Facebook is realizing it has broad obligations to society. Here’s how it could start meeting them.
Academic rigor, journalistic flair
Science + Tech – Articles, Analysis, Opinion
Displaying 2651 - 2675 of 3604 articles
For years, watchdogs have warned of the potential problems of sharing data with online companies. The Facebook data crisis has made these concerns much more real. What should be done now?
Four scientists talk through the ways they now build outreach into their work as a way to spread their research’s impact – something that wasn’t the norm for past generations of academics.
The current reckoning with data has been a long time coming, a historian of privacy in the US writes.
US privacy laws focus on informing consumers what’s happening with their data; other countries specifically restrict data collection and analysis.
As millions in federal dollars flow to states to protect elections, what should the money help pay for?
When NASA first started planning the Kepler mission, no one knew if the universe held any planets outside our solar system. Thousands of exoplanets later, the search enters a new phase as Kepler retires.
The best way to protect elections is to plan and prepare for an audit of the results after the votes are cast.
Are DNA samples today’s version of the human skeletons that hung in 20th-century natural history museums? They can provide genetic revelations about our species’ history – but at an ethical price.
A couple thousand satellites are orbiting Earth right now. Under the right conditions, your naked eye can spot these human-made objects in the night sky.
It will be hard to adjust. Considering what happened with the onset of car travel and web surfing, society can’t just wing it.
People in Appalachia are skeptical and cautious around technology – and how they think can be useful and instructive for living in a tech-centric world.
Where does responsibility lie if a person acts under the influence of their brain implant? As neurotechnologies advance, a neuroethicist and a legal expert write that now’s the time to hash it out.
Prime numbers are the biggest and oldest data set in mathematics. Why have they captivated mathematicians for millennia?
An email from Aleksandr Kogan sheds light on exactly how much your Facebook data reveals about you, and what data scientists can actually do with that information.
Whether or not you’ve ever used the word flutter, you’ve encountered the phenomenon – in flags, airplanes, bridges and more. Mathematicians are still figuring out exactly why and how this happens.
Cognitive psychologists know the way our minds work means we not only don’t notice errors and misinformation we know are wrong, we also then remember them as true.
A core idea in molecular biology is that one gene codes for one protein. Now biologists have found an example of a gene that yields two forms of a protein – enabling it to evolve new functionality.
The wired Earth of the 21st century is at the mercy of the volatile nature of the sun.
Social media provide shortcuts to things we yearn for, like connection and validation. Media effects scholars explain the psychological benefits we get from Facebook that make it so hard to quit.
Facebook’s users have wildly different expectations about privacy and security. What may look like inadequate oversight in some places may be considered an overreach in others.
In the wake of a self-driving Uber car killing a pedestrian in Arizona, an ethicist examines the state of autonomous vehicle development.
When thinking about regulating them, it’s useful to know Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple and Microsoft have some similarities. But generally they’re not competing with each other – or anyone else.
Pakistan had only eight new diagnoses of polio in 2017. The virus’ days look numbered – but health workers have their work cut out for them to eradicate the devastating disease once and for all.
Users shouldn’t trust Facebook, but that doesn’t mean they should immediately abandon what has become a crucial platform for connectedness.