Showing 1 - 10 of 22
The year of the woeful world leaders
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 28/12/2018
» The dictionaries have decided on their 2018 words of the year. Oxford picked "toxic". Merriam-Webster went for "justice". Collins chose "single-use". However, I'd zero in on "misgovernment". Surely, 2018 saw a number of countries misruled by the worst crop of world leaders in recent memory.
What's scary about Facebook's new troll findings
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 03/08/2018
» Facebook's widely publicised discovery of a possible influence operation through "inauthentic" accounts warrants some scrutiny -- and some reflection about the difference between a genuine political debate on social networks versus its simulated version.
Fighting tax dodgers can kill growth
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 26/07/2018
» It's easy to be outraged about multinational corporations' shifting of profits to tax havens, but much harder to figure out how to stop them from doing it without hurting the economy. Evidence exists that curbing tax avoidance opportunities makes these firms move actual jobs, not just accounting profits, overseas.
Cambridge Analytica's business simply isn't data
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 23/03/2018
» As the Cambridge Analytica scandal unfolds, the Western world is meeting a little-known part of its political industry, the one that has operated in developing nations since at least the 1990s. CA's methods as revealed by Britain's Channel 4 News, whose reporter posed as a potential Sri Lankan client, may be a bit extreme -- but for the most part, the consultancy has been one of many firms that have brought Western-style electioneering to lawless environments in which it has been blatantly abused.
The Cambridge Analytica red herring
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 21/03/2018
» Facebook is being hammered for allowing the data firm Cambridge Analytica to acquire 50 million user profiles in the US, which it may or may not have used to help the Trump campaign. But the outrage misses the target: There's nothing Cambridge Analytica could have done that Facebook itself doesn't offer political clients.
Twitter struggling to engineer healthy conversation
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 05/03/2018
» Facebook's self-regulatory contortions in the wake of fake news and trolling scandals have gone on, with little visible effect, for months. Now Twitter founder and Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey has announced his company is going to try a different tack -- but Mr Dorsey's approach is arguably even more far-fetched than his Facebook peer Mark Zuckerberg's: It's an attempt to view Twitter's social mess as an engineering problem.
Facebook's new mission looks well nigh impossible
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 17/01/2018
» If Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg is sincere in a recent post about gradually taking the media element out of "social media", he's striking a powerful blow for tech self-regulation, as well as preparing to pay a heavy price for the evolution of his vision. But getting the genie back into the bottle may be too difficult even for Mr Zuckerberg, and, in any case, his creation's problems go far beyond his proposed fix.
No, separatism isn't the continent's next major crisis
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 03/11/2017
» Those who are always on the lookout for the next European crisis -- Brexiters not least among them -- have latched on to Catalonia's symbolic "secession" as another sign that Europe isn't working well. The Catalan events, however, merely confirm that today, Western European countries are secession-proof -- too fat to fail. Belgium, the country where ousted Catalan First Minister Carles Puigdemont is hiding out from prosecution (or, to Catalan secessionists, leading a government in exile) is another example.
Vladimir Putin struggles with enthusiasm problem
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 15/09/2017
» According to the Daily Beast's latest scoop, "a Russian operative" used Facebook to organise an anti-Muslim event in Twin Falls, Idaho, that attracted a grand total of four people. Inside Russia, the Kremlin appears to have a similar inability to stoke crowds.
The new Saudi Arabian heir is a dangerous man
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 23/06/2017
» The abrupt change in Saudi Arabia's line of royal succession will probably help maintain the House of Saud's sway over its 31 million people, 70% of whom are under 30. It is, however, a dangerous move in the context of a new Big Game unfolding in the Middle East, which involves the US, Russia and local players.