than black defendants to be incorrectly flagged as low risk.

(Sorry if I seem to be spamming the thread with links: these are issues I've been concerned about for a while.)

*womanformerly

So sorry to hear what you’ve been through - I can’t even begin to imagine how stressful and life affecting that must have been / still is. Have you got support?

I’m reading a book at the moment that be of interest called the Cyber Effect by Mary Aiken? I’m half way through and finding it really thought provoking / informative/ terrifying. The author is a cyber forensic pathologist who is an academic as well as working with the CIA. She discusses how new technology & social media are fanning the flames of pathologies that until recently we’re barely heard of and now are becoming mainstream- she also dedicates large sections to stalking behaviour.

Perking Faintly Thanks for those links. Sound fascinating, will definitely read.

Perking I remember reading about the COMPAS algorithm somewhere else - scary stuff, especially since there's this popular view that's sprung up that computer systems are somehow impartial and above being questioned.

Oddly enough, The Good Wife and – even more – it's successor series, The Good Fight, are very on the ball in portraying machine learning, Facebook micro-targetting and the like.

No you're not spamming al all - I am very interested and have done a lot of research in this year plus had the experience of tech being weaponised to target me, as well as supporting other women who have been on the receiving end of tech abuse - so very on point.

Will be back later when more time

woman, spareRib

The international aspect to this is really worrying in terms of international reach and more fundamentally whether uk regulation is adequate anyway.
The UK attitude so far seems to be that what we have will do. we also have Brexit coming.

The European Commission (who propose legislation to the EU) seem to be making noises in the right direction in terms of gender (they may mean sex?) considerations. They at least encourage companies to consider ‘gender’ as part of responsibile research innovation (RRI) which would cover things like algorithms and robots:

‘RRI requires that all stakeholders including civil society are responsive to each other and take shared responsibility for the processes and outcomes of research and innovation.

This means working together in: science education; the definition of research agendas; the conduct of research; the access to research results; and the application of new knowledge in society- in full respect of gender equality, the gender dimension in research and ethics considerations.’

ec.europa.eu/research/swafs/pdf/rome_declaration_RRI_final_21_November.pdf

The Department of Culture, Media & Sport is involved in this within the UK. This is where they're at, to date:

www.gov.uk/government/news/government-outlines-next-steps-to-make-the-uk-the-safest-place-to-be-online
The Prime Minister has announced plans to review laws and make sure that what is illegal offline is illegal online as the Government marks Safer Internet Day.

I've only quickly skipped through the green paper just now, but seems worth a proper look:

Internet Safety Strategy – Green paper October 2017
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/650949/Internet_Safety_Strategy_green_paper.pdf
Police response to online hate crime
As part of this Strategy, the Home Office are creating a new national police online hate crime hub. The hub will act as a single point through which all reports of online hate crime are channeled. Specially trained officers will liaise with the victim and use their knowledge of online hate crime to collect relevant evidence that will be needed by the CPS to bring a prosecution. Evidence and any preliminary investigative work to identify the perpetrator will then be allocated to the relevant police force where the alleged offence took place to take forward the investigation. The hub will provide local forces with guidance or specialist knowledge. This will provide victims with a better service and will make it more likely that prosecutions can be brought.

I do know the govt have been asking tech companies to come up with technical solutions to the the whack-a-mole problems that woman describes. Currently, a sender of malicious comms can hide themselves very effectively by all sort of tricks.

More from the Green Paper (pp38-39):

Government strategies
There are a number of existing strategies which seek to protect internet users from online harm and the Internet Safety Strategy will support these efforts.

These strategies include:
• The Ending Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategy, published in March 2017, emphasises the importance of protecting people from these crimes online and offline, as well as addressing offending specifically facilitated by the Internet. The Strategy commits to working with law enforcement and online safety forums to ensure the risk posed by online VAWG is understood, and that all victims have the confidence to report these crimes. We are clear that civil orders, as well as legislation, apply equally online as offline, and we have committed to introduce new Stalking Protection Civil Orders, which will have the power to place restrictions on stalkers’ online, as well as offline behaviours.
[...]
• The Hate Crime Action Plan, launched in July 2016, focuses on five key areas:
1. Preventing hate crime by challenging beliefs and attitudes;
2. Responding to hate crime within our communities;
3. Increasing the reporting of hate crime;
4. Improving support for victims of hate crime; and
5. Building our understanding of hate crime.

So, good aspirations. Let's see if they can deliver...