News

Disinformation in Spanish is prolific on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube despite vows to act

Article Published: October 6, 2022

Written By: Kari Paul for The Guardian

Social media platforms’ failure to eradicate the false information amounts to aiding and abetting disenfranchisement, advocates say

Last year, US lawmakers urged the CEOs of major tech companies including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to do more to combat disinformation spreading in Spanish, warning that inaccurate information on key issues such as vaccines and the presidential election was proliferating on their platforms.

“There is significant evidence that your Spanish-language moderation efforts are not keeping pace, with widespread accounts of viral content promoting human smuggling, vaccine hoaxes, and election misinformation,” the lawmakers wrote in a July 2021 letter. “Congress has a moral duty to ensure that all social media users have the same access to truthful and trustworthy content regardless of the language they speak at home or use to communicate online.”

More than a year later, and with the midterm elections fast approaching, advocates say these social media platforms are still falling short on policing such content – particularly when it comes to non-English languages.

With Spanish-speaking voters making up a significant part of the US electorate – Latino voters constituted the second largest voting block in the 2020 presidential election – the failure to eradicate misinformation in Spanish from social media platforms amounts to aiding and abetting disenfranchisement, said Mariana Ruiz Firmat, executive director at tech-focused racial justice nonprofit organization Kairos.

“This kind of nonchalant approach, where companies turn their heads away from the threat, shows how little they value protecting or caring about Latinx users who rely on their platforms to gain crucial access to information about voting,” said Ruiz Firmat.

Read full article here.

Elon Musk buying Twitter ‘puts our democracy at stake,’ civil-rights advocates say

Article Published: October 6, 2022

Written By: Levi Sumagaysay for MarketWatch

Right-wing figures are looking to Musk as their 'free-speech' champion and celebrated the news when he offered to buy Twitter in April

Misinformation and disinformation proliferated on Facebook META, +2.11% — which is majority controlled by billionaire co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg — before, during and after the 2016 elections. The company has since taken steps to combat fake news on its platform, and has also banned Trump and others.

“Twitter reaches more than just its users,” said Jelani Drew-Davi, campaigns director for Kairos Action, an organization that works on campaigns that involve technology, racial justice and democracy. “It’s a place of huge global and political significance.”

Referring to the the deadly “Unite the Right” white-supremacist rally in 2017 that was largely organized online, Drew-Davi said online abuse can “leak” offline: “Before Charlottesville, I didn’t think I realized how much power the internet had.”

A year after the rally, Kairos, Color of Change and other advocacy groups formed or joined Change the Terms, a coalition to push online platforms to step up their efforts against hate, abuse and misinformation, which they said have resulted in changes at Twitter and elsewhere.

Read full article here.

Why abortion is tech's next big reputational risk

Article Published: July 13, 2022

Written By: Casey Newton for Platformer

On July 6, amid a growing number of questions about how the company would deploy its latest innovations responsibly, Google said it had undertaken a new approach to ethical design. The company had begun testing a “Moral Imagination” workshop, it said — “a two-day, live-video immersive set of activities for product teams.”

The purpose for the workshop was to think through the ramifications of artificial intelligence, and was announced in the aftermath of a responsible AI researcher there telling the Washington Post he believed that Google AI had become sentient. So far, 248 employees representing 23 product and research teams have participated in these imagination workshops, Google said — “resulting in deeper, ongoing AI ethics consultations on product development.”

One good aspect of the Trump presidency was the way it forced tech giants to do more of this kind of reckoning: asking themselves how current and future products would likely be misused and abused, and modifying them accordingly. And yet recent events have illustrated how, particularly in the way they collect and store data, the giants aren’t stretching their moral imaginations nearly far enough.

Fowler writes:

“It is their responsibility as a company to keep people’s data secure — but as it currently stands, it shifts the work onto the user to figure out how to delete their data,” said Jelani Drew-Davi, campaigns director of Kairos, a left-leaning digital advocacy group.

I understand there’s a sad irony in this exercise. “Take a minute and just feel how intolerable it is for us to essentially be supplicants toward a massively wealthy, massively powerful data company, saying, ‘Please, please, please stop collecting sensitive data,’” said Zuboff.

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Okay, Google: To protect women, collect less data about everyone

Article Published: July 1, 2022

Written By: Geoffrey A. Fowler for The Washington Post

We the users want Google to delete our data. Our rights depend on it.

This is a moment I’ve long worried would arrive. The way tens of millions of Americans use everyday Google products has suddenly become dangerous. Following the Supreme Court decision to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, anything Google knows about you could be acquired by police in states where abortion is now illegal. A search for “Plan B,” a ping to Google Maps at an abortion clinic or even a message you send about taking a pregnancy test could all become criminal evidence.

There is something Google could do about this: Stop collecting — and start deleting — data that could be used to prosecute abortions. Yet so far, Google and other Big Tech companies have committed to few product changes that might endanger their ability to profit off our personal lives. Nor have they publicly committed to how they might fight legal demands related to prosecuting abortions.

So what are the most urgent kinds of data Google should stop collecting? I spoke to privacy advocates to start a list of demands.

“It is their responsibility as a company to keep people’s data secure — but as it currently stands, it shifts the work onto the user to figure out how to delete their data,” said Jelani Drew-Davi, campaigns director of Kairos, a left-leaning digital advocacy group.

Read full article here.

Roe Ruling Sparks Balancing Act on Privacy Legislation Approach

Article Published: June 29, 2022

Written By: Maria Curi for Bloomberg Government

Democrats and civil rights advocates are maneuvering on how to tie abortion rights to the protection of sensitive data—but not jeopardize Congress’s efforts to pass landmark bipartisan privacy legislation.

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade thrust data protections into the limelight, as browsing histories, online medical records, and location data could be used to incriminate people seeking abortions. Some Democrats have sought to use the Supreme Court’s decision to fire up their base and get support for partisan data legislation—but others worry about torpedoing privacy negotiations in Congress that rely on Republican support.

It makes sense to tie Roe to privacy, and scaring abortion opponents away shouldn’t be Congress’s concern, said Jelani Drew-Davi, director of campaigns at Kairos. The grassroots organization focuses on the intersection of tech and equity.

“From our perspective, it’s not something we should be afraid to talk about,” Drew-Davi said. “Privacy is on voters’ minds, and it will become even more of a point with Roe.”

Read the full article here.

Could your online data be used to determine if you are looking for an abortion

Article Published: May 10, 2022

Written By: Brett Molina for USA TODAY

Some experts fear that those who seek abortions could be outed by tech companies to governments or law enforcement by handing over the troves of personal data they maintain upon request.

"With unintended consequences here, we're really looking at a situation where tech companies' very loose restrictions around collecting data and users' data privacy is really going to put people who are seeking abortions, or even seeking to learn more about abortions, at risk," said Mariana Ruiz Firmat, executive director at nonprofit organization Kairos, who uses the pronouns she/they. 

Ruiz Firmat said the discussion about Roe v. Wade is an important reminder to pay special attention to how online data is protected and shared.

"This is an opportunity for users to learn a lot more about data privacy," they said. "Read about it, learn about it before you agree to all those terms and conditions from the platform itself."

Read the full article here.

Twitter Employees Have Spent Years Trying to Make the Platform Safer. Elon Musk Could Undermine All That

Article Published: April 26, 2022

Written by: Billy Perrigo for TIME

Members of marginalized communities—who are disproportionately the victims of online threats and abuse—are among those most protected by Twitter’s current content moderation system. Activists from these communities share Twitter employees’ concerns that those protections could be rolled back. “If Elon Musk were to take over, the damage that would be done would spread from Twitter workers not being able to implement the things they need in order to keep the platform safe,” Jelani Drew-Davi, a campaign manager at the digital civil rights group Kairos, told TIME in the days leading up to the deal. As an example of Musk’s record on similar matters, Drew-Davi cited a lawsuit alleging a culture of rampant racist abuse toward Black workers in a Tesla factory in California.

Since the explosion of social media usage more than a decade ago, researchers and technologists have forged an understanding of the ways that the design of social media sites has an impact on civic discourse and, ultimately, democratic processes. One of their key findings: sites that privilege free speech above all else tend to become spaces where civic discourse is drowned out by harassment, restricting participation to a privileged few.

Read the full article here.

Elon Musk’s Twitter Acquisition Reinforces Calls For Big Tech To ‘Fix The Feed’

Article Published: April 26, 2022

Written by: Anoa Changa for NewsOne

In an interview with NewsOne, Jelani Drew-Davi, director of campaigns for Kairos, mentioned there was reason to be concerned about the future of Twitter and content moderation.

“Elon Musk, from two weeks ago, and from even before that, has been very clear about the ways in which he sees content moderation and wants Twitter specifically to be a different place,” Drew-Davi said. “It’s really clear that he is intending to rollback content moderation policies, under the veil and guise of free speech, which ultimately will just lead to more disinformation and more hateful content on the platform that does affect black and brown people, LGBT folks and women more often and deeper than it does anybody else.”

Request for social media giants to change terms of service and community standards is not a new thing. While some people may say social media, particularly Twitter, isn’t the real world. These sites can have a real-world impact as words and plans move from online to offline action. 

“When things start to pop off, it’s not just online. It has a real impact on people offline as well,” Drew-Davi said. “There have also been calls to deplatform white supremacists off of Twitter for spreading hateful content. But also this information is truly making the experience for users, especially Black and Brown users, one that is not safe both in words and in character count but also when it comes to offline action.”

Read the full article here.

Elon Musk's Next Twitter Challenge: Figuring Out How to Moderate Speech

Article Published: April 26, 2022

Written By: Queenie Wong for CNET

We worry that he could take things in a very different direction," Greenblatt said. "Moreover, as a private company, Twitter will lack the transparency and accountability of a public firm."

Mariana Ruiz Firmat, executive director of technology-focused racial justice group Kairos, said Musk's ownership of Twitter will result in a rollback of content moderation under the guise of "free speech."

The deal, she said, "is alarming to the employees, advocates and users who have fought for years to push the company to adopt appropriate safety and disinformation guidelines."

Read the full article here.

Russia is using Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to tell lies. Here’s how the companies are responding

Article Published: March 5, 2022

Written by Carolyn Said for The San Francisco Chronicle

Social media has become integral to many people’s lives as their main source of information, both public and private. That makes it fertile ground for bad actors seeking to sow discord — as was vividly shown with Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

“We can’t belittle the significant power and ultimate responsibility Silicon Valley has in this moment to make sure truth prevails over misinformation,” said Mariana Ruiz Firmat, executive director of Kairos Action, which runs campaigns to hold technology companies accountable.

Read the full article here.

Would you take a Facebook or Instagram break? Why civil rights groups want you to log out

Written by Jessica Guynn for USA TODAY

“Social justice and civil rights groups are urging consumers to join a nationwide boycott starting Nov. 10 to protest what they say is the social media giant’s failure to address the destructive role it plays in American life, from the deadly COVID pandemic to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Kairos, which is organizing the boycott, is calling it The Facebook Logout, the technology-focused racial justice group exclusively told USA TODAY.

“People make this platform powerful, and without users, there is no Facebook,” Mariana Ruiz Firmat, executive director of Kairos, said in an interview.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Image by Solen Feyissa

Image by Solen Feyissa