Politics and Governance

• Bittersweet Mysteries of Machine Learning (A Provocation)- Frank Pasquale, London School of Economics and Political Science Media Policy Project Blog (@FrankPasquale)
  Pasquale describes the complex issues surrounding algorithmic accountability and machine learning. In considering of the prevalence of computational reasoning in today's society, it is important that we determine how and which algorithmic systems should be subjected to human decision-making and oversight.
• World’s Biggest Democracy Stands Up for Net Neutrality- World Wide Web Foundation (@webfoundation)
  India has just passed clear net neutrality rules, “Prohibition of Discriminatory Tariffs for Data Services Regulations,” that will outlaw zero rating of specific services. Advocating for the free and open Internet, the regulations will encourage true digital equality.
• Anonymous Targets African Governments Against Corruption- Carolina, HackRead (@hackread)
  Hackers from the online hacktivist Anonymous have recently begun targeting African governments in protest of increased corruption. The hackers demand an end to the corruption, and will continue to leak confidential and sensitive information until the governments cooperate.

PeaceBuilding and Violence

• Are You Really Listening? How Feedback Mechanisms Work (Or Not) In Insecure Environments- Lotte Ruppert & Elias Sagmeister, The Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action (ALNAP) (@ALNAP)
  This article describes the results of a 3 year study by the SAVE research project, which sought to better understand and improve aid delivery to insecure environments. The research provides valuable insights into formal and informal feedback mechanisms used by aid agencies and the challenges they face in trying to address the issues reported by communities receiving aid.

Climate Change and Resilience

• An Open Guide to Zika Data- Erin Kissane & Jeremy Singer-Vine, Source (@kissane) (@jsvine) (@source)
  Jeremy Singer-Vine of Buzzfeed has recently started an open-sourced project for Zika-related data in order to accumulate data about the epidemic and related challenges. The project hopes to attract a diverse audience that may be able to work collaboratively on translating the data into open structured data.

Data Ethics and Literacy

• CognitiveLogic raises $3M to Help Enterprises Pool Big Data While Keeping Privacy Intact- Ingrid Lunden, Tech Crunch (@ingridlunden)
  Nick Halstead, founder of DataSift, has started a new company called CognitiveLogic, with the purpose of directly providing Big Data analytics and insights to companies by combining datasets from different enterprises while still maintaining privacy rights. The company will begin by targeting the government, health, and finance sectors.
• Here’s How Twitter’s New Algorithmic Timeline is Going to Work- Casey Newtown, The Verge (@CaseyNewton)
  New information has surfaced about the new Twitter algorithms and how they will reorder timelines, showing the most popular tweets first and related posts. Concerns have been voiced about how the new feed takes tweets out of context; however, users will have the option to opt-out of the new timeline.