Cathy O'Neil

Commenting on his own quest to take over Twitter, Elon Musk has suggested he might share with the public the code that determines what content gets promoted on the platform and what gets suppressed. That may sound exciting and it might well increase profit for Twitter, but average users will…

Some of the country’s largest employers, including General Motors, IBM and Meta, have formed a new venture with a laudable goal: ensuring that artificial intelligence doesn’t perpetuate or worsen discrimination in hiring. The mere existence of the Data & Trust Alliance, as it is called, is good…

There’s been a lot of discussion, since the Facebook Files were leaked, about how to repair the social media platform. A lot of this talk centers on how algorithms manipulate the feeds, and how we users are profiled and fed exactly the content that arouses us to fits of hatred, conspiracy…

This week’s Congressional testimony by whistleblower Frances Haugen drove home an important message: Facebook is actively harming millions, perhaps billions, of users around the world with a host of algorithms designed to boost engagement and advertising revenue. This leaves the question: what…

The battle lines in the war on COVID-19 have been getting blurrier, as infections surge and studies offer changing and sometimes conflicting data on exactly how much protection vaccines provide. Amid the fog, we mustn’t lose sight of a crucial truth: Vaccines still work, and they’re still a…

As Facebook weathers yet another scandal, this time fueled by its internal research on the effects of Instagram, I’d like to focus on something slightly different that should be a scandal, too: the quality of that internal research. Facebook has been pushing back against a story in the Wall…

I have a friend who works in the New York City Department of Education’s Covid-19 “situation room” — tracing cases, informing contacts and so on. She’s really good at her job, which is why I was surprised to hear her make a strange statistical assertion: Since the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are 95…

I wouldn’t want to work at a social media company right now. With the spotlight on insurrection planning, conspiracy theories and otherwise harmful content, Facebook, Twitter and the rest will face renewed pressure to clean up their act. Yet no matter what they try, all I can see are obstacles. …

Deciding who gets the Covid-19 vaccine — and who has to wait — will be no easy task. Essentially, authorities around the world are building myriad algorithms to assess who is important, who is most at risk, and how to balance those considerations. I have one piece of advice: Be as transparent as…

Good news has a way of making people do stupid things — particularly amid the coronavirus pandemic. Infection data looking better? Let’s open bars, restaurants, schools, colleges, even the opera! The result: rising cases wherever people let their guard down and gather in ways that facilitate the…