When the media does us wrong and community accountability
The Protest Facebook coalition organized a Protect the Results demonstration in front of Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters on the afternoon of November 4th.
ABC press coverage: Protesters Demand Twitter and Facebook Take More Action Against Election Disinformation
KTVU press coverage: San Francisco Bay Area Protestors Push Back on Trump’s Election Interference
by Veronica Irwin. Published in SF Weekly.
Remember when we thought we were going to make the world a better place?
In the city where Jello Biafra once ran for mayor on a platform that would have required businessmen to wear clown suits, recently graduated engineers arrived wearing jeans and pocket-tees. Like the countercultural icons who came before them, they thumbed their collective noses at the stuffy protocols that had come to dominate the white collar workforce. While New York’s business elite had members-only clubs, local tech CEOs kept a kegerator in the office — right next to the ping-pong table and bean bag chair lounge. The Silicon Valley “campus,” complete with outdoor shopping centers and arcades, replaced the corporate headquarters, and open floor plans dismantled the sterile grid of cubicles.
This was the Left Coast. On this side of the country, the son of a teen mom and a cuban immigrant could rise to become the world’s first trillionaire and a couple of bearded, shaggy college dropouts could build a world-conquering personal computer company while pledging to Think Different.
Continue reading The Robber Barons of Big Tech
by Michael Cabanatuan. Originally published in SF Chronicle
A committee of San Francisco supervisors on Thursday condemned the naming of San Francisco General Hospital for Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, citing a long list of grievances against the social media giant and claiming its practices endanger public health.
The three-member Government Audit and Oversight Committee voted to condemn the hospital’s name and to develop a better policy for future naming of public facilities. The resolution, which carries no legal mandates, was mostly a statement of opinion by the board — and a chance to bash Facebook. The board is constrained in its contract with Zuckerberg in removing his name from the hospital.
Continue reading S.F. Supes Again Condemn Zuckerberg’s Name on City General Hospital
originally published on SFGate.com
San Francisco supervisors voted 10-1 in approval of a resolution condemning the naming of Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
The resolution, authored by Supervisor Gordon Mar, urges the city to establish clear standards for naming rights for public institutions and properties, reserving those rights only for organizations that align with the city’s values.
Continue reading Supervisors Approve Resolution To Condemn Naming Of Hospital After Mark Zuckerberg
The Aaron Swartz Day Police Surveillance Project teamed up with Priveasy to create a set of tools designed to assist in the ongoing fight for police and sheriff accountability. Bad Apple (https://BadApple.tools) contains a) a searchable database of verified oversight commissions b) a searchable collection of public records act templates c) a growing database of officers and investigative reports and d) a private tip submission line.
All of the technology powering Bad Apple is completely open source (https://GitHub.com/P5vc) and released under a CC-BY-SA-4.0 license, allowing for maximum transparency. The Bad Apple website is available in both English and Spanish, and is designed to be completely accessible.
Read more here.
Media Alliance is a proud supporter of the Social Media DATA Act, introduced into Congress by MA democrat Lori Trahan. The DATA Act would compel social media companies to preserve their ad libraries and make them available to academic researchers to study the impact of targeted advertising.
See what people are saying about the Social Media DATA Act.
Tracy Rosenberg, Executive Director, Media Alliance:
“The Social Media Data Act would ensure that qualified academic researchers can study social media advertising and its impacts with unimpeded access to the data they need. Digital advertising uses the information social media platforms collect about us to expose us to
individualized targeted advertising for profit. Such advertising can be based on our preferences, associations, location, the state of our health, religion, race or age, When profit-driven imperatives control much of our social media feeds, we see different content based on who we are. This can result in discriminatory outcomes, increased polarization, the spread of misinformation, and the use of our most personal characteristics to manipulate our perceptions of the world. This should not go on in a black box where we cannot see under the hood to measure what is happening to us. With transparent access to social media advertising metrics, we can develop best practices to meaningfully study impact and develop policy to mitigate harm and protect personal privacy and vulnerable populations subject to discrimination. Social media has changed the world, in both positive and negative ways, and we should be able to reap the benefits without sacrificing our civil and human rights, if not the health of democracy itself. The Social Media Data Act would help to find that balance.”
Multiple consumer privacy bills have been emerging from the federal government lately, mostly in response to state efforts like CCPA.
Here’s a letter from privacy groups, including Media Alliance, about the batch from the US Senate including COPRA from Senator Maria Cantwell D-WA), USCDPA from Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) and the Browser Act from Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN).
Unsurprisingly, Cantwell’s bill comes the closest to a federal data privacy bill that would actually protect consumers.
15 prominent privacy groups (including Media Alliance) sent a letter to the CA Legislature encouraging them to strengthen California’s state privacy law (CCPA), the only statewide comprehensive consumer privacy legislation in the county, and prevent industry gutting it prior to 2020, when the law is scheduled to take effect.
The privacy groups stated “We urge you to keep the focus on strengthening protections for your constituents, and to reject
efforts to diminish Californians’ privacy and security protections.” Continue reading Strengthening CCPA
