Computer Science | Grinnell College

For our first CS Table discussion of the semester, we’ll be looking at some of the findings and recommendations from ProPublica’s investigation of political advertising on Facebook. ProPublica began by offering a series of proposals for Facebook to reduce the potential for abuse of its advertising system in April, followed by an analysis of Facebook’s first attempt at revising their ad-tracking system. ProPublica then launched their own initiative to collect political ads shown to users who were willing to install a browser plugin. We’ll discuss the challenge Facebook faces with its advertising system, evaluate their work so far, and discuss the broader issues of ad targeting and content moderation online.

Here are the readings for this week:

• Four Ways to Fix Facebook. Julia Angwin. April 5, 2018. ProPublica.
• What Facebook’s New Political Ad System Misses. Jeremy B. Merrill, Ariana Tobin, and Madeleine Varner. May 24, 2018. ProPublica.
• If you are interested in seeing more political ads ProPublica has tracked on Facebook, you can see this more recent article: Why Am I Seeing This? Interesting Facebook Ads From Our Political Ad Collector. Jeremy B. Merrill. September 5, 2018. ProPublica.

Computer science table (CS Table) is a weekly meeting of Grinnell College community members (students, faculty, staff, etc.) interested in discussing topics related to computing and computer science. CS Table meets Tuesdays from 12:00–12:45pm in JRC 224C (inside the Marketplace). Contact the CS faculty for the weekly reading. Students on meal plans, faculty, and staff are expected to cover the cost of their meals. Visitors to the College and students not on meal plans can charge their meals to the department (sign in at the Marketplace front desk).

We will consider the implications of two models that websites can use to generate revenue from their users: advertising and cryptocurrency mining. Advertising has been a popular model for website operators to generate revenue even though visitors do not pay to access their content, but advertising has some significant problems with security and privacy. We’ll explore these problems, look at two new approaches, and think generally about how web companies should generate the revenue they need to pay their bills while respecting and protecting their users.

While there are many excellent articles on the wide variety of issues related to this topic, the first three readings listed should serve as a good foundation for our discussion. The additional optional readings raise some important issues that we hope to touch on in the discussion, so take a look at one or two that interest you.

Readings:

• Kate Cox. Five Things We’ve Learned About How Companies Track You Online and Off. Consumerist. Jan 25, 2017.
• Alan Toner. The False Teeth of Chrome's Ad Filter. The Electronic Frontier Foundation. Feb 15, 2018.
• Jon Brodkin. Salon to ad blockers: Can we use your browser to mine cryptocurrency?. Ars Technica. Feb 13, 2018.

Additional readings:

• Peter Eckersley. How Online Tracking Companies Know Most of What You Do Online (and What Social Networks Are Doing to Help Them). The Electronic Frontier Foundation. Sep 21, 2009.
• Jennifer Langston. For $1000, anyone can purchase online ads to track your location and app use. University of Washington News. Oct 18, 2017.
• Mike Orcutt. Hijacking Computers to Mine Cryptocurrency Is All the Rage. MIT Technology Review. Oct 5, 2017.
• Panopticlick 3.0: Is your browser safe against tracking?. The Electronic Frontier Foundation.
• Coinhive: A Crypto Miner for your Website.

Computer science table (CS Table) is a weekly meeting of Grinnell College community members (students, faculty, staff, etc.) interested in discussing topics related to computing and computer science. CS Table meets Tuesdays from 12:00–12:45pm in JRC 224A (inside the Marketplace). Contact the CS faculty for the weekly reading. Students on meal plans, faculty, and staff are expected to cover the cost of their meals. Visitors to the College and students not on meal plans can charge their meals to the department (sign in at the Marketplace front desk).