Whistleblowers play an important role, but at this point in digital tech and media history, we need more than a single individual’s perspective — even if it’s an insider’s perspective. Yes the company Frances Haugen and Sophie Zhang worked for is huge, but it’s still one company. …
But if you do, this is crucial: ‘Report it. Don’t share it.’
The “it” in “Report it. Don’t share it.” — a public awareness campaign Facebook launched this week — is child sexual abuse material (CSAM), the accurate term for what is typically called “child pornography” in the United States.
“The prevalence of this content on our platform is very low,” Facebook…
What do Pepe the Frog, WallStreetBets and the state of democracy have in common? Meme culture. You heard a whole lot about the “meme stock mania” last week (but did you hear that Jaime Rogozinski, the WallStreetBets subreddit’s founder, just sold his life story to RatPac Entertainment?). You may not…
Feast your eyes on the work and wisdom of Gen Z-ers in Homeschool Musical: Class of 2020 and a virtual conference about youth & technology
Remember that headline in The Atlantic three years ago asking whether smartphones were “destroying a generation”? I hope not. But if you do, there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary — even in 2020, believe it or not. Young people are using smartphones and other technology to heal themselves and…
Watch this non-documentary, now on Netflix, at your own risk. At the very least go into it with more than a grain of salt. …
…and therefore us (or all of us who use social media)
I’m certainly not the first to quote her, but yesterday Evelyn Douek at Harvard Law School tweeted, “Americans want platforms to be places of open expression, but also misinfo removed, but also tech companies have too much power & can’t be trusted to make content decisions, but also the gvt…
5 steps needed now, no turning back
We’re feeling the urgency, right? Maybe it’s just that we’re facing more than we ever have, amid a pandemic, nationwide protests against social injustice and a fraught election year. But all of a sudden, small, incremental, single-platform fixes seem like “band-aids,” symptom treatments.
An example is the Oversight Board that…
Moving away from surveillance and control and toward a child rights framework honored all over the world
For 20 years now, all around the world, governments, child advocacy groups, corporations, schools and parents have actually been trying to uphold children’s rights of protection by ignoring their participation rights online (those of expression, conscience, participation, association, access to information and being consulted on matters that concern them). …
About a book by a 12-year-old activist (and her educator mom) who are showing us how it’s done
Olivia Van Ledtje, age 12, is a social media influencer but in a good way. A powerful way, actually. …
It wasn’t because of the headline — “Zuckerberg and Warren want to fix Big Tech in different ways — and neither of them will work” — that I was excited to read this article by researchers in Science, Technology & Society at Harvard. …
