Rebekah Jean Overdorf

rebekah.overdorf@epfl.ch 41 21 693 75 59
EPFL IC IINFCOM LSIR
BC 114 (Bâtiment BC)
Station 14
CH-1015 Lausanne
Web site: Web site: https://www.epfl.ch/labs/lsir
Current work
My background is in studying the effects that machine learning can have on privacy and the ways in which machine learning can be used to attack private systems and infer private information. Currently, my research revolves around the negative impacts of technical optimization systems on the users, non-users, and on the environments in which they are deployed. I am particularly interested in developing technologies and methods that measure and counter these negative externalities in situations in which we cannot trust the service provider. For example, countering bias in an unfair system when the service provider is not incentivized to correct it, developing technologies to assist municipalities negatively effected by routing applications or ride sharing applications, and measuring and countering the effects of fake news and fake accounts on social media platforms. In this context, I am very interested in the effect that the shift to social media platforms for public discourse has on what information we have access to and who has access to it as well as it's intersection with censorship.
I am currently an Information Controls Fellow with the Open Technology Fund working in collaboration with the Civil Initiative on Internet Policy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan to identify fake online social network accounts and monitor and assess their activities as well as their effect on the overall network.
I am currently an Information Controls Fellow with the Open Technology Fund working in collaboration with the Civil Initiative on Internet Policy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan to identify fake online social network accounts and monitor and assess their activities as well as their effect on the overall network.