Lily Salter's Blog, page 89

California’s next megaflood would be worse than eight Hurricane Katrinas

AP/Gerald Herbert

This post originally appeared on Grist.

Worse than the 1906 earthquake. Worse than eight Hurricane Katrinas. Worse than every wildfire in California history, combined. The world’s first trillion-dollar natural disaster.

A wintertime megaflood in California could turn out to be the worst natural disaster in U.S. history by far, and we are making it much more likely, according to an alarming study published this week in Nature Climate Change.

The odds are good that such a flood will happen in the next 40 years, the study says. By the end of the century, it’s a near certainty. (And then another one hits, and another — three such storms are possible by 2100). By juicing the atmosphere, extreme West Coast rainstorms will happen at five times their historical rate, if humanity continues on roughly a business-as-usual path, the new research predicts.

The study’s lead author, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a lifelong Californian, says the best way to understand what we’re doing to California’s weather is to think of earthquakes.

“A major earthquake on the Hayward Fault in the San Francisco Bay Area or on the San Andreas Fault east of Los Angeles is an inevitability in the long run, and either event would likely be devastating,” Swain says. “Yet the big difference with the risk of a major flood event is that human activities are greatly increasing the likelihood of the physical event itself through the emission of greenhouse gases.”

Three years ago, much of the Pacific Northwest sat in stunned silence after reading Kathryn Schulz’s Pulitzer-winning description of “the really big one” — an unimaginably huge earthquake, a full-margin rupture of the Cascadia subduction zone. Within months of that article, Congress held hearings and proposed new funding to prepare.

California’s looming megaflood would likely be much worse.

In terms of sheer destruction, displacement of human life, re-ordering of society, a California megaflood would be without parallel in modern U.S. history. The state’s levees aren’t designed to attempt to hold back such a flood. The blow to the world’s sixth largest economy would send shockwaves throughout the world.

On his blog, Swain wrote: “Climate scientists are sometimes accused of being ‘alarmist,’ but I would argue that alarm is a reasonable human response.”

In 2011, the USGS assessed the modern-day implications of a flood like the one that happened in the winter of 1862 — currently the worst flood in California history. An unceasing onslaught of atmospheric rivers brought Los Angeles three years worth of rain, more than 36 inches, in a month and a half. Floodwaters turned California’s Central Valley into an inland sea, from Bakersfield to Redding. When it was all finished, the storms had destroyed one-third of the taxable land in California, and bankrupted the state.

Swain’s research considered the consequences of these megafloods on the state’s water management system and found the signs of catastrophe:

[S]uch events would be unprecedented in California’s modern era of extensive water infrastructure. Few of the dams, levees and canals that currently protect millions living in California’s flood plains and facilitate the movement of water from Sierra Nevada watersheds to coastal cities have been tested by a deluge as severe as the extraordinary 1861–1862 storm sequence—a repeat of which would probably lead to considerable loss of life and economic damages approaching a trillion dollars.

And, deep breaths, this isn’t the worst-case scenario. It is “plausible, perhaps inevitable”, according to the USGS, that a flood even worse than the 1862 disaster will occur again. The USGS called their scenario the “ARkStorm” — a thousand-year megastorm — and made a stark warning: “The hazards associated with such extreme winter storms have not tested modern infrastructure nor the preparedness of the emergency management community.”

For California, it looks like the worst of climate change is just getting started.

This time it’s too personal: “James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction”

AMC/Michael Moriatis

Sci-fi fandom frequently requires a measure of quiet, consistent reconciliation between one's enduring affection for the genre and annoyance at the people creating it. Such musings tugged at the borders of my thoughts while watching “AMC Visionaries: James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction,” debuting Monday at 10 p.m. on AMC.

Each of its six episodes is an entertaining rehash of modern cinema’s greatest genre hits, or a few of them anyway. Devotees to the “Terminator” and “Alien” franchises should have a wonderful time knocking off to bed with this trip through what Cameron considers to be the standard-bearers of sci-fi entertainment as we know it. His takes are divided into manageable and easy-to-digest segments, starting with “Alien Life” and how concepts of those ideas have been translated by the likes of Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott.

Cameron also chats with fellow directors Guillermo del Toro, George Lucas and Christopher Nolan throughout the series, as well as a few of the genre’s prominent faces including Will Smith, Keanu Reeves and two actors in whose careers he’s played a major role, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sigourney Weaver. Certainly there is value to having those stars in the mix if only to enjoy seeing Schwarzenegger admit, “I would have loved to be able to time travel. I mean, imagine to go back and to say, ‘I’m not going to do ‘Hercules in New York.’”

But hardcore sci-fi nerds aren’t going to learn anything new in watching “James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction.” In some respects, actually, they may question why Cameron chooses to feature a few esoteric film choices while omitting mention of others.

Perhaps the best purpose of this series is to be used as an aid to help non-geeks understand the enthusiasts in their lives. I almost went as far to posit that Cameron’s series could help relative noobs hold their own in party conversations with fans but honestly, that’s usually a losing battle in the best of circumstances. Anyway, if the highest value of this version of “Visionaries” is to celebrate specific versions of entertainment in the most basic way possible by triggering our emotional memories of cinematic touchstones, then Cameron’s “Story of Science Fiction” fulfills that directive to the best of its ability.

Cameron’s ode to sci-fi represents the second edition of  AMC's “Visionaries” series; Robert Kirkman, creator of “The Walking Dead,” served as a tour guide through his “Secret History of Comics” in 2017.

Attaching high-profile names to "Visionaries" grants the series an imprimatur of legitimacy, albeit to varying degrees. Kirkman, for example, isn’t merely one of the comic book industry’s better-known celebrities, he’s the network’s most valued name brand producer. Nerdier and more knowledgeable comic book experts are out there, and there’s a case to be made that Kevin Smith is more famous than Kirkman. But AMC’s executives are amply-aware that most “Walking Dead” viewers have never experienced the musty innards of their local comic book shop and may never do so. And more pertinently, Smith’s comic book series is not the show that’s keeping the lights over there.

Meanwhile, few people if any would question Cameron’s qualifications to helm a multi-episode swim through sci-fi, a genre to which he’s substantially contributed and has a significant hand in shaping, and don't you forget it.

The director has been playing around with television projects for the last few years, mainly filming his adventures manning the deep-diving submersible vessel known as Deepsea Challenger. Concurrently he was also plotting to franchise his “Avatar” series by creating four sequels to the 2009 film, the first of which is currently scheduled to release two and a half years from now December 2020.  It’s never too early to campaign these days, especially in a marketplace dominated by Marvel’s sleeper-hold on that segment.

The topmost limitation of “James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction” is the fact that it is Cameron’s vision, specific to his tastes, opinions about and comprehension of the genre. He's no fan of the "Avengers" universe which explains, say, the lack of segments about "Black Panther" and the elements of Afro-futurism incorporated throughout. This is acutely noticeable given that two of the experts called upon to lend their opinion to episodes are noted black sci-fi authors Nnedi Okorafor and Nalo Hopkinson.

Cameron would pay lip service to that point, in all likelihood, while explaining that his series focus on high concept films and subject matter. By and large, this approach works best for the seasoned cable movie consumer, people who may sit through 1985’s “Cocoon” and not be put off by the notion that they’re watching a movie about extraterrestrial life forms.

Similarly, the series takes time travel, the subject of its sixth episode, and loops in a discussion about “Doctor Who,” calling upon recently departed Time Lord Peter Capaldi to hold forth on the series. Just in case that’s too nerdy, “Story of Science Fiction” also brings it back around to conversations about why  “Back to the Future” and “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” theoretically speaking, could never happen while letting us know that it's perfectly OK to remain in love with both movies.

Cameron values broad appeal over digging deeply to closely examine some science fiction’s taproots. Look closely enough — which, here, only requires you to keep your eyes open — and you may also notice a hierarchy among those Cameron interview subjects. Dean Devlin, the screenwriter of “Independence Day,” is featured, as is “RoboCop” and “Starship Troopers” director Paul Verhoeven. However, Cameron reserves his onscreen passion for his exchanges with Lucas and Spielberg, directors he likely considers to be on his level.

Indeed, the most obvious of Cameron’s touches on “Story of Science Fiction” is his insistence upon inserting himself into his conversations with his fellow A-listers so that we never forget his role in creating the modern science fiction cinematic universe. Somehow he can’t resist making their mutual experience and viewpoint on a specific subject about him and the way he relates to it. For instance, take his interactions with Spielberg, recently the subject of an illuminating and emotionally vulnerable biopic that did much to explain why and how his filmmaking shaped the American moviegoing experience. Spielberg's humility only makes Cameron's mountainous self-regard stand out. What else could one expect from a guy who declared himself king of the world upon winning his Oscar for “Titanic”?

This doesn’t greatly detract from the series as a whole; its still fun to watch cinematic giants trace the genre best known films back to the works of H.G. Wells, Ted Chiang, Arthur Clarke, Robert Heinlein and others. However, I'm not sure that I needed to spend a quarter of the "Intelligent Machines" episode watching Cameron and Schwarzenegger massage one another over the wonderfulness and originality of the "Terminator" franchise.

Upcoming hours devoted to space exploration, monsters, dark futures and intelligent machines all serve this end while skipping through these subjects with a light touch. Television genre aficionados are served well by the series’ inclusion of “Battlestar Galactica” creator Ronald D. Moore as well as Christopher Nolan and Lisa Joy, the minds behind HBO’s “Westworld.” These join the obligatory considerations of iconic installments of “The Twilight Zone” and “Star Trek,” along with other TV sci-fi ephemera.

Even so, it’s difficult if not impossible to overlook who and which subjects are missing from Cameron’s evaluation of the discussion. Whatever diversity of viewpoints on display in the series appears to be inserted, occasionally as an afterthought. Women are represented largely by Cameron’s female leads, such as Weaver and Zoe Saldana. With the exception of notable TV producer Jane Espenson the series features very few female screenwriters and no female directors.

Mind you, only recently have female directors gotten the opportunity to helm high profile sci-fi blockbusters, but one would think that at the very least a series that found a way to wax on about the low-budget 2004 film “Primer” might have take a minute or two to chat with Ava DuVernay about her work on bringing Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time” to the screen.

Even Cameron’s ex-wife Katheryn Bigelow could have gotten a mention; she won a Saturn Award for her work on 1995's “Strange Days,”  which Cameron co-wrote and produced. Of course, knowing what we know about Cameron, that's asking a lot.

Similarly it may be silly to wonder why the series doesn't devote more than a few moments to Okorafor and Hopkinson to weigh in on more than just sci-fi cinema’s usage of alien stories as parables to examine man’s inhumanity against man. Future episodes incorporate Smith but for the most part, the minority experience with science fiction receives the most discussion in that first episode.

Afterward the show moves on, checking its boxes by including input from Brown professor  as well as authors Ken Liu and Veronica Roth. To be fair, expert commentary by critics Amy Nicholson and Annalee Newitz  and science fiction professor Lisa Yaszek lend vital context to every episode, preventing "James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction" from being entirely "stale, male and pale," to use Cameron's own words. Cameron's series could had done a slightly better job at setting a standard for other "Visionaries" to follow.

We've yet to see Eli Roth's "Visionaries" installment on the horror genre, and that may fill in those gaps. At a 2017 Television Critics Association press conference, when the series was first announced, Roth enthusiastically declared, "I want to get Catherine Hardwicke. I want to get . . . Katt Shea . . . Jackie Kong — any woman that’s directed a movie, because there were a lot of fantastic entries." It'll be refreshing to see a look at films from a creator who is enthusiastic about adopting a wider point of view.  Until that happens we'll have to content ourselves with going back to a well many others have dipped into before, albeit with a lesser sense of their own boldness.

Why having kids is like going through puberty: “I really feel like I regressed”

Isaac Wasuck/Harper Collins

In a world supersaturated with "mommy bloggers" and groaning bookstore shelves full of competing memoirs on childrearing takes a brave person to go down that well-trod road. But Kimberly Harrington is one tough mother. The essayist and copywriter's new collection, arriving just in time for Mother's Day, reveals itself right from the title: "Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words."

Filled with the blunt, witty observations that have gained Harrington a following for her McSweeney's contributions, "Amateur Hour" is a candid look at both the joys and horrors of family life, including pregnancy loss, marital strife and the guilt and exhaustion of "work-life balance."

Salon spoke to Harrington via phone recently about motherhood, Facebook and other confounding things.

There are so many books out there about motherhood and there are even so many funny books out there about motherhood. How did you say, I’m going to do it and I’m going to do something different?

I started putting some personal essays out there on Medium and McSweeney’s. Not all the pieces were about parenthood, but there was definitely an intersection, because that’s what’s going on in my life. When my agent reached out to me, it was for one of my pieces on McSweeney’s, "Please Don’t Get Murdered at School Today." Then it just took shape from there, where it seemed, “OK. This is the thread that’s going on in your life right now. You're approaching it from this serious, crybaby angle.”

I wasn’t like, "I want to write about motherhood all the time and I want to write about parenting all the time." When the book was announced, it was announced under "parenting." If you spend any time with me, you know I should not be writing a parenting book. That would be apparent to anyone.

It’s so interesting because it follows a narrative. There are things that you reveal along the way. It’s a collection of essays that also really functions very effectively as a memoir.

When my editor went through it the first time, she had comments along those lines. I thought I was just writing these individual little building blocks that would hopefully make sense and would be friends when I put them all together. When she said that, I feel like something shifted in my head where I understood it a bit better, and I let go of my hangup over being under this theoretical "parenting" category. It ended up being much more these different angles on that experience of not just parenting or motherhood but my life. When I got into proofreading and all the really nitty-gritty details, it was the first time I realized I actually hadn't set the stage with my kids’ names or anything.

And it works out because you tease out these details. You don’t see those things necessarily coming early on in the book. It’s like, “Hold on. I think that I’m reading a memoir.”

This is total trickery for a book. Actually, only a month ago I was really struggling about it with how it’s going to fit together, especially, with the conceptual humor pieces. I think there is the memoir part of it that made sense for me, and then I looked back and realized, “Oh, it’s a portfolio.” It’s like, "You basically made what you’ve spent your whole life doing but just in a book form.”

It reminds me of Shirley Jackson’s essays on motherhood, where she’s also in this house in Vermont talking about the chaos of it. It’s very funny, but with this through line of the honest-to-God bleakness of raising a family.

My approach is that I feel really superstitious about complaining about parenting. I really don’t care what people think about me or think about my parenting, but probably because I had a miscarriage with my first pregnancy and I had a miscarriage in between my first and second child, I just have this superstition built in where it’s, “Do you really want to complain about it? You wanted it.” I think that there’s always this fine line that I’m trying to walk in terms of recognizing that it grinds you to dust just on a fundamental level. I look at my friends who chose not to have children, it’s like, “You guys look really young.”

I’ve aged like a two-term president since I had these kids. It is very cliché. I hate even that I’m saying this out loud, but I can’t imagine my life without my kids either, because it’s just given form to what I’ve done since. What mother hasn’t tried to write about that? I do think that the huge challenge in any sort of writing about parenting is that writing is a huge outlet for mothers, especially now that everyone can write and put stuff out there.

You also experience it to a degree in marriage. It’s like you become part of this community that is really most of the world, and yet you are also in a fortress with walls around it.

I really had this experience where I struggled with both kids when they were infants, especially when they were both really little. They were two years apart, and that was just all hard. I finally realized that the last time I felt this hormonal, that I felt that insecure and unsteady, and that I didn’t know what I was doing, was puberty.

Everyone thinks they're having a very unique experience. Maybe that’s why they don’t talk about it, or people don’t want to feel like they're failing, which again reminds me of being in middle school and high school. You don’t want to talk about what makes you sad, or what you're angry about, or what you're upset about, or what makes you feel bad about yourself because you’ll feel like a loser with your friends.

At least for me, I really feel like I regressed to that level of, I don’t want to be a loser who doesn’t know how to do this and is complaining about it or is crying about it. That’s a really vulnerable place to be when you're a grown-up.

You talk also about miscarriage, you talk about marital problems, you talk about anxiety. You talk about wanting to have your career and being good at your career and loving your career. These are all things that are often shrouded in tremendous taboo.

The career stuff I actually felt uncomfortable with, which surprises me because I’m not shy about what I do and I’ve always wanted to work. I think the anxiety one in particular, it was helpful that I had shared an early draft of that piece. I remember feeling really nervous about sharing it. To me it’s very similar to being vocal about miscarriage. I felt like a very similar sort of reaction — which is you think you're the only person and then you realize it's quite literally everyone you know.

Our culture really likes to just have pleasant chitchat and no one wants to be a downer in conversations and there’s a lot of quirky things I think amongst women in general: If I am just having cocktail party chitchat and I talk about being anxious, then where the hell is that conversation going to go? I think sometimes — and I certainly have this experience as a reader — when I read a piece that really connects, I feel like you give you permission to then have that dialogue. I find the evolution of sharing and feedback really interesting as this book took shape.

I’ve interviewed Brene Brown a couple of times, and she talks so much about how we as a culture admire when someone steps out and says, "This is who I am, this is my experience." But when it’s your own experience you feel, I don’t think so.

I think that I was able to step back a little bit and realize that there were certain conditions in my life that made it possible for me to say whatever I wanted without fear of fallout, even though once it was shared I would be sitting at meetings with people who knew me and I knew they probably had read [my] pieces. I think we all talk a very big game about how vocal we want other people to be on our behalf.

You talk about miscarriage, you talk about mental health, but honestly your essay about your relationship as seen through the prism of Facebook was the most painful thing.

Social media becomes a mirror for what's going on with your life, or what you're insecure about. Everyone at a certain degree is trying to pretend like they have it together.

Every now and then I try to imagine the possibility that someone looks at my life and thinks, well, she’s got her shit together.

That’s how it works. I think it’s all of us walking around pretty much knowing that in one way or another no one has her shit together. Then we all think everyone else is killing it on some level.

I almost can’t remember what my life was like before social media. How did I compare myself negatively to other people?

I actually was just talking about that the other night in terms of the phases of my kids’ lives. When they both were born there was no iPhone, no social media. I'm really, in hindsight, grateful for that.

The upside is if I had had to see people posting about their sleeping babies I would have lost my shit for good. I was barely hanging on both times, and I think that would’ve done it. I have a lot of empathy for new mothers who are dealing with that because to me that is a really toxic combination when you're that vulnerable and hormonal and really in the thick of comparing of yourself with everyone on every level. It’s not just you, it’s what your baby is doing and is your baby sleeping and is everything normal. I’m sure there’s a support level too that’s really counter balances.

I interviewed this actress a couple of months ago and she talked about being in a private Facebook group for women going through postpartum depression. That was huge for her. But then the other day in my Instagram recommendations I found this woman with pictures of her adorable perfect infant and a puppy and a 2-year-old, and I thought, screw you, lady.

There’s no way I could been creating a Van Gogh situations with either my kids because they never slept. Every time I see those napping baby with puppy pictures I need a trigger warning. I think that’s the next phase of my lady life is transitioning fully from the trauma to the "That’s adorable" again.

My daughter was a horrible, horrible sleeper. She didn’t sleep through the night till she was like a year and a half old. I remember clearly this one night — and we’ve all had a million of these — where you can’t believe you're still alive but you're so exhausted that you want to cry. Her crib was in her room and I got up to try to get her to fall back asleep. I was basically slung over this crib trying to sleep standing up. I had this conscious thought which was, sear this moment into your brain right now if you ever consider wanting another kid. I can remember still to this day. She is almost 12. I remember that feeling of just like, don’t ever forget how broken you are right now as you're trying to sleep standing up. It’s been highly effective, I have to say. It's something that’s like sending future messages to yourself because, yes, you’ll forget.

I have done the same thing where I’ve had moments in my life where I’ve thought, don’t you romanticize this. Don’t you ever romanticize what it’s like to have to push a stroller through the snow.

Don’t get me wrong. Once these kids got to a certain age they were delightful. I love hanging out with them. It was still hard. I look at pictures of them being little kids and there are aspects I miss about it. I think a lot of mothers, and dads for that matter, miss the all-in on loving you dynamic that you lose over time. I like talking to the people they are now. It was just laugh out loud funny when I finally realized this is what I’m struggling with — I can’t deal with not knowing what you want. For all the challenges of middle school, I thoroughly enjoy being able to just talk with them like human beings. It’s intense, but we just do the best we can.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

The Nazi history of Hans Asperger proves we need a new word for this type of autism

AP/W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Back in 2012, the American Psychiatric Association voted to remove "Asperger Syndrome" as an official diagnosis in their manual. Their decision was based on terminological precision rather than ethical considerations; they felt that it ought to be folded into autism spectrum disorders and argued that merging it with the broader spectrum would "help more accurately and consistently diagnose children with autism." Nevertheless, as Edith Sheffer's new book "Asperger's Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna" points out, they wound up being ahead of the curve when it came to disassociating the condition itself from the name of Hans Asperger himself.

As Sheffer meticulously documents and proves in her book, Asperger collaborated with Nazi Germany in unforgivable ways. He gave public credence to their most toxic views on race and biology (known as eugenics), served as a medical consultant for Adolf Hitler's administration and recommended that countless children be put to death at the Spiegelgrund, a clinic for "inferior" children. Many of Asperger's career opportunities were given to him because of the racial privileges he was afforded in Nazi Germany, and although a narrative later emerged that depicted Asperger as an opponent of Nazism, the historical evidence demonstrates that he both sympathized with aspects of and personally benefited from Nazi ideology.

"Since Asperger's work wound up broadening ideas of an autism spectrum, many laud him for recognizing and celebrating children's differences," Sheffer writes in her introduction. "Asperger is often portrayed as a champion of neurodiversity." Yet Sheffer argued that it's time "to consider what Asperger actually wrote and did in greater depth," pointing out that his story can serve as a "cautionary tale" about "revealing the extent to which diagnoses can be shaped by social and political forces, how difficult those may be to perceive, and how hard they may be to combat."

This is the part where I have to temporarily remove my book critic hat and put on my personal essay hat. It isn't just that I'm on the autism spectrum myself, which I've discussed extensively in my past writing. I'm also Jewish, which means that the story of Asperger's Nazism is doubly troubling for me. On the one hand, this is the man whose early work made it possible for me and millions like me to receive something resembling a proper medical diagnosis, to say nothing of the social understanding that we often desperately lacked. At the same time, he is also responsible for the deaths of countless innocent people — and supported a regime that brutally massacred six million of my coreligionists.

How do we reconcile the man's positive legacy with his negative one?

The most obvious answer is to finish the work that the American Psychiatric Association began in 2012. Although "Asperger Syndrome" has already been purged from the medical lexicon (albeit for unrelated reasons), it is still a popular term if for no other reason than it's convenient to use. There is an obvious difference between people on the autism spectrum who are ultimately able to function in society and those who are not. The term "high-functioning" has often been used to distinguish between the two groups, but the danger there is that it implies individuals whose autism manifests itself in more severe ways are "low-functioning" — a needless insult, and not an accurate one either.

I'm not sure which term should be used to provide the necessary linguistic clarity without becoming offensive. Very often the psychological nomenclature evolves so drastically that language which was once innocuous is now regarded as offensive or worse. As a result, I believe it is important to be cautious before branding a certain designation out of bounds.

Yet that time has come for Asperger Syndrome. When someone refers to an individual with autism as having Asperger Syndrome, they are paying tribute to a man whose horrific misdeeds ought to deprive him of that credit. The term quite simply has to go.

Yet how should this change the way we think of autism?

First and foremost, we need to look to Carol Povey, director of the London-based Center for Autism of the National Autistic Society. As she told The New York Times in an email earlier this month, "Obviously, no one with a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome should feel in any way tainted by this very troubling history." As someone who has grown up in a culture that often loved to deny the presence of neurological atypicality — and, for that matter, still does today — it is dangerous to simply say that Hans Asperger was a bad person and leave it at that. The legacy of Asperger the man absolutely deserves to be destroyed, but it is important to be careful.

The fact that Asperger was a Nazi doesn't mean there is anything inherently hateful or even inaccurate about the autism spectrum disorders that we learned about as a result of his work. Indeed, it's important to remember that most of what we know today about autism isn't based on his work; like so many scientists before him, he simply added a small piece to a larger mosaic in which subsequent researchers have also made their invaluable contributions.

At the same time, we must never forget that the original Hans Asperger did terrible things. It isn't simply so that his name will no longer be associated with autism. As a doctor, his foremost responsibility was to heal and improve the quality of life. Yet to quote a study by medical historian Herwig Czech:

Asperger managed to accommodate himself to the Nazi regime and was rewarded for his affirmations of loyalty with career opportunities. He joined several organizations affiliated with the NSDAP (although not the Nazi party itself), publicly legitimized race hygiene policies including forced sterilizations and, on several occasions, actively cooperated with the child ‘euthanasia’ program. The language he employed to diagnose his patients was often remarkably harsh (even in comparison with assessments written by the staff at Vienna’s notorious Spiegelgrund ‘euthanasia’ institution), belying the notion that he tried to protect the children under his care by embellishing their diagnoses.

This is not a legacy that should remain buried. It is a track record of horror that must not be forgotten. If we do, we will have lost touch with our own basic sense of decency.

“The Simpsons” creator Matt Groening addresses Apu controversy

FOX

For the first time, "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening publicly addressed criticism surrounding the character of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, an Indian-American convenience-store owner voiced by a white man, in an interview with USA Today in honor of the show's record-breaking 636th episode.

Apu, a shopkeeper who has been part of the long-running animation series since 1990, with Hank Azaria adopting an Indian accent to voice him, has been widely condemned as an instance of racist stereotyping.

When asked if he has mulled over the backlash of Apu as a stereotype, Groening replied, “Not really. I’m proud of what we do on the show. And I think it’s a time in our culture where people love to pretend they’re offended.”

He then added, “We’ll let the show speak for itself.”

The most prominent recent criticism of Apu came from comedian Hari Kondabolu. Kondabolu is the creator of a 2017 truTV documentary, "The Problem with Apu," which suggests Apu is emblematic of a larger issue: The bad representation of people of color in pop culture.

"The Simpsons" referenced the Apu controversy in the April 8, episode "No Good Read Goes Unpunished." In the episode, the writers confessed that while Apu's character was "politically incorrect," they did not apologize for the offense the series has caused and the racist stereotypes it has enforced. Instead, the sitcom indicated that being politically correct is bad for story-telling and for art, and suggested that not much can be done to mend the transgressions of the past — a lackluster response for a series known for its savage satire and cultural criticism.

The episode wrestles with the Apu controversy after Marge (Julie Kavner) tries to share her favorite childhood book with Lisa (Yeardley Smith), but discovers that it's filled with racist comments and stereotypes. In an effort to "fix" the problem, Marge attempts to rewrite the book to make it politically correct, then decides that it makes for a dull and uninspired narrative.

“Well, what am I supposed to do?” Marge asks.

“It’s hard to say. Something that started decades ago and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect,” Lisa answers. “What can you do?”

The camera then pans to a picture of Apu on Lisa's bedside table.

"Some things will be dealt with at a later date," Marge adds.

"If at all," Lisa responds, and the pair stare directly into the camera.

Kondabolu was not impressed with the way the show addressed the controversy.

"Wow. 'Politically Incorrect?' That’s the takeaway from my movie & the discussion it sparked? Man, I really loved this show. This is sad," Kondabolu tweeted.

Wow. “Politically Incorrect?” That’s the takeaway from my movie & the discussion it sparked? Man, I really loved this show. This is sad. https://t.co/lYFH5LguEJ

— Hari Kondabolu (@harikondabolu) April 9, 2018

After the episode aired, show-runner Al Jean tweeted that the show will “try to find an answer that is popular & more important right,” while Hank Azaria, who voices Apu, offered to “step aside” from voicing the character.

.@TheSimpsons I truly appreciate all responses pro and con. Will continue to try to find an answer that is popular & more important right

— Al Jean (@AlJean) April 13, 2018

Kathy Griffin isn’t sorry for offending Trump

Getty/Alberto E. Rodriguez

Comedian Kathy Griffin is walking back on her apology to President Donald Trump and the public for being photographed holding a bloodied mannequin head that resembled Trump.

During an appearance on "The View" Monday morning, Griffin wasted virtually no time before declaring to the show's hosts, "by the way, I take the apology back."

It has been almost a year since she taped an apology where she admitted that when she posed with a fake decapitated Trump head, she went "way too far." Griffin said then that she "sincerely" apologizes for the images and that she "understands how it offends people. It wasn't funny. I get it," and asked for the public's forgiveness.

But Griffin said Monday that she regrets apologizing to Trump and the same goes to Trump's children, Don Jr. and Eric Trump, whom she said she refers to as "Eddie Munster and date rape."

"Look, I'm not holding back on this family," she continued to audience applause. "This president is different and I have been through the mill and so now I'm back on the road. I sold out Carnegie Hall in less than 24 hours."

"When I found out that I was really just part of the Trump wood-chipper, which Michelle Wolf is in now," Griffin added, "I didn't know, they had this apparatus already set up before my silly picture of a $5 Halloween mask and ketchup and I wanted to make a statement about what a misogynist he is. And also I remember the eight years of the photos of Obama's lynching and nobody said anything, right that was all okay. That was all on Facebook."

Griffin's point is one that has been buzzing on social media since comedian Michelle Wolf's controversial monologue at the White House Correspondent's Dinner Saturday, where she roasted everyone: Democrats, Republicans, Trump, Congress, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, et al. Press and lawmakers have called her jokes offensive, disgraceful and demanded she apologize. But many people have interrogated the idea that a comedian, whether it be Wolf, Griffin, or anyone else, be held to a higher standard than the president.

Trump has said despicable remarks about women, Mexicans, immigrants, Muslims, African nations, Obama, Clinton... the list goes on, and rarely has he apologized. In their jokes, both Wolf and Griffin have emphasized that nothing about Trump, his administration or tenure is normal and nor should it be treated as such.

Joy Behar asked Griffin if she's worried Trump supporters will attack her again now that she takes back her apology. "They are, they're starting today," she replied. "The First Amendment is the First Amendment for a reason. It’s the first one! And also, I mean the thing is this guy just is different."

.@kathygriffin says she regrets apologizing for the controversial Trump photoshoot, says she "wanted to make a statement of what a misogynist he is": "The First Amendment is the First Amendment for a reason — it's the first one!" https://t.co/f8u2wbJuik pic.twitter.com/hiTphteypv

— The View (@TheView) April 30, 2018

Griffin said that not only did she receive death threats, but so did her mother, who live in a retirement village, and her sister, who was in a hospital for cancer treatment. Griffin went on to say that after her infamous photoshoot, the Department of Justice opened a two-month investigation "for conspiracy to assassinate the president of the United States." She said in conclusion, "f**k him."

South Korea’s president wants a Nobel Peace Prize for Trump

Getty/Chung Sung-Jun

South Korean President Moon Jae-in is calling for his American counterpart, President Donald Trump, to win a Nobel Peace Prize for putting pressure on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Should that actually happen? Perhaps — if Trump can deliver results after his upcoming meeting with Kim Jong-un. In other words, if Trump actually does something helpful to spur the peace process.

"President Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize. The only thing we need is peace," Moon told his aides during a meeting on Monday, according to The Washington Post. The compliment may not have been unsolicited, at least in the direct sense. After North Korea made evident its desire to talk to South Korea in January, Trump claimed that it was because of his own tough policy toward the wayward dictatorship. A few days later, Moon confirmed that Trump deserved credit for the then-impending talks, saying during a news conference in Seoul that "I give President Trump huge credit for bringing about the inter-Korean talks, and I’d like to thank him for that."

It later turned out that Trump had asked Moon to give him public credit for making the talks possible, according to a report at the time by the Post.

While it is unclear whether Trump made a similar request of Moon this time around, it stands to reason that his earlier request for public acknowledgment of his efforts could have influenced the South Korean president's decision to call for a Nobel Peace Prize for the American president.

Moon Jae-in wasn't alone in calling for Nobel Peace Prize recognition for the president. Over the weekend, Trump did little to quell the enthusiasm of a crowd that chanted for him to be awarded the prize as a result of the talks in Korea. As the Post reported:

At a rally in Michigan on Saturday, Trump demurred when he started talking about North Korea and members of the audience began chanting “Nobel! Nobel!”

“That’s very nice, thank you,” Trump said. “I just want to get the job done.”

But he also again took the credit for bringing North Korea to the table with his “maximum pressure” policy.

One of the “fake news” outlets had asked what Trump had to do with the North Korean talks, the president told the crowd. “I’ll tell you what. Like, how about, everything,” he said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., also mused on Sunday that Trump should possibly win the Nobel Peace Prize. This is a notable turn for Graham, who has mostly distinguished himself as one of the few Senate Republicans willing to be an outspoken critic of the president.

"I think Trump has convinced him [Kim Jong-un] that the only way his regime will survive is to for them to give up their nukes and in return to end the Korean War so North Korea can have a more normal economy," Graham told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo.

Graham then claimed that "President Trump, if he can lead us to ending the Korean War after 70 years and getting North Korea to give up their nuclear program in a verifiable way, deserves the Nobel Peace Prize and then some."

Graham also added, "I want to be there. It may be the first time the Nobel Peace Prize was given and there was mass casualties because I think a lot of liberals would kill themselves if they did that. But the bottom line is, by any objective measure what President Trump has done is historic."

Much as it may pain liberals to admit it, Trump will indeed have achieved something historic if he is able to bring about a lasting and meaningful peace between North and South Korea. It is not unreasonable to say that he would deserve the Nobel Peace Prize for an achievement that Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama were all unable to pull off.

At the same time, the task is nowhere near complete. And as Salon learned when it spoke with North Korea policy experts from both parties earlier this month, Trump will have his work cut out for him when he meets with Kim Jong-un at some point in the next few weeks.

"Previous administrations have been through this cycle of escalation and negotiations in the past, and it hasn't produced any significant change in the trajectory of North Korea's weapons of mass destruction or its missile programs," Jamie Fly, a North Korea expert who served as foreign policy adviser to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio during the 2016 presidential campaign, told Salon earlier this month.

Fly added that if the president "comes out of the summit without any significant offers by the North Koreans, I think he's going to face a tough choice pretty quickly of whether he continues the pressure campaign through additional sanctions and economic pressure. But given his rhetoric in the past, he may have to face expedited consideration of various military options."

Laura Rosenberger, who worked as a foreign policy adviser for Hillary for America, had similar thoughts at the time.

"What Trump has done here is put that [meeting] at the front, without a clear sense of what the agenda is, having given up the leverage we would have by the fact of this meeting. That means the stakes here are extraordinarily high. The consequences of failure are quite significant, in the sense that ... once you have a meeting at the presidential level, you don't have much runway after that," Rosenberger told Salon.

She added: "One of the things that worries me is that if there is failure to reach agreement on at least the process moving forward — I can't imagine under any circumstance that they reach meaningful agreement on anything other than broad platitudes at the table — you need agreement on a process to work out these issues after the meeting. If that doesn't come about, given what we have already seen from this administration I think we risk falling off the cliff to a military option."

None of these comments, which came weeks before the meeting between Kim and Moon, imply that what has happened between the North Korean and South Korean leaders wasn't historic. That said, because Trump has talked tough about North Korea in the past and then agreed to meet with Kim Jong-un -- a major diplomatic concession, and something no previous president has even seriously considered -- there is an immense burden on the president to make sure the North Korean regime doesn't wind up taking him for a ride.

NRA takes heat for banning guns at their annual meeting

Getty/Bill Ingalls

The NRA is banning firearms from a speech to be delivered by Vice President Mike Pence at their annual meeting, sparking outcries of hypocrisy by the Parkland high school students who survived a mass shooting in February.

At the source of the outrage is the fact that the Secret Service does not allow firearms to be present for events in which their protectees are going to be present and the center of attention, according to The Washington Post. As a result, and in order to comply with the federal laws regarding Secret Service authority on these issues, the NRA is going to ban firearms from the arena where Pence is speaking while he is present.

As the NRA explained, "firearms and firearm accessories, knives or weapons of any kind will be prohibited in the forum prior to and during his attendance." Agency spokesman Shawn L. Holtzclaw also told the Post that "individuals determined to be carrying firearms will not be allowed past a predetermined outer perimeter checkpoint, regardless of whether they possess a ticket to the event."

While the NRA doesn't have any control over needing to disarm its own members for Pence's speech, they could disinvite the vice president on the grounds that requiring their members to not carry firearms flies in the face of their notion that "a good guy with a gun" can always be trusted. The Post itself noted how many NRA members are reacting to this by posting choice quotes from the Texas CHL Forum, a message board for gun owners:

"Obviously even republicans and so called leaders don’t trust the ‘good guys.’ I realize it’s the VP, but still makes our whole argument look foolish," a commenter who self-identified as an NRA member said Thursday.

"You may disagree … but in my opinion the very people that claim to protect the 2A should never host an event that requires disarming the good guys. Sad. No excuses for this … it makes us look stupid," the commenter said.

Another self-identified NRA member agreed, saying Friday: "Me personally, I won’t be listening to him speak. I won’t be going anywhere that I cant carry my firearm. It’s essentially the nations largest get together for gun owners and they won’t let law abiding legal gun owners carry guns because someone who’s supposedly pro 2A thinks its too ‘dangerous’? thats liberal logic right there."

The BBC also found some choice comments from the message board that supported the NRA's decision to keep Pence as a speaker:

"Come on guys- the President and Vice-President aren't "regular guys"... and should not be expected to do what we do," said one user.

"Expecting them to speak at a large gathering of armed, UNVETTED people with no checks on their background or mental state is literally the dumbest thing I have read on this forum in a while."

Many of the survivors from the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida are also drawing attention to the hypocrisy of the NRA's decision to keep Pence as a speaker despite the Secret Service's demands.

"The NRA has evolved into such a hilarious parody of itself," Parkland survivor Cameron Kasky wrote on Twitter, according to CBS News.

Fred Guttenberg, the father of a 14-year-old named Jaime Guttenberg who died in the February shooting, wrote that "on so many levels, this is enlightening. According to the NRA, we should want everyone to have weapons when we are in public. But when they put on a convention, the weapons are a concern? I thought giving everyone a gun was to enhance safety. Am I missing something?"

Former Parkland student Matt Deitch had a similar observation.

"Wait wait wait wait wait wait. You're telling me to make the VP safe there aren't any weapons around but when it comes to children they want guns everywhere? Can someone explain this to me? Because it sounds like the NRA wants to protect people who help them sell guns, not kids," Deitch wrote.

Moms Demand Action also drew attention to the irony, tweeting that "the NRA won't allow guns at Mike Pence's convention speech and Parkland students are highlighting the irony."

Of course, part of the problem is that the pro-gun arguments have never really been about "good guys with a gun" or about protecting the Second Amendment. They have, instead, been rooted in an extreme right-wing anti-government ideology that was popularized by the NRA after it was taken over by ideological elements in the 1970s. Its underlying assumption is that the government wishes to become a tyranny and hopes to achieve that goal by disarming its own citizenry.

The internet is designed for corporations, not people

AP

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Urban spaces are often designed to be subtly hostile to certain uses. Think about, for example, the seat partitions on bus terminal benches that make it harder for the homeless to sleep there or the decorative leaves on railings in front of office buildings and on university campuses that serve to make skateboarding dangerous.

Scholars call this “hostile urban architecture.”

When a few weeks ago, news broke that Facebook shared millions of users’ private information with Cambridge Analytica, which then used it for political purposes, I saw the parallels.

As a scholar of the social and political implications of technology, I would argue the internet is designed to be hostile to the people who use it. I call it a “hostile information architecture.”

The depth of the privacy problem

Let’s start with Facebook and privacy. Sites like Facebook supposedly protect user privacy with a practice called “notice and consent.” This practice is the business model of the internet. Sites fund their “free” services by collecting information about users and selling that information to others.

Of course, these sites present privacy policies to users to notify them how their information will be used. They ask users to “click here to accept” them. The problem is that these policies are nearly impossible to understand. As a result, no one knows what they have consented to.

But that’s not all. The problem runs deeper than that. Legal scholar Katherine Strandburg has pointed out that the entire metaphor of a market where consumers trade privacy for services is deeply flawed. It is advertisers, not users, who are Facebook’s real customers. Users have no idea what they are “paying” and have no possible way of knowing the value of their information. Users are also unable to protect themselves, as opting out of sites like Facebook and Google isn’t viable for most.

As I have argued in an academic journal, the main thing notice and consent does is subtly communicate to users the idea that their privacy is a commodity that they trade for services. It certainly does not protect their privacy. It also hurts innocent people.

It’s not just that most of those whose data made it to Cambridge Analytica did not consent to that transfer, but it’s also the case that Facebook has vast troves of data even on those who refuse to use its services.

Not unrelated, news broke recently that thousands of Google Play — probably illegally — track children. We can expect stories like this to surface again and again. The truth is there is too much money in personal information.

Facebook’s hostile information architecture

Facebook’s privacy problem is both a symptom of its hostile information architecture and an excellent example of it.

Several years ago, two of my colleagues, Celine Latulipe and Heather Lipford and I published an article in which we argued that many of Facebook’s privacy issues were problems of design.

Our argument was that these design elements violated ordinary people’s expectations of how information about them would travel. For example, Facebook allowed apps to collect information on users’ friends (this is why the Cambridge Analytica problem impacted so many people). But no one who signed up for, say, tennis lessons would think that the tennis club should have access to personal information about their friends.

The details have changed since then, but they aren’t better. Facebook still makes it very hard for you to control how much data it gets about you. Everything about the Facebook experience is very carefully curated. Users who don’t like it have little choice, as the site has a virtual monopoly on social networking.

The internet’s hostile architecture

Lawrence Lessig, one of the leading legal scholars of the internet, wrote a pioneering book that discussed the similarities between architecture in physical space and things like interfaces online. Both can regulate what you do in a place, as anyone who has tried to access content behind a “paywall” immediately understands.

In the present context, the idea that the internet is at least somewhat of a public space where one can meet friends, listen to music, go shopping, and get news is a complete myth.

Unless you make money by trafficking in user data, internet architecture is hostile from top to bottom. That the business model of companies like Facebook is based on targeted advertising is only part of the story. Here are some other examples of how the internet is designed by and for companies, not the public.

Consider first that the internet in the U.S. isn’t actually, in any legal sense, a public space. The hardware is all owned by telecom companies, and they have successfully lobbied 20 state legislatures to ban efforts by cities to build out public broadband.

The Federal Trade Commission has recently declared its intention to undo Obama-era net neutrality rules. The rollback, which treats the internet as a vehicle for delivering paid content, would allow ISPs like the telecom companies to deliver their own content, or paid content, faster than (or instead of) everyone else’s. So advertising could come faster, and your blog about free speech could take a very long time to load.

Copyright law gives sites like YouTube very strong legal incentives to unilaterally and automatically, without user consent, take down material that someone says is infringing, and very few incentives to restore it, even if it is legitimate. These takedown provisions include content that would be protected free speech in other contexts; both President Barack Obama and Senator John McCain campaigns had material removed from their YouTube channels in the weeks prior to the 2008 elections.

Federal requirements that content-filtering software is installed in public libraries that receive federal funding regulate the only internet the poor can access. These privately produced programs are designed to block access to pornography, but they tend to sweep up other material, particularly if it is about LGBTQ+ issues. Worse, the companies that make these programs are under no obligation to disclose how or what their software blocks.

In short, the internet has enough seat dividers and decorative leaves to be a hostile architecture. This time, though, it’s a hostile information architecture.

A broader conversation

So let’s do have a conversation about Facebook. But let’s make that part of a bigger conversation about information architecture, and how much of it should be ceded to corporate interests.

As the celebrated urban theorist and activist Jane Jacobs famously wrote, the best public spaces involve lots of side streets and unplanned interactions. Our current information architecture, like our heavily surveilled urban architecture, is going in the opposite direction.

Gordon Hull, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Director of Center for Professional and Applied Ethics, University of North Carolina – Charlotte

Can AI really solve Facebook’s problems?

AP/Andrew Harnik

This article was originally published by Scientific American.

Congress interrogated Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg for two days this week over his company’s privacy policies — and its apparent inability to prevent the misuse of its social media platform by some promoting hatred, terrorism or political propaganda. Throughout Zuckerberg’s apologies for not doing more to protect users’ privacy and curb the spread of false and misleading information on the site, he repeatedly reassured lawmakers that artificial intelligence would soon fix many of Facebook’s problems. Whether or not he has a strong case depends on how his company specifically plans to use AI — and how quickly the technology matures over the next few years.

Zuckerberg touted several AI successes before the Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees and the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Facebook AI algorithms already find and delete 99 percent of terrorist propaganda and recruitment efforts posted by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and al Qaeda-related Facebook accounts, Zuckerberg testified during Tuesday’s Senate hearing. But the Counter Extremism Project(CEP), a nonprofit nongovernmental organization that monitors and reports on the terrorist-group activities, disputed Facebook’s claim the same day. The CEP issued a statement saying it still finds “examples of extremist content and hate speech on Facebook on a regular basis.”

Facebook’s founder frequently reminded Congress that he launched the network from his dorm room in 2004, and he acknowledged several times that his approach to monitoring content has long relied on members reporting misuse. That reactive stance has contributed over the years to the company’s failure to quickly find and remove discriminatory advertisements, hateful content directed at specific groups, and terrorist messages, he said. Nor was Facebook equipped to handle the deluge of misleading news articles posted by Russian groups seeking to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. AI is already helping Facebook address some of those problems, according to Zuckerberg, who said that the company used the technology to find and delete “tens of thousands” of accounts seeking to influence voters prior to political elections in France, Germany and elsewhere within the past year.

Zuckerberg acknowledged that software that can automatically identify verbal assaults is more difficult to write, and still five to 10 years away. The main challenges are defining exactly what qualifies as hate speech, and training AI algorithms to identify it across a number of languages. In response to criticism that Facebook provided a forum for inciting violence against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar (also called Burma) and was slow to remove such content, Zuckerberg said his company was ill-prepared to prevent its platform from being misused. He told Senators that, in addition to developing AI software to automatically identify hate speech in the future, the company is hiring dozens more Burmese-speaking staff to monitor malicious activity directed at the Rohingya. He added that, until the software is ready, there’s a “higher error rate flagging such content than I’m comfortable with.”

Facebook has about 15,000 people working on security and content review and plans hire another 5,000 by the end of the year. “This is an arms race,” Zuckerberg said, noting that 2018 is an important year for elections in the U.S. and elsewhere — and that Facebook’s adversaries will continue to get better at using the platform to spread misinformation.

“I believe that what [Zuckerberg] says is possible, but since the methods and results have not been published I cannot say for sure whether Facebook can achieve the accuracy required,” says Stuart Russell, a computer science and engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “A combination of AI and crowdsourced flagging, with proper inference methods to estimate flagger reliability, should be able to clean up enough garbage that posting garbage becomes a futile activity.”

AI’s ability to determine whether a Facebook post includes or links to false information requires the software to understand semantics and what different words mean in context, says Dean Pomerlau, an adjunct research scientist at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute. “You need common sense to understand what people mean, and that is beyond AI’s current capabilities,” Pomerlau says. A poster’s ability to make subtle changes in text, images or video flagged as “objectionable” further complicates AI’s capacity to help Facebook. Text alterations, photo cropping and video editing make it difficult for software to do simplistic pattern matching as the content spreads and changes, Pomerlau says. A near-term approach that could work, he adds, would be for Facebook to equip the thousands of people it is hiring to monitor content with artificially intelligent tools that help them find and analyze fake news and other unwanted content.

Facebook’s AI development is indeed well underway. The company launched the Facebook AI Research (FAIR) lab in 2013 under the leadership of AI luminary Yann LeCun. LeCun, who switched roles earlier this year to became Facebook’s chief AI scientist, focused FAIR’s research on developing predictive abilities that would enable the social media site to make educated guesses about what users want in order to better engage with them. That includes more customized news feeds and targeted advertisements, as well as improvements in chatbots—artificially intelligent computer programs designed to provide information, enable online purchases and deliver customer service. The same algorithms designed to improve chatbots’ ability to recognize different languages and comprehend dialogue will be particularly relevant to Facebook’s ability to flag objectionable content worldwide.

A recurring concern in both the Senate and House hearings was whether Facebook can avoid political bias when defining objectionable content. Zuckerberg said Tuesday that the company has a team focused on how to ethically employ AI. Facebook will ultimately have to rely on AI to flag content that might be objectionable or require review, says Florian Schaub, an assistant professor of information at the University of Michigan. “They can’t hire enough humans to monitor every post that goes up on Facebook,” he says. “The big challenge, and the thing that we as a society should be concerned about, is that Facebook becomes the watcher over our morals. In that case, it’s a group of people at Facebook rather than society that decides what’s objectionable.”

Facebook has been in hot water with regulators over revelations that groups linked to Russian military intelligence services utilized the platform for years, leading up to the 2016 election. Facebook discovered 470 accounts and pages contributing to a disinformation campaign run by Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA). Over a two-year period the IRA spent about $100,000 on more than 3,000 Facebook ads. The final straw that landed Zuckerberg in front of Senate and House committees, however, was the recent revelation that Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan turned over data on roughly 87 million Facebook users and their friends without their permission to Cambridge Analytica, a political data firm hired by Pres. Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign.

“It seems Facebook is going through a phase of reckoning and now starting to realize how socially impactful their platform is,” Schaub says. “For a long time they felt they were serving a great social function in getting people connected, and now they’re realizing there’s actually a lot of responsibility that comes with that. That seems to be a little bit of a shift, but at the same time this is not the first time we’re hearing Zuckerberg apologize for indiscretions on Facebook.”

The real question is more about Facebook’s will to change than its ability to develop the AI and other technology needed to better protect member privacy and prevent the spread of violent or misleading content, Pomerlau says. “The basic business model is built on sensational content,” he adds. “So it’s not clear that getting rid of all inflammatory stuff is in Facebook’s best interest.”