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(Also on Mastodon at @mer__edith@mastodon.world)

Science & Technologysignal.orgJoined May 2014

3,908 Following

61.3K Followers

Meredith Whittaker’s Tweets

Pinned Tweet

Sep 6, 2022

Professional news! On September 12 I'll be officially starting as President of

. I'm honored, I'm excited, and I can't think of anything more meaningful I could be doing with my time and energy. Read a bit more about the role and my thinking here 👇

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Signal

Sep 6, 2022

We are very happy to announce that board member, longtime friend of Signal, and advocate for digital privacy @mer__edith will be joining as Signal’s President beginning September 12. Read the full announcement: signal.org/blog/announcin

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13h

Thinking about tech's dark prosopographies after reading that EA forum trash fire

14h

I'd be remiss not to mention that in academia this is about more than self perception -- in many fields there are almost no stable jobs and definitions of "world class" sort thousands of Ph.D's into categories of precarity (most) vs. relative stability (a scant handful).

This stance toward self worth gives anyone who defines the benchmark against which "world class" is measured extraordinary power over those seeking to excel.

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Matt McAdam

@mxmcadam

Jan 13

Something I've noticed about many academics over the years is that if they're into something--running, chess, violin, painting, etc--they can't stand not being really, really good at it. They consider themselves terrible at something if they're not nearly world class.

Signal

shoshana wodinsky (she/her)

Archive a conversation in Signal to remove it from your chat list without deleting it entirely. Useful for group chats for past events, convos with exes, or any recent chat you don’t want staring you in the face when you open Signal.

Two screenshots, one of an Android phone and one of an iPhone demonstrating how to archive a potentially awkward conversation reading “Hope it wasn’t too weird to see each other today-"

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Shoshana is one of the best to ever do it. Strongly encourage editors to take this opportunity!

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@swodinsky

Jan 11

i honestly don’t know what the protocol for this kind of thing is. but if there’s any editors left on this godawful site that are into longform dives into data brokering and ad tracking……. let’s chat.

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Something so miserable about referring to the expanding capabilities of mass visual surveillance systems as "progress" (Yes ofc positivism and the conflation of new tech products w scientific advancement is a longstanding problem. AND this instance in particular is galling)

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Oliver Cameron

@olivercameron

We’ve all rightfully been taken by LLMs and how impressive the current state-of-the-art is. But, don’t sleep on computer vision. The progress is similarly insane.

1:01

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Alaphia Zoyab

@Alaphia

"We are seeing the very emotionally charged issue of child endangerment being used now, as it has been in the past, as a pretext for arguing that we need to implement fundamentally unworkable mass surveillance capabilities." The brilliant

Signal president Meredith Whittaker on Big Tech & protecting consumer...

youtube.com

A vocal critic of Big Tech, Meredith Whittaker became the first president of the encrypted messaging app Signal last fall. On Tuesday, Jan. 10 at 1:00 p.m. E...

Open Rights Group

@OpenRightsGroup

“I would point people to the Open Rights Group and their work if you want to get a better understanding of [the Online Safety Bill] and its dangers.” Meredith Whittaker in

@washingtonpost

Transcript: The Path Forward: Technology and Security with Meredith Whittaker

washingtonpost.com

shoshana wodinsky (she/her)

@swodinsky

Jan 11

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Anna Artyushina

@socioanna

Jan 11

In this fantastic interview,

Signal president Meredith Whittaker on Big Tech & protecting consumer...

explains why breaking encryption for the sake of public safety isn't a working solution and how the UK's Online Safety Bill will likely lead to a new system of mass surveillance youtu.be/eouVRp6x2eU #BigTech #dataprotection

youtube.com

A vocal critic of Big Tech, Meredith Whittaker became the first president of the encrypted messaging app Signal last fall. On Tuesday, Jan. 10 at 1:00 p.m. E...

says, “WhatsApp collects information about who’s in a group… who’s talking to whom… profile information… photos, and it collect other really key information that is extremely revealing and often more powerful than the contents of the chat.” #PostLive

4:15

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Iran Says Face Recognition Will ID Women Breaking Hijab Laws

Will Oremus

@WillOremus

Jan 10

If your job involves building surveillance tech and you think it won't be used to oppress people... It probably will.

wired.com

Iranian women are baring their heads to protest government controls. A top official said algorithms can identify anyone flouting dress codes.

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on Dec. 28 New York Times opinion piece:“There are actors on one side who believe that this human right should extend to any mode of communication… and then there are powerful actors who would like to have access to the information that would be otherwise shielded.”

1:51

688 views

tells

: “This op-ed is weak arguments that are packaged in the imprimatur of authority… that will most likely be used as a hollow citation by those who are in the next year set to likely unveil anti-privacy legislation." #PostLive

2:01

634 views

says, “We are seeing… the very emotionally charged issue of child-endangerment being used now… as a pretext for arguing that we need to implement fundamentally unworkable mass surveillance capabilities.” #PostLive

3:24

617 views

Opinion | The Signal App and the Danger of Privacy at All Costs

Jan 3

OK! let’s talk about That Op-ed. The one that insisted not only that privacy is dangerous, but that not affirmatively building surveillance into communication tools is a radical ideological position. 1/

web.archive.org

The debate about dilemmas posed by the text messaging system.

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Washington Post Live

Jan 9

On Tuesday, Jan. 10 at 1:00 p.m. ET:

President

joins

to discuss Signal’s efforts to protect consumer data and privacy and how she sees the future of the tech industry at large. #PostLive Register- ow.ly/CvNs50Mm7JU

Tomorrow:

will be chatting live w/ tech policy reporter

for Washington Post Live (

Signal president on future of Big Tech and protecting consumer data

). Expect a conversation about Signal, privacy, data & AI, and what lies ahead for the coming year. Jan. 10 1pm ET - sign up to watch:

washingtonpost.com

A vocal critic of Big Tech, Meredith Whittaker became the first president of the encrypted messaging app Signal last fall. On Tuesday, Jan. 10 at 1:00 p.m. ET, Whittaker joins Cat Zakrzewski, The...

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The Markup

@themarkup

Jan 9

“In theory, interoperability is great. But in Signal’s case, we are not willing to lower our privacy bar in the name of interoperating with apps like WhatsApp or iMessage that don’t adhere to our standards,” says

president

Back into the Trenches of the Crypto Wars – The Markup

Jan 9

Anyway,,,,

$A screenshot of a tweet that says “a client informed me that he will no longer pay me to write content for his website because AI can write it for free, but he wants to pay me a fraction of my usual rate to rewrite it in different words so it can pass Google’s AI detection screening.$

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“AI” will not replace you. A person making half what you do with no benefits whose job is the same as yours was but now includes babysitting “AI” will. twitter.com/svpino/status/…

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Jan 8

Ada Lovelace and Babbage tried to develop a system to win at horse racing and she lost so bad she had to pawn her jewels. The mathematical tendency to try to rationalize (outsmart) messy chance, dangerous then as now.

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Jan 8

I remember a similar AI climate c. 2014-2016. The Singularity! Predictions that e.g. AI'll make radiologists obsolete any minute. This was tempered for a bit by attention to issues like bias c. 2018-2019. & now we're on to another round of profitable chaotic ungrounded optimism.

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François Chollet

@fchollet

Jan 8

The current climate in AI has so many parallels to 2021 web3 it's making me uncomfortable. Narratives based on zero data are accepted as self-evident. Everyone is expecting as a sure thing "civilization-altering" impact (& 100x returns on investment) in the next 2-3 years

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Alex Howard

@digiphile

“A world that doesn’t have privacy is a world where the power structures that exist now are cemented, almost impossible to perturb, and authoritarianism thrives in these conditions.”-

themarkup.org/hello-world/20

Academia.edu is such a sad reincarnation of Klout

Masai4PM

@Masai4PM

“Sitting here in the wake of data breach after data breach, terms of service change after terms of service change, I’m confident in saying that building systems that work to not collect data, like Signal, is the only meaningful way to protect privacy.”

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The Markup

@themarkup

You wouldn’t expect law enforcement to go to a pen company and ask for everything that’s been written with a specific pen, says @mer__edith. So why has that been normalized with chat companies and your messages? Read the full interview: themarkup.org/hello-world/20

erin pineda

@erinrpineda

like a how-to guide for how not to do human subjects research

derek guy

@dieworkwear

running an experiment on 4000 unwitting people with mental health issues to find out they want human empathy, not machine-generated language

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Rob Morris

@RobertRMorris

Jan 6

Once people learned the messages were co-created by a machine, it didn’t work. Simulated empathy feels weird, empty.

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craig newmark

@craignewmark

The Crypto Wars aren’t over. Governments are still regularly trying to undermine strong encryption. In her latest newsletter

@JuliaAngwin

interviews

president

about how Signal limits data collection and why that is so unusual.

Back into the Trenches of the Crypto Wars – The Markup

Julia Angwin

@JuliaAngwin

"I don’t think we have much of a chance for a livable future if we don’t have a truly private means to communicate with each other,"

president

tells me in this week's newsletter:

Back into the Trenches of the Crypto Wars – The Markup

The Markup

@themarkup

You wouldn’t expect law enforcement to go to a pen company and ask for everything that’s been written with a specific pen, says

. So why has that been normalized with chat companies and your messages? Read the full interview:

Back into the Trenches of the Crypto Wars – The Markup

Kareem Carr | Data Scientist

@kareem_carr

Jan 6

The most disturbing thing I've seen in these "can AI be sentient?" debates is people saying stuff like "us meat computers need to get used to the idea that we aren't special". That is real psychopath shit. "Humans are just things" is the worst possible take on all this.

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“AI” will not replace you. A person making half what you do with no benefits whose job is the same as yours was but now includes babysitting “AI” will.

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Santiago

@svpino

AI will not replace you. A person using AI will.

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Cat Zakrzewski

Very excited about this

interview next week. Send me your questions for Meredith!

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Looking forward to talking with @Cat_Zakrzewski and Washington Post Live @PostLive about Signal, the importance of privacy, and what lies ahead in 2023. Tuesday Jan 10, 1pm ET, sign up to watch! washingtonpost.com/washington-pos

Signal

When you take a photo in Signal, it doesn’t save to your phone’s camera roll 🕶️ This keeps it really private, not stored on cloud backup servers.

Two images of iOS phone screens. The one on the left shows a highlighted camera icon in the top right corner, which is where the in-app camera lives in Signal. The second screen shows a closeup photo of a cat looking curiously and demandingly at the camera.

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Looking forward to talking with

and Washington Post Live

Signal president on future of Big Tech and protecting consumer data

about Signal, the importance of privacy, and what lies ahead in 2023. Tuesday Jan 10, 1pm ET, sign up to watch!

washingtonpost.com

A vocal critic of Big Tech, Meredith Whittaker became the first president of the encrypted messaging app Signal last fall. On Tuesday, Jan. 10 at 1:00 p.m. ET, Whittaker joins Cat Zakrzewski, The...

Jan 3

In short, we are right, our arguments are robust, and we have done the reading. But if we want to defend privacy, we’ll need to be coordinated and bold, and not make the mistake of assuming that being correct is in itself a strategy. There's a lot of work ahead in 2023! 7/

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Particularly because these laws would, in effect, prevent people developing tech from NOT building mass surveillance and censorship capabilities. Which, while extremely poorly argued, is effectively the main thrust of the op-ed. 6/

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What laws? What political platforms? I don’t know. But the age ID requirement passed in CA this week, and the regulations that would require communications apps to proactively scan and police content that are currently moving forward in the EU and the UK give us some clues. 5/

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The op-ed works to create the appearance of a “debate” on more or less settled issues. This is a powerful function, bolstered by the NYT imprimatur, which allows it serve as a “Potemkin citation” -- a seemingly credible reference in support of bad privacy laws and platforms. 4/

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