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smart-tvs-are-like-“a-digital-trojan-horse”-in-people’s-homes

Smart TVs are like “a digital Trojan Horse” in people’s homes

ads, FCC, ftc, generative ai, Policy, streaming, Tech, TVs / /

Similarly, the report’s authors describe concerns that the CTV industry’s extensive data collection and tracking could potentially have a political impact. It asserts that political candidates could use such data to run “covert personalized campaigns” leveraging information on things like political orientations and “emotional states”:

With no transparency or oversight, these practices could unleash millions of personalized, manipulative and highly targeted political ads, spread disinformation, and further exacerbate the political polarization that threatens a healthy democratic culture in the US.

“Potential discriminatory impacts”

The CDD’s report claims that Black, Hispanic, and Asian-Americans in the US are being “singled out by marketers as highly lucrative targets,” due to fast adoption of new digital media services and brand loyalty. Black and Hispanic communities are key advertising targets for FAST channels, per the report. Chester told Ars:

There are major potential discriminatory impacts from CTV’s harvesting of data from communities of color.

He pointed to “growing widespread racial and ethnic data” collection for ad targeting and marketing.

“We believe this is sensitive information that should not be applied to the data profiles used for targeting on CTV and across other platforms. … Its use in political advertising on CTV will enable widespread disinformation and voter suppression campaigns targeting these communities,” Chester said.

Regulation

In a letter sent to the FTC, FCC, California attorney general, and CPPA , the CDD asked for an investigation into the US’ CTV industry, “including on antitrust, consumer protection, and privacy grounds.” The CDD emphasized the challenges that streamers—including those who pay for ad-free streaming—face in protecting their data from advertisers.

“Connected television has taken root and grown as an unregulated medium in the United States, along with the other platforms, devices, and applications that are part of the massive internet industry,” the report says.

The group asks for the FTC and FCC to investigate CTV practices and consider building on current legislation, like the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act. They also request that antitrust regulators delve deeply into the business practices of CTV players like Amazon, Comcast, and Disney to help build “competition and diversity in the digital and connected TV marketplace.”

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Medicine Nobel goes to previously unknown way of controlling genes

Biology, evolution, gene regulation, microRNA, Nobel prize, Science / /

Based on the stereotypical hairpin structure, researchers have scanned genomes and found over 38,000 likely precursors; nearly 50,000 mature microRNAs have been discovered by sequencing all the RNA found in cells from a variety of species. While found widely in animals, they’ve also been discovered in plants, raising the possibility that they existed in a single-celled ancestral organism.

While some microRNA genes, including lin-4 and let-7, have dramatic phenotypes when mutated, many have weak or confusing effects. This is likely in part due to the fact that a single microRNA can bind to and regulate a variety of genes and so may have a mix of effects when mutated. In other cases, several different microRNAs may bind to the same messenger RNA, creating a redundancy that makes the loss of a single microRNA difficult to detect.

Nevertheless, there’s plenty of evidence that, collectively, they’re essential for normal development in many organisms and tissues. Knocking out the gene that encodes the Dicer protein, which is needed for forming mature microRNAs, causes early embryonic lethality. Knockouts of the gene in specific cell types cause a variety of defects. For example, B cells never mature if Dicer is lost in that cell lineage, and a knockout in nerve cells causes microcephaly and limiting branching of connections among neurons, leading the animals to die shortly after birth.

This being the Medicine prize, the Nobel Committee also cite a number of human genetic diseases that are caused by mutations in microRNA genes.

Overall, the award highlights just how complex life is at the cellular level. There’s a fair number of genes that have to be made by every cell simply to enable their survival. But as for the rest, they exist embedded in complex regulatory networks that interact to ensure that proteins are made only where and when they’re needed, and often degraded if they somehow get made anyway. And every now and then, fundamental research in an oddball species is still telling us unexpected things about those networks.

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