Announcing the recipients of Instagram research awards on safety and community health

by Facebook AI

At Meta, we conduct our own research and consult external experts and research to understand how we can improve our products and policies to better support our community. For the past several years, we’ve awarded external researchers around the world funding to study topics like well-being and polarization that may affect people’s experiences on our platforms.

In May 2021, Instagram launched a request for proposals (RFP) focused on research on safety and community health, especially as it relates to young people and underserved communities. Today, we’re announcing the winners of these awards.

“It’s important for us to collaborate with external researchers to identify ways we can improve Instagram’s policies and products. This round of research recipients is looking at critical issues like supporting trans people’s journeys with gender affirmation online and decreasing harassment among young people.” said Kristin Hendrix, Head of Instagram Research.

Specifically, we were interested in proposals for research that would help us (1) better understand equity and fairness issues in our community, (2) develop better policies, (3) assess possible improvements to protect our younger community, or (4) better understand the mechanisms (e.g., social support, social comparison) through which Instagram usage could impact the people that use our service.

Applications were initially reviewed by members of our internal research team with diverse subject matter expertise based on a broad range of criteria including anticipated impact, plan for conducting the research and more. Finalists were reviewed and winners were ultimately chosen by leaders from Meta’s research organization.

The RFP attracted more than 200 proposals from 172 universities and institutions around the world. The winners and their research proposals are listed below. The work all of the applicants are doing is critically important, and we’re grateful to everyone who applied. We look forward to sharing upcoming RFPs in the future.

Research award winners

Principal investigators are listed first unless otherwise noted.

Chatbots as Social Support Actors (CASSA)
Celeste Campos-Castillo, Linnea I. Laestadius (University of Wisconsin Milwaukee)

“We hope the inclusion of diverse voices from communities that have experienced structural racism will help promote equity in the design of technology-driven mental health interventions like this chatbot.” – Campos-Castillo and Laestadius

Enhancing trans people’s experiences of gender affirmation on Instagram
Denton Callander, Teddy Cook (University of New South Wales)

“Instagram and other social media are really important social spaces for many trans people, which is why we’re so excited to launch the #TransIsBeautiful project. This innovative social research will help us learn about how to maximize visual social media as a safe, healthy, and affirming space for trans people of all genders in Australia and around the world.” – Cook, #TransIsBeautiful Co-Lead Investigator, Manager of Trans Health Equity at ACON, and Vice President of the Australian Professional Association for Trans Health

Improving water safety at risky Instagram hotspots via targeted information
Amy Peden, Robert Brander, William Koon (University of New South Wales)

“Chasing the perfect selfie can result in temporary loss of concentration and self-awareness which can lead to injury and death. Drowning is the leading cause of selfie-related death, with many picturesque locations near to water or on rocky outcrops or clifftops. We are thrilled to be working with Instagram to develop, implement and evaluate the best way to get water safety information to people who are hashtagging or tagging themselves at known risky locations, starting with sites of concern across Australia and California in the United States. This research has the power to save lives and we’re so excited to get started.” – Peden

Mitigating cyberbullying experiences of younger users on Instagram
Jorge Goncalves, Louise La Sala, Senuri Wijenayake, Simon D’Alfonso (University of Melbourne)

“We aim to investigate the occurrence of cyberbullying from a novel socio-psychological perspective to further understand the rationale behind this behaviour. We hope that the outcomes of our work will extend Instagram’s recent endeavours to provide a safer environment for its young users by uncovering new approaches to mitigate bad experiences on the platform.” – Goncalves

Towards proactive moderation of coordinated harassment on Instagram
Gianluca Stringhini, Chen Ling (Boston University)

“Online harassment against social media users does not come out of the blue, but it is often the result of coordination from hateful communities that pick their targets and coordinate hateful attacks against them. In this project we aim to understand what kind of Instagram content commonly receives coordinate harassment, with the goal of improving content moderation. Identifying content that is likely to receive harassment can help human moderators focus their efforts and improve the safety of Instagram users.” – Stringhini

Using IG to increase physical activity & support among BIPOC students
Olivia Johnson, Desmond Delk (University of Houston)

“From improving mental and physical health to enhancing our emotional well-being, the benefits of engaging in daily physical activity are limitless. However, many individuals do not meet the daily physical activity recommendations. As such, we are exploring the impact of IG social support communities in addressing physical fitness adherence of BIPOC college women.” – Johnson and Delk

Finalists

#LesbiansofInstagram: investigating Instagram’s role in queer women’s lives
Stefanie Duguay (Concordia University)

Cancer hoax victims on Instagram: learning from community responses
Lisbeth Klastrup (IT University of Copenhagen)

Effect of likes on diverse adolescent girls’ social comparison & body image
Jessica Faye Saunders, Asia Eaton (Clark University)

Imag(in)ing better bodies: investigating teens’ narratives of photo editing
Ysabel Gerrard, Ruth Holliday (University of Sheffield)

Instagram influence on teen food choice and equity in diverse communities
Darcy A. Freedman, Callie Ogland-Hand, Nora L. Nock (Case Western Reserve University)

Sharing family narratives including people with disabilities best practices
Renee Barnes, Gerard Goggin, Katie Ellis, Tama Leaver (University of the Sunshine Coast)

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Sharing the results of sponsored independent research on furthering inclusion across economies

by Facebook AI

We are pleased to share a series of reports that examine BIPOC entrepreneurship across eight markets. The reports, which were commissioned by Meta, analyze the mechanisms of economic exclusion in these markets, and how digital tools help entrepreneurs establish and grow successful small businesses, helping to level the playing field.

Interviews with eight business owners, as well as a review of existing research and publicly available data, reveal that entrepreneurs from marginalized groups use digital tools to do the following:

  • Find alternative sources of funding and investment, in contrast to more prohibitive traditional channels
  • Reduce start-up, marketing, and other costs when launching and growing their businesses
  • Create new product offerings and innovate for the unmet needs of their co-ethnic consumers

These findings build on previous work by Meta’s Policy Advocacy and Research team and Data for Good team. Preliminary findings from many of our projects, including Digital Tools in Crisis and Recovery, Dynamic Markets, and Global State of Small Business, show that SMB leaders from minority communities in the United States were more likely to turn to digital tools to mitigate the economic effects of the pandemic on their businesses.

We wanted to dig deeper into these results and expand our analysis to other countries, so we commissioned a team of leading experts to assess the state of economic inclusion and the impact of digital tools around the world. Two authors — Dr. Jock Collins, scholar of Australian immigration and indigenous entrepreneurship, and Dr. Mohanbir Sawhney, expert on business innovation, including among underprivileged groups — led the research, alongside a panel of seven regional consulting experts with global and local expertise on minority entrepreneurship.

The resulting white paper and individual country reports shed light on the unique challenges facing BIPOC business leaders, as well how digital technologies help them overcome the social, economic, and cultural barriers that they face in conducting business.

To read the reports, click the link below.

View reports

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Announcing the winners of the 2021 People’s Expectations and Experiences with Digital Privacy RFP

by Facebook AI

In August, Meta, formerly known as Facebook, launched the 2021 People’s Expectations and Experiences with Digital Privacy request for proposals (RFP). Today, we’re announcing the winners of this award.
VIEW RFPIn 2020, we launched a similar research award opportunity in this space. We have continued this support for academics from across the social sciences and technical disciplines, empowering them to broaden and deepen our collective knowledge of global privacy expectations and experiences.

“Both this year’s and last year’s RFPs are about expanding research on two vital topics for the advancement of privacy science: privacy measurement and inclusive privacy,” said Meta Head of Privacy Research Liz Keneski in a Q&A about the RFP.

This year, areas of interest included the following:

  • Improving understanding of users’ privacy attitudes, concerns, preferences, needs, behaviors, and outcomes
  • Novel assessments of digital transparency and control that are meaningful for diverse populations, context, and data types

The RFP attracted 89 proposals from 74 universities and institutions around the world. Thank you to everyone who took the time to submit a proposal, and congratulations to the winners.

Research award winners

Principal investigators are listed first unless otherwise noted.

Addressing biases in measurement of self-reported privacy constructs
Heng Xu, Nan Zhang (American University, Washington, D.C.)

Designing digital privacy education interventions for older adults
Kaileigh Byrne, Bart Knijnenburg (Clemson University)

Exploring privacy concerns and policy negotiation strategies in smart homes
Chuan Yue (Colorado School of Mines)

Global south citizens’ privacy perceptions and management of targeted ads
Yang Wang (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

Privacy regulations and consumer search for products and information
Pinar Yildirim, Yu Zhao (University of Pennsylvania), Pradeep Chintagunta (University of Chicago)

Understanding the digital privacy of the rural women in Bangladesh
Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed (University of Toronto), Mahdi Nasrullah Al-Ameen (Utah State University), Sharifa Sultana (Cornell University)

Understanding the roles of discrete emotions in privacy management
Hyunjin Kang (Nanyang Technological University), Jeeyun Oh (University of Texas at Austin)

Finalists

Designing “just-in-time” privacy nudges and education with and for teens
Pamela Wisniewski (University of Central Florida)

Developing tailored interventions to boost privacy control and resilience
Sophie Boerman, Joanna Strycharz (University of Amsterdam)

Digital payment system (DPS) privacy and user satisfaction in three countries
Raghav Rao, Oluwafemi Akanfe, Rohit Valecha (University of Texas at San Antonio)

Examining privacy concerns for interventions in online news systems
Matthew Louis Mauriello (University of Delaware)

Inclusive privacy design for vulnerable populations beyond W.E.I.R.D
Maryam Mustafa, Mobin Javed (Lahore University of Management Sciences)

Interactive image control: Addressing privacy concerns in public spaces
Maria D. Molina, Ruth Shillair (Michigan State University)

Privacy-preserving approaches to combating misinformation globally
Aditya Vashistha (Cornell University)

The socioeconomic & cultural influence: Adolescents’ perception of privacy
Kuskridho Ambardi, Adityo Hidayat, Anisa Pratita Kirana Mantovani, Dewa Ayu Diah Angendari, Faiz Rahman, Paska Bayu Darmawan (Universitas Gadjah Mada/Center for Digital Society)

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Differences in public views on climate change around the world, by gender

by Facebook AI

Emergencies tend to exacerbate preexisting vulnerabilities, leaving women more likely to experience the negative effects of environmental, economic, and social crises. The COVID-19 pandemic was no exception, during which women were forced to spend more time doing unpaid domestic work. In the last year, women-led businesses also closed at higher rates than those led by men.

Climate change is already having a disproportionate impact on women, which will only increase as the climate crisis progresses. Women, for example, have higher rates of heat-related morbidity and mortality than men. In many countries, however, the unequal impacts from climate change are driven by long-standing social norms whereby women carry the primary responsibility for managing the household, including the provision of food, water, and shelter — activities all affected by climate change. For example, as rivers have become saltier, women have to travel farther to fetch clean water. When severe weather such as floods and droughts caused by climate change affects communities, young women and girls may have to drop out of school to support their families, and they may be at an increased risk of organized human trafficking because protective patterns in families and society are disrupted. Even at home, they may be at a higher risk of physical, sexual, and domestic violence in the aftermath of disasters.

Information is critical for climate resiliency

Given their disproportionate vulnerability, it is critical to support women around the world as they work to increase their climate resiliency. To better understand viewpoints and challenges associated with climate change, Data for Good at Meta partnered with the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication to conduct a survey of Facebook users in early 2021. The survey asked over 75,000 people across 31 countries and territories about their climate change knowledge, attitudes, policy preferences, and behaviors. All respondents were asked to self-identify their gender*, allowing for a unique analysis of the viewpoints of women and how climate change affects them.

Gender differences in awareness of climate change and concern about its effects

In this study, we found that a majority of people in about half of the countries and territories surveyed said they knew at least a moderate amount about climate change, led by Australia and Germany. However, in some countries, there were significant numbers of people who had little to no knowledge of climate change. This includes more than a quarter of people in Nigeria who reported that they had “never heard of it,” as well as substantial portions of people in Malaysia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam. Since this survey was conducted on Facebook, it may also have underrepresented offline populations that research has shown are less likely to know about climate change, suggesting that even higher proportions of some populations may not know about the existence of this crisis.

While there is lower reported knowledge of climate change in less industrialized countries, there are larger gaps between genders in industrial countries such as the U.K., Canada, and the United States. We see significantly more men saying they know at least a moderate amount about climate change in these countries, highlighting the need to raise public awareness on the issue in both developed and developing countries.

While on average women who took the survey said they knew less about climate change, we found that they were consistently more worried about the issue than men. In the United States, this difference was much larger than in previous studies, with about three-quarters of women reporting being “somewhat worried” or “very worried” about this issue, compared with just over half of men, with similar discrepancies in most of Europe, Canada, and Australia.

Analyzing the potential harm of the changing climate, more women than men said it would harm them personally “a great deal” or a “moderate amount.” In the United States, the U.K., and Canada, there was a nearly 15 percentage point difference between men’s and women’s predictions of harm. This difference is not unfounded — previous research has shown that heatwaves in France, China, and India, as well as tropical cyclones in Bangladesh and the Philippines, were more deadly for women than they were for men. Prior comparisons in the United States also show that women perceive more harm than men on a range of climate-related risk perceptions.

Education and communication

Knowledge about the impacts of climate change along with mitigation and adaptation strategies are all necessary for households and communities addressing this crisis. In particular, women need access to information that helps them address climate impacts that affect their well-being, such as their access to food, water, fuel, and possible displacement due to extreme weather.

While a majority of people in all countries and territories said they want more information about climate change, significantly greater proportions of women reported wanting to know more about the topic. The difference between men and women was notable in the United States, the Czech Republic, Australia, and Saudi Arabia, where the proportion of women who wanted more information about climate change was 10 to 15 percentage points higher than the proportion of men saying so.

There is still an enormous need for basic education, awareness building, and understanding of climate change around the world. As a global social media platform, Meta is well positioned to help share accurate information about climate change, a core motivation for the creation of its Climate Science Center. Through this survey, we learned that while most people surveyed correctly identified human activity as the primary cause of climate change, sizable portions of the population still believe it is caused mostly by natural changes or equally by natural changes and human activity. People in Spain were the most aware that climate change is caused mostly by human activity (64 percent), but even in that setting, more than one in three thought that climate change was caused mostly by natural changes in the environment or caused equally by human activities and natural changes. At the other end of the spectrum, fewer than two in 10 people in Indonesia correctly understood the main driver of climate change.

We observe differences by gender even on these beliefs about climate change. Even though a larger proportion of women are worried about climate change, fewer women are aware of its root causes. This discrepancy is particularly large in Vietnam and Nigeria, where women are less aware than men of the causes of climate change. However, in a few European countries, such as the Netherlands and Czech Republic, more women than men understand the causes of climate change.

This study demonstrates that gender plays an important role in shaping public understanding and responses to climate change. As a result, climate communication campaigns need to recognize these diverse responses and tailor their strategies. We are encouraged by promising research that our partners at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication are doing to better understand different audiences on the topic of climate change and meet their unique needs. Strategies such as storytelling may be particularly effective by including emotional content as well as accurate information.

As a global platform, Meta has a unique ability to inform and engage people around the world in climate change solutions. This study is the first of many to help our partners ensure that people have access to information, resources, and tools to reduce the threat of climate change and prepare for the impacts.

For researchers interested in using this survey data or other datasets provided by Data for Good at Meta, please contact dataforgood@fb.com. Our publicly available datasets can also be found on the Humanitarian Data Exchange.


*The survey was fielded between February 17, 2021, and March 3, 2021, to Facebook users over the age of 18. Survey results have been weighted to better reflect the population of each country or territory. More on the methodology is available here. This blog focuses on differences between men and women and unfortunately does not include perspectives of people beyond the gender binary due to a few constraints, including limitations in sample size.

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Introducing the 2021 Facebook India Tech Scholars

by Facebook AI

Earlier this year, Facebook India launched the Facebook India Tech Scholars (FITS) program to provide a research and mentorship platform to law students who are keen to engage on contemporary questions of technology, law, and policy. Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co. (SAM), India’s foremost full-service law firm, is supporting the program as a knowledge partner.

The FITS program seeks to provide selected scholars a platform to build a body of research on evolving tech law and policy issues, and is designed to provide eight law students (two each from four participating law schools) with the opportunity to work on an independent research project under the guidance of prominent research institutions and think tanks in India, who will participate in the program as mentoring institutions. The final deliverable is a research paper due upon the program’s conclusion.

FITS 2021–2022

Along with the involvement of the mentoring institutions, the FITS program is also guided by an expert advisory committee for the duration of the program.

The inaugural edition of the FITS program will run for a period of nine months, commencing in October 2021 and concluding with the submission of the scholars’ research papers. As this is the first year of the FITS initiative, participation was limited to students from four law schools in India.

Application process

The call for applications was launched in May 2021, and applications were invited from fourth- and fifth-year law students from the following law schools:

  • National Law School of India, Bengaluru (NLSIU)
  • West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata (NUJS)
  • National Law University, Delhi (NLU D)
  • National Law University, Jodhpur (NLU J)

The preliminary screening process by the FITS selection committee (which comprises members from Facebook and SAM) involved a two-step process: (a) an essay-based evaluation and (b) interviews. Short-listed applicants were further evaluated by the advisory committee, culminating in the final selection of eight scholars.

Mentoring institutions

Each mentoring institution will host one or more scholars for the duration of the FITS program. The mentoring institutions’ role will include guiding the scholars as they work toward their final research papers, honing their research and writing skills and providing timely inputs on the final deliverable. We are excited to be joined by four renowned research institutions and think tanks as our mentoring institutions this year:

  • Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, India (CEIP)
  • Centre for Internet & Society (CIS)
  • Observer Research Foundation (ORF)
  • Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC)

Advisory committee

The FITS advisory committee comprises senior legal and tech policy experts, who were instrumental to the selection of the scholars and who will also certify the completion of the FITS program by the scholars, in addition to advising the FITS organization team. Our advisory committee for this year is as follows:

  • Honorable Justice B.N. Srikrishna, Retired Judge of the Supreme Court of India
  • Ms. Pallavi Shroff, Managing Partner, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co.
  • Ms. Rama Vedashree, CEO, Data Security Council of India
  • Dr. P. Vigneswara Ilavarasan, Professor, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi
  • Dr. V. Sridhar, Professor, International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore

Meet our scholars

Asees Kaur, NUJS
Mentoring institution: ORF
Research theme: emerging technologies

Asees is a fourth-year law student and aims to use the FITS platform to make meaningful contributions to the relatively underexplored topic of artificial intelligence and the law. Asees has previously presented recommendations before the Joint Parliamentary Committee, which is currently deliberating India’s Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, and has clerked at the Supreme Court of India.

Jade Lyngdoh, NLU J
Mentoring institution: SFLC
Research theme: intermediary liability & free speech

Jade is a fourth-year law student and aims to explore the convergence of blasphemous and hate speech, and the role played by regional and linguistic backgrounds in such instances. Jade assists the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom as a research intern and has also undertaken internships with law firms and independent counsel in India.

Karthik Rai, NLSIU
Mentoring institution: ORF
Research theme: data governance

Karthik is a fourth-year law student and aims to study the multitude of concerns associated with data governance such as data protection, portability, and other pressing issues that have political, economic, and legal implications. As part of internships, Karthik has spent time with law firms, think tanks, and independent counsel, and has also published several tech policy–related blogs and articles.

Kartik Agarwal, NLU J
Mentoring institution: CIS
Research theme: intermediary liability & free speech

Kartik is a final-year law student and would like to spend time with the program probing issues related to social media companies and their policies governing freedom of speech and expression on their platforms. Kartik has experience interning with law firms, participating in mooting and debating competitions, and writing on a wide range of topics.

Meghna Bhaskar, NLU D
Mentoring institution: ORF
Research theme: emerging technologies

Meghna is a final-year law student hoping to explore the relationship between intellectual property law and machine learning and artificial intelligence-based works. Meghna has published several blogs and articles on topics relating to tech policy, and has spent time interning with various organizations, including law firms and research initiatives.

Shivangi Mishra, NLSIU
Mentoring institution: CIS
Research theme: data governance

Shivangi is a fourth-year law student and would like to use the FITS program to study cross-jurisdictional approaches to data governance, especially from a socio-legal lens. Shivangi has an extensive research background, having assisted on projects such as the Global Study on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Regulation and working with academicians whose research is focused on tech policy.

Supriya Shekher, NLU D
Mentoring institution: CEIP
Research theme: data governance

Supriya is a fourth-year law student and seeks to understand the interface between personal data protection and antitrust regimes, including from a comparative perspective as well as between personal data-related rights and community-based rights over data. Supriya has experience interning with independent counsel and assisting with research projects, and has participated in several other cocurricular activities.

Varunavi Bangia, NUJS
Mentoring institution: SFLC
Research theme: data governance

Varunavi is a final-year law student with a growing interest in India’s approach to regulating nonpersonal data even as the regulatory framework around personal data is emerging, and would like to study these issues from a socio-legal perspective. Varunavi’s cocurricular experience includes various internships, publishing written research, and participating in moot court competitions.

Closing remarks from the advisory committee

“We, at Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co., are glad to have partnered with Facebook as their knowledge partner in this new initiative. I am sure this platform will provide a unique experience to the Scholars as they are given the opportunity to interact with and learn from the eminent mentoring institutions. I am also glad to be a part of the advisory committee and am looking forward to the research that will emerge at the conclusion of the program.”

— Ms. Pallavi Shroff, Managing Partner, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co.

“I find the FITS program an excellent initiative to nurture and grow bright young law students from premier academic institutions, in the evolving policy and legal facets of technology. Providing an opportunity to law students to research on policy areas with mentorship from leading think tanks will surely create impact. As an advisory committee member, I was very impressed by the rigorous selection process developed by Facebook with support from their knowledge partner Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co. The final short-listed candidates have differentiated themselves by their nuanced understanding of evolving technology policy themes, and the breadth of research publications and writing they have done, even as students. I wish them the very best in their policy research pursuits.”

— Ms. Rama Vedashree, CEO, Data Security Council of India

“I’m excited to be a member of the Facebook India Tech Scholars initiative. This is critical for India’s tech policy ecosystem to be strengthened and built. I am convinced that, in the future, tech policymaking will be vibrant thanks to these emerging young scholars.”

— Dr. P. Vigneswara Ilavarasan, Professor, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi

“The FITS initiative to engage young law students in contemporary research at the intersection of technology, law, and business will indeed promote the much-needed innovative approach to development of legislation in this fast-evolving tech space.”

— Dr. V. Sridhar, Professor, International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore

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Q&A with Dimitrios Skarlatos, visiting scientist at Facebook and assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University

by Facebook AI

In this monthly interview series, we turn the spotlight on members of the academic community and the important research they do — as thought partners, collaborators, and independent contributors.

For October, we nominated Dimitrios Skarlatos, an assistant professor in the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Before starting his professorship at CMU, Skarlatos decided to spend some time at Facebook as a visiting scientist. He has received several awards for his research, including a Facebook faculty award and the 2021 ACM SIGARCH & IEEE CS TCCA Outstanding Dissertation award for “contributions to redesigning the abstractions and interfaces that connect hardware and operating systems.”

In this Q&A, Skarlatos shares his experience as a visiting scientist at Facebook, his motivation for taking a “prebattical,” the research projects he’s worked on, advice for academics considering a similar path, and more.

Q: Tell us about your academic experience so far. What are your primary research interests?

Dimitrios Skarlatos: I’m an assistant professor at the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon University. My research bridges computer architecture and operating systems focusing on performance, security, and scalability. My current work follows two central themes: (a) uncovering security vulnerabilities and building defenses at the boundary between hardware and OS, and (b) redesigning abstractions and interfaces between the two layers to improve performance and scalability.

Q: What inspired you to spend some time at Facebook before starting your professorship?

DS: The motivation for me was to learn more about large-scale, real-world data center deployments and systems. I believe that this learning experience is invaluable and will help me grow as a researcher. Facebook maintains a flat organization structure that facilitates cross-organizational interdisciplinary research at an unprecedented level. Even during my initial engagement with Facebook, I had the chance to talk with vastly different teams and learn about their research challenges rooted in running massive production systems for almost any technical area that I was interested in, including data centers, kernels, global load balancing, machine learning hardware, serverless computing, and so on. I found this to be unique to Facebook and an incredible opportunity for visiting scientists like me. Access to the best and brightest minds coupled with the ability to solve real-world problems at Facebook facilitates cutting-edge research seamlessly, which I’m particularly excited about.

Q: What research projects did you work on during your time at Facebook? What team(s) did you collaborate with?

DS: My time at Facebook started with working with the RAS team and Andy Newel. RAS is Facebook’s region-wide resource allocator that performs continuous optimizations. RAS introduces a novel capacity abstraction called reservations. Based on this abstraction, it takes a two-level approach to scale resource allocation to all data centers in a region, where a mixed-integer-programming solver continuously optimizes server-to-reservation assignments off the critical path, and a traditional container allocator does real-time placement of containers on servers in a reservation. RAS provides guaranteed capacity while taking into account random and correlated failures, data center maintenance, heterogeneous hardware, and compound workload constraints. You can read more about RAS in our SOSP 2021 paper, “RAS: continuously optimized region-wide datacenter resource allocation.”

Beyond RAS, I further worked on lightweight virtualization solutions based on containers with multiple teams across the kernel and hardware, microservice, and serverless teams at Facebook. It was a very rewarding experience collaborating with dozens of people on a diversity of projects, and a unique learning opportunity.

Q: What’s it like doing research at Facebook?

DS: Great research is always motivated by asking the right questions. What are the problems the next-generation software and hardware systems should solve? How should we maximize our research impact? Facebook is an ideal place to answer these questions and gain valuable experience. The opportunity to do awesome work and write strong technical papers at top-tier conferences is possible. This becomes apparent by looking at the strong research publications from multiple teams and projects across Facebook.

Of course, that doesn’t mean there weren’t challenges. One challenge I had to overcome was to stay a little outside of my research comfort zone in order to grow. I believe that the best approach to overcome these challenges is to connect with people with expertise that spans multiple areas and collaborate on solving problems across the stack.

Facebook fosters collaboration and direct communication across different teams and projects. During my visit, I had the chance to connect with people across many teams and organizations from distributed systems, operating systems, hardware, machine learning, security, and others. It’s very exciting to talk with people working on vastly different projects and products. Such conversations could lead to long-term collaborations or further help connect the dots and form an understanding of the bigger picture.

Q: What advice would you give to university researchers looking to become visiting scientists at Facebook?

DS: I believe that the best approach for becoming a visiting scientist is to network: Attend conferences and reach out and connect with people who have visited or worked at Facebook in an area that’s of interest to you. That’s the best way to get a first impression of the experience and maybe get things started. My experience started with knowing Tianyin Xu, who also spent a year at Facebook as a visiting scientist.

As a visiting scientist, one of the most valuable pieces of advice from my Facebook colleagues Kaushik Veeraraghavan and CQ Tang was to not feel constrained by research areas. My main research is on abstractions and interfaces that connect hardware with operating systems. At Facebook, I had the chance to connect with layers even higher up the stack and work on bridging hardware with distributed systems and build abstractions for hardware and container management at a regional scale.

Also, just go for it. Facebook provides an environment to pursue your research interests with leading experts and to do impactful research. It is a unique learning experience. After joining Facebook, it became clear that the opportunities are endless, so my primary advice to visiting scientists is to overcommit — but controllably. Solving real-world problems at Facebook’s scale takes a lot of time and effort, and by taking on multiple projects, I had more opportunities to work on and explore multiple directions with several teams. That helped me to see the bigger picture and connect all the research pieces together.

Q: What do you think will be the next big challenges in systems research that industry and academia could tackle together?

DS: I believe that computing systems are undergoing a radical shift, propelled by stern security requirements and an unprecedented growth in data and users. This change has proved to be abstraction breaking. Current hardware and operating system abstractions were built at a time when we had minimal security threats, scarce compute and memory resources, and limited numbers of users. These assumptions are not representative of today’s computing landscape. In this new era of computing, it is urgent that we rethink the synergy between the OS and hardware layers from scratch. Collaboration between industry and academia is going to be critical in building tomorrow’s systems that power the world’s data centers.

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Registration now open for the 2021 Testing and Verification Symposium

by Facebook AI

Our annual Testing and Verification (TAV) Symposium brings together academia and industry in an open environment to exchange ideas and showcase the top experts from testing and verification scientific research and practice.

This year, the fifth annual TAV Symposium will be held virtually from Wednesday, December 1, through Thursday, December 2, 2021. The event is open to all testing and verification practitioners and researchers and is free to attend. The symposium’s agenda will include 10 talks that will offer opportunities for Q&A via the event platform.

Those interested in attending may submit their registration request below.

REGISTER

“My team, Sapienz, is collaborating with previous speakers on the ideas discussed at last year’s TAV symposium,” says Facebook Software Engineer Yue Jia. “The symposium is a great venue to share the challenges we are facing and to stimulate the technology transfer of research results to software testing and verification practices.”

Jia continues: “Beyond the great presentations, I enjoyed the discussions among the various testing and verification communities from last year’s TAV Symposium. The symposium offers an open platform to bridge research and practice in software testing, verification, and validation.”

“The TAV Symposium is a unique venue in the conference landscape where testing and verification, industry and academia, and theory and practice all meet as one community realizing their shared goal: raising everyone’s confidence in software,” says Software Engineer Jules Villard. “I cannot wait to meet this year’s TAV community and discover new collaboration opportunities.”

Below is the list of confirmed speakers, which can also be found on the registration page. Leading up to the event, as additional speakers are confirmed, they will be added to the registration site.

Confirmed speakers

Viktor Malík (Brno University of Technology)

Ke Mao (WhatsApp)

Azalea Raad (Imperial College London)

Tao Xie (Peking University)

Chunyang Chen (Monash University)

Isabel Min Li (Imperial College London)

Kinga Bojarczuk (Facebook)

Sébastien Bardin (Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique)

Raphaël Monat (Sorbonne Université)

Noam Zilberstein (Cornell University)

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For more information about speakers, including full bios and topics, visit the registration page.

The post Registration now open for the 2021 Testing and Verification Symposium appeared first on Facebook Research.

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Facebook and USENIX announce the winners of the 2021 Internet Defense Prize

by Facebook AI

Today, Facebook and USENIX awarded a total of $200,000 to the top three winners of the Internet Defense Prize. Funded by Facebook and offered in partnership with USENIX, the award celebrates security research contributions to the protection and defense of the internet. In this post, we share details on the research we awarded today and also on the upcoming changes to how the Prize will operate in the future.

Award recipients

We awarded our first-place prize of $100,000 to winners Ofek Kirzner and Adam Morrison of Tel Aviv University for their work titled “An Analysis of Speculative Type Confusion Vulnerabilities in the Wild.” The paper defines “speculative type confusion,” an issue where branch mispredictions cause a victim program to execute with variables holding values of the wrong type. The impact in this scenario is that the victim program leaks sensitive memory content.

Second-place prize winner Nicholas Carlini of Google was awarded $60,000 for their paper “Poisoning the Unlabeled Dataset of Semi-Supervised Learning.” The paper looks at the “data set poisoning” problem: If an attacker can control (“poison”) a portion of the training set for a machine learning model, how much can the attacker force the model to incorrectly classify? The research shows that in the “semi supervised” setting where models include training on unlabeled data, poisoning as little as 0.1% of the unlabeled training data enables controlling the model’s output.

The third-place prize of $40,000 awarded to a team of researchers, including Kevin Bock (University of Maryland), Abdulrahman Alaraj (University of Colorado Boulder), Eric Wustrow (University of Colorado Boulder), Yair Fax (University of Maryland), Kyle Hurley (University of Maryland), and Dave Levin (University of Maryland). Their research “Weaponizing Middleboxes for TCP Reflected Amplification” looked at the problem of an attacker amplifying network traffic to cause a distributed denial of service attack previously believed to be a class called “reflective amplification,” which would work only for UDP-based protocols. The authors showed that, in fact, TCP-based protocols can be used in reflective amplification. Then, they scanned the entire IPv4 internet to demonstrate that there are hundreds of thousands of IP addresses hosting potential amplifiers.

We congratulate the 2021 winners of the Internet Defense Prize and thank them for their contributions to help make the internet more secure. To be considered for the Prize in 2022, submit a paper to USENIX Security 2022 here.

Starting in 2022, the USENIX Security Awards Committee will begin independently determining the prize, to be distributed by USENIX. Facebook will continue to fund the Internet Defense Prize as a founding partner.

See the USENIX post here.

The post Facebook and USENIX announce the winners of the 2021 Internet Defense Prize appeared first on Facebook Research.

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