Thinking Outside the Black-Box: The Case for "Algorithmic Sovereignty" in Social Media

This article is an interdisciplinary critical analysis of personalization systems and the gatekeeping role of current mainstream social media. The first section presents a literature review of data-driven personalization and its challenges in social media. The second section sheds light on increasing concerns regarding algorithms' ability to overtly persuade—and covertly manipulate—users for the sake of engagement, introducing the emergence of the exclusive ownership of behavioral modification through hyper-nudging techniques. The third section empirically analyzes users' expectations and behaviors regarding such data-driven personalization to frame a conceptualization of users' agency. The fourth section introduces the concept of "algorithmic sovereignty." Current projects that aim to grant this algorithmic sovereignty highlight some potential applications. Together this novel theoretical framework and empirical applications suggest that, to preserve trust, social media should open their personalization algorithms to a social negotiation as the first step toward a more sustainable social media landscape. To decentralize the immense power of mainstream social media, guarantee a democratic oversight, and mitigate the unintended undesirable consequences of their algorithmic curation, public institutions and civil society could help in developing and researching public algorithms, fostering a collective awareness so as to eventually ensure a fair and accountable "algorithmic sovereignty.

Thyroid Hormone Profile in Patients Ingesting Soft Gel Capsule or Liquid Levothyroxine Formulations with Breakfast

Background. Recently, it has been shown that liquid L-T4 formulation can be ingested with breakfast. This study looked to extend these findings by investigating whether a soft gel capsule formulation of L-T4 could also be ingested at breakfast time. Methods. 60 patients (18–65 yrs), previously submitted to thyroidectomy for proven benign goitre in stable euthyroidism receiving liquid L-T4 therapy ingested with breakfast, were enrolled. TSH, fT4, and fT3 levels were assessed in all the patients who were switched from liquid L-T4 to a soft gel capsule formulation at the same dosage of L-T4. After 6 months, TSH, fT4, and fT3 levels were determined again. Results. There were no differences in TSH levels, but fT3 and fT4 levels during treatment with the soft gel capsule were significantly lower than those at enrolment with the liquid L-T4 formulation (TSH median (min–max): 1.9 (0.5–4.0) versus 2.2 (0.5–4.5) mIU/L, fT3: 2.5 (2.4–3.1) versus 2.7 (2.4–3.3) pg/mL, p<0.05, and fT4: 9.9 (8.0–13) versus 10.6 (8.6–13.8) pg/mL, p<0.0001). Conclusion. Both liquid and soft gel formulations of L-T4 can be taken with breakfast. However, liquid L-T4 would be the preferred formulation for patients in whom even small changes in fT4 and fT3 levels are to be avoided

Visibilidade no Facebook: Modelos, Medições e Implicações

National audienceFacebook news feed personalization algorithm has a significant impact , on a daily basis, on the lifestyle, mood and opinion of millions of Internet users. Nonetheless, such algorithms lack transparency challenging researchers to improve their fairness and accountability. In this paper, we propose a model to capture the dynamics of contents over a timeline (also known as news feed). The input to our model is a fundamental quantity associated to timelines, which we show that can be easily parameterized using real world data: the arrival rate of posts of a given publisher followed by the user. Using real world Facebook traces from the latest elections in Italy, we validate the accuracy of the proposed model and use the model for conterfactual what-if analysis.O Facebook tem um impacto significativo na vida de milhões de usuários da Internet, todos os dias. Entretanto, os mecanismos usados pelo Fa-cebook para filtrar mensagens apresentadas aos usuários não são de domínio público, motivando uma engenharia reversa dos mesmos. Neste trabalho, pro-pomos modelos e mediçmediç˜medições para melhor entender o comportamento de timeli-nes. Em particular, reportamos resultados sobre mediçmediç˜medições de visibilidade de fontes das eleiçeleiç˜eleições italianas de 2018, que motivam um modelo analítico para caracterizar a visibilidade de posts. Dentre as implicaçimplicaç˜implicações práticas de nossos estudos, indicamos seu potencial para inferir diferentes métricas de visibilidade a partir de medidas colhidas do sistema

Impact on monthly migraine days of discontinuing anti-CGRP antibodies after one year of treatment - a real-life cohort study.

OBJECTIVE This study aims to analyse the effect of the discontinuation of anti-calcitonin gene-related peptide antibodies on monthly migraine days after 12 treatment months. BACKGROUND Anti-calcitonin gene-related peptide antibodies have been a game changer in migraine prophylaxis. However, high treatment costs warrant reducing treatment duration to the essential minimum. METHODS We collected data of patients with migraine who had received anti-calcitonin gene-related peptide antibodies and had received treatment for 12 months. RESULTS We included 52 patients. The average number of monthly migraine days was 16 ± 7 days at baseline, 6 ± 6 in the third, and 5 ± 4 in the 12th treatment month. After treatment interruption, the number of monthly migraine days was 6 ± 4 days in the first month, 9 ± 4 days in the second, and 11 ± 5 days in the third month. Most patients (88.9%) restarted treatment. CONCLUSION Only little of the therapeutic effect of anti-calcitonin gene-related peptide antibodies outlasts their pharmacological effect. After treatment interruption, migraine frequency rose in most patients, and prophylaxis was required again in most cases.Limiting treatment to benefitting patients and confirming the need for prophylaxis periodically is reasonable. However, our data does not support the need for prescheduled treatment discontinuation after 12 months and a fixed duration of the treatment interruption of 3 months

Modelando, Auditando e Prevendo a Visibilidade de Fontes no Facebook: Um Estudo de Caso nas Eleições Italianas

O Facebook tem um impacto significativo na vida de milhões de usuários da Internet, todos os dias.  Entretanto, os mecanismos usados pelo Facebook para filtrar mensagens apresentadas aos usuários não são de domínio público,   motivando uma engenharia reversa dos mesmos. Neste trabalho, propomos modelos e medições para melhor entender o comportamento de timelines.  Em particular, reportamos resultados sobre medições de visibilidade de fontes das eleições italianas de 2018, que  motivam  um modelo analítico para caracterizar a  visibilidade de posts.  Dentre as implicações práticas de nossos estudos, indicamos seu potencial para inferir diferentes métricas de visibilidade a partir de medidas colhidas do sistema

Fairness in Online Social Network Timelines: Measurements, Models and Mechanism Design

International audienceFacebook News Feed personalization algorithm has a significant impact, on a daily basis, on the lifestyle, mood and opinion of millions of Internet users. Nonetheless, the behavior of such algorithm lacks transparency, motivating measurements, modeling and analysis in order to understand and improve its properties. In this paper, we propose a reproducible methodology encompassing measurements , an analytical model and a fairness-based News Feed design. The model leverages the versatility and analytical tractability of time-to-live (TTL) counters to capture the visibility and occupancy of publishers over a News Feed. Measurements are used to parameterize and to validate the expressive power of the proposed model. Then, we conduct a what-if analysis to assess the visibility and occupancy bias incurred by users against a baseline derived from the model. Our results indicate that a significant bias exists and it is more prominent at the top position of the News Feed. In addition , we find that the bias is non-negligible even for users that are deliberately set as neutral with respect to their political views, motivating the proposal of a novel and more transparent fairness-based News Feed design

Biases in the Facebook News Feed: a Case Study on the Italian Elections

International audienceFacebook News Feed personalization algorithm has a significant impact, on a daily basis, on the lifestyle, mood and opinion of millions of Internet users. Nonetheless, the behavior of such algorithms usually lacks transparency, motivating measurements, modeling and analysis in order to understand and improve its properties. In this paper, we propose a reproducible methodology encompassing measurements and an analytical model to capture the visibility of publishers over a News Feed. First, measurements are used to parameterize and to validate the expressive power of the proposed model. Then, we conduct a what-if analysis to assess the visibility bias incurred by the users against a baseline derived from the model. Our results indicate that a significant bias exists and it is more prominent at the top position of the News Feed. In addition, we found that the bias is non-negligible even for users that are deliberately set as neutral with respect to their political views

Impairment of T cell development and acute inflammatory response in HIV-1 Tat transgenic mice

Immune activation and chronic inflammation are hallmark features of HIV infection causing T-cell depletion and cellular immune dysfunction in AIDS. Here, we addressed the issue whether HIV-1 Tat could affect T cell development and acute inflammatory response by generating a transgenic mouse expressing Tat in lymphoid tissue. Tat-Tg mice showed thymus atrophy and the maturation block from DN4 to DP thymic subpopulations, resulting in CD4(+) and CD8(+) T cells depletion in peripheral blood. In Tat-positive thymus, we observed the increased p65/NF-κB activity and deregulated expression of cytokines/chemokines and microRNA-181a-1, which are involved in T-lymphopoiesis. Upon LPS intraperitoneal injection, Tat-Tg mice developed an abnormal acute inflammatory response, which was characterized by enhanced lethality and production of inflammatory cytokines. Based on these findings, Tat-Tg mouse could represent an animal model for testing adjunctive therapies of HIV-1-associated inflammation and immune deregulation

COVID-19-associated Guillain-Barré syndrome in the early pandemic experience in Lombardia (Italy)

Objective To estimate the incidence and describe clinical characteristics and outcome of GBS in COVID-19 patients (COVID19-GBS) in one of the most hit regions during the frst pandemic wave, Lombardia. Methods Adult patients admitted to 20 Neurological Units between 1/3–30/4/2020 with COVID19-GBS were included as part of a multi-center study organized by the Italian society of Hospital Neuroscience (SNO). Results Thirty-eight COVID19-GBS patients had a mean age of 60.7 years and male frequency of 86.8%. CSF albuminocytological dissociation was detected in 71.4%, and PCR for SARS-CoV-2 was negative in 19 tested patients. Based on neurophysiology, 81.8% of patients had a diagnosis of AIDP, 12.1% of AMSAN, and 6.1% of AMAN. The course was favorable in 76.3% of patients, stable in 10.5%, while 13.2% worsened, of which 3 died. The estimated occurrence rate in Lombardia ranges from 0.5 to 0.05 GBS cases per 1000 COVID-19 infections depending on whether you consider positive cases or estimated seropositive cases. When we compared GBS cases with the pre-pandemic period, we found a reduction of cases from 165 to 135 cases in the 2-month study period in Lombardia. Conclusions We detected an increased incidence of GBS in COVID-19 patients which can refect a higher risk of GBS in COVID-19 patients and a reduction of GBS events during the pandemic period possibly due to a lower spread of more common respiratory infectious diseases determined by an increased use of preventive measures