Author: Arvind Narayanan
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An Introduction to My Project: Algorithmic Amplification and Society
This article was originally published on the Knight Institute website at Columbia University. The distribution of online speech today is almost wholly algorithm-mediated. To talk about speech, then, we have to talk about algorithms. In computer science, the algorithms driving social media are called recommendation systems, and they are the secret sauce behind Facebook and…
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How the National AI Research Resource can steward the datasets it hosts
Last week I participated on a panel about the National AI Research Resource (NAIRR), a proposed computing and data resource for academic AI researchers. The NAIRR’s goal is to subsidize the spiraling costs of many types of AI research that have put them out of reach of most academic groups. My comments on the panel…
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Faculty search in information technology policy
I’m happy to announce that Princeton University is recruiting a faculty member in information technology policy. The position is open rank — assistant, associate, or full professor — and we welcome applicants from any relevant discipline. The successful candidate will likely be jointly appointed in the School of Public and International Affairs and a disciplinary…
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Studying the societal impact of recommender systems using simulation
By Eli Lucherini, Matthew Sun, Amy Winecoff, and Arvind Narayanan. For those interested in the impact of recommender systems on society, we are happy to share several new pieces: a software tool for studying this interface via simulation the accompanying paper a short piece on methodological concerns in simulation research a talk offering a critical…
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Can the exfiltration of personal data by web trackers be stopped?
by Günes Acar, Steven Englehardt, and Arvind Narayanan. In a series of posts on this blog in 2017/18, we revealed how web trackers exfiltrate personal information from web pages, browser password managers, form inputs, and the Facebook Login API. Our findings resulted in many fixes and privacy improvements to browsers, websites, third parties, and privacy…
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Deconstructing Google’s excuses on tracking protection
By Jonathan Mayer and Arvind Narayanan. Blocking cookies is bad for privacy. That’s the new disingenuous argument from Google, trying to justify why Chrome is so far behind Safari and Firefox in offering privacy protections. As researchers who have spent over a decade studying web tracking and online advertising, we want to set the record…
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Why PhD experiences are so variable and what you can do about it
People who do PhDs seem to have either strongly positive or strongly negative experiences — for some, it’s the best time of their lives, while others regret the decision to do a PhD. Few career choices involve such a colossal time commitment, so it’s worth thinking carefully about whether a PhD is right for you,…
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Against privacy defeatism: why browsers can still stop fingerprinting
In this post I’ll discuss how a landmark piece of privacy research was widely misinterpreted, how this misinterpretation deterred the development of privacy technologies rather than spurring it, how a recent paper set the record straight, and what we can learn from all this. The research in question is about browser fingerprinting. Because of differences…
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How to constructively review a research paper
Any piece of research can be evaluated on three axes: Correctness/validity — are the claims justified by evidence? Impact/significance — how will the findings affect the research field (and the world)? Novelty/originality — how big a leap are the ideas, especially the methods, compared to what was already known? There are additional considerations such as…
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When the business model *is* the privacy violation
Sometimes, when we worry about data privacy, we’re worried that data might fall into the wrong hands or be misused for unintended purposes. If I’m considering participating in a medical study, I’d want to know if insurance companies will obtain the data and use it against me. In these scenarios, we should look for ways…