Archive for censorship

Machine-based Censorship

Posted in Biographical with tags , , , , , , , on November 25, 2024 by telescoper

A very noticeable manifestation of the rise of so-called Artificial Intelligence has been the use of AI bots in censoring posts. The most recent example of this I’ve seen was on Saturday when I wrote a post about the general election candidates for my constituency, Kildare North. As usual when I write an article here it gets posted automatically on a variety of other platforms, including LinkedIn. However, Saturday’s post was blocked:

The powers that be did not tell me which of the “Professional Community Policies” that post might have violated so I looked through them all and couldn’t find any plausible reason for blocking that post. I can only assume some defect in the algorithm deployed by LinkedIn had been triggered wrongly. Unfortunately, all this is run by machine so there is no possibility of appeal.

I’ve noticed quite a few bizarre things like this over the past few weeks. The worst offender when it comes to random censorship is Meta (which runs Facebook, Instagram and Threads). I have been posting content automatically on Meta platforms, Facebook and Threads. Recently, however, Meta’s AI algorithm has gone berserk. A couple of weeks ago it blocked this post (about the Edgeworth family) on the grounds that it violated rules concerning “nudity or sexual activity”. Heaven knows how it decided that; you can read the post yourself. I defy you to find any nudity or sexual activity, or reference thereto, or link to any post that mentions such things, anywhere in it!

When I appealed the decision I got this.

Truly bizarre.

More recently, it blocked this post (one of my regular weekly updates for OJAp) on the grounds that it was identified as spam. I can see the need for an automatic screening given the huge volume of posts, but the problem is that my facebook feed is full of actual spam that gets through these filters while innocent posts get blocked. In other words the algorithm is crap. If you ask for a review of the decision, all Meta does is run the algorithm again – with the same results, which is a waste of time.

The algorithm that screens comments on this blog for spam has also been playing up, with some comments from regular contributors being tagged as spam.

None of these is in itself of any consequence to me personally, not least because I’m not trying to run a business using these platforms. However, such AI engines are being deployed nowadays in a huge range of contexts primarily in order to save money. No doubt such processes do save money, but if they are based on poorly constructed algorithms – which they seem to be – the consequences could be dire. Imagine the horror of a health service based on poorly trained AI…

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Beating the Ban

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth with tags , , , , on September 18, 2024 by telescoper

Access to this blog is still blocked on Maynooth University campus. I was told that this was because of phishing activity, but IT Services are not replying to my requests for information about this alleged misconduct. If it were true I would have been subject to disciplinary action, and I haven’t because it is not true. I can only assume that it is a half-witted attempt at censorship.

I did originally think that the entire WordPress.com domain was blocked but I found that I could access the excellent blog by mathematician Terry Tao so it does appear I have been singled out for banning.

You can still read this blog off campus, but if you want to read it on Maynooth University campus, my posts are available in full federated form on Mastodon by following In the Dark on mastodon.social here.

That means you can read whole posts there rather than having to follow a link as on other social media (Threads, BlueSky, LinkedIn and Facebook).

Alternatively, you can receive posts via email here:

In the past I have used this blog, along with my other social media, to promote activities, courses, and job opportunities at Maynooth University. I will not be doing that until the ban is lifted. I have of course also posted items critical of the University management and will continue doing that.

UPDATE: By sheer coincidence (?), just a couple of hours after posting this item (from home), IT services contacted me and told me that this page has now been “reclassified as a blog” and is now accessible from campus (which is where I am writing this update). What it was classified as before is anyone’s guess, but access from campus has now been restored.

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Scopus should be banned

Posted in Maynooth, Open Access with tags , , , on September 5, 2024 by telescoper

I think it’s time to provide an update on the (lack of) progress getting The Open Journal of Astrophysics properly indexed in Scopus (which markets itself as a purveyor of “metrics you can trust”).

You might recall back in June that I reported that OJAp had been included in the index, but unfortunately the Scopus team messed up very badly by omitting about one-third of our papers and most of our citations. Here’s what they did:

In the column marked Documents 2020-23  you will see the number 67. In fact we published 99 articles between 2020 and 2023, not 67. This is easily established here. The number 67 relates to the period 2022-23 only. Accidentally or deliberately, Scopus has omitted a third of our papers from its database. But the error doesn’t end there. Papers published in OJAp between 2020 and 2023 have actually been cited 959 times, not 137. If you restrict the count to papers published in 2022-23 there are 526 citations. It’s no wonder that OJAp has such a low CiteScore, and consequently appears so far down the rankings, when the citation information is so woefully inaccurate. “Metrics you can trust?” My arse!

If you want accurate bibliometric information about the papers published in the two years that Scopus has chosen to ignore you can look here.

I sent this information to Scopus on 15th June, soon after noticing the error, but I then got shunted around. I eventually got a reply on 23rd August, acknowledging the mistake and including this:

I want to assure you that your request has been promptly forwarded to our technical team for the addition of the paper to our database. While we strive to resolve this as swiftly as possible, please be aware that this correction process may take up to four weeks to be completed. 

I think they’re using some definition of “promptly” with which I am unfamiliar. I’m not optimistic that they will actually correct it in four weeks, either, since it took 5 months to get the initial 67 papers indexed.

This all merely demonstrates the folly that so many institutions place so much trust in Scopus. Based on my interactions with them, I wouldn’t trust them with anything at all. Unfortunately the powers that be have decided that Scopus listing is such a reliable indicator of quality that any article not published in a Scopus journal is worthless. Knowing that it has a monopoly, Scopus has no incentive to put any effort into its own quality assurance. It can peddle any error-ridden tripe to its subscribers, most of them paying for the product with taxpayers’ money.

(I might add that if OJAp were a commercial journal, then the willful publication of demonstrably false information about it would be actionable as it is potentially damaging to business. )

Presumably at the instigation of senior management, IT services at Maynooth University are still banning access to this blog from campus. It would make far more sense for them to ban Scopus.

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