T3THICS Week 15: The EU OOO
T3THICS <3s the EU OOO, Meta lost a COO, and the Twitter deal is on shaky grounds
T3THICS is Monika & Marta’s weekly roundup of tech ethics news (and olds) - and our quick thoughts on them.
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Small Announcement:
As of this week, T3THICS will move to a modified summer schedule. We’ll still be sending you the same roundup of tech ethics news links but moving those to a bi-weekly cadence. On alternating weeks we’ll have longer analysis pieces that we’re really excited to share with you. This is our version of the famous European Out of Office messages: we know summer should be a bit slower, and we want to give that to ourselves and y’all at home. We can’t wait for you to read the cool stuff we have coming out in the next few months!
Monika’s Things:
The big news this week: Meta lost its COO, Sheryl Sandberg, who announced she was stepping down after a 14 year tenure at the company. She was pivotal in creating the ad business model and has garnered harsh criticism from tech ethics researchers as a result. Some have speculated her exposure in the mounting legal actions against Facebook may have been part of the reason. Her successor, Javi Olivan, may also represent a legal risk to the company due to his involvement and previous depositions:
Speaking of European OOOs, here’s an argument for bringing back the AOL Instant Messenger “away message” to reign in how digital communication may appear instantaneous, but is actually asynchronous and intrusive
As the Depp/Heard defamation trial concluded this week, a number of journalists, activists and domestic violence experts have spoken out about the misinformation, social media pile ons and other dark patterns that have emerged and potentially signal a bigger shift. Taylor Lorenz’ piece has a well rounded look at some of the potential consequences of TikTok creators disintermediating the news:
But while people who consume their news from content creators often believe it to be more trustworthy than mainstream media, “creators aren’t beholden to any editorial standards or journalistic norms,” Kat Tenbarge, a reporter at NBC News covering the trial tweeted. “In fact, they’re incentivized to break them, to fit the narrative and make money.” Media and influencers on the political right seized upon the cultural moment to make Depp a cause celebre, using their coverage to turn the trial into a referendum on the #MeToo movement.
Great read in Vice by Edward Ongweso Jr about the rise and fall of Softbank’s $100 billion Vision Fund that propped up the now famously monopolistic and unprofitable business models of Uber and WeWork
Tech’s WFH Woes continue: an engineer has sued Amazon for not covering WFH costs like home internet, electricity and more
An interesting piece by Reyhan Topal on data colonialism
Another day, another shady crypto story. This time it’s about a landlord who illegally held a security deposit in BTC and tried to stiff the tenant because of BTC’s recent crash
Also in crypto: a startup called SEXN wants to create a “sex-to-earn-crypto” app with ostensibly zero considerations for the privacy, ethics or unintended social harms
Instagram has launched Amber Alerts in the US and 24 other countries
Verge reports on the Canadian Government’s Office fo the Privacy Commissioner investigation into inappropriate data collection from donut giant Tim Horton’s app
Meanwhile, the USGov has brought the first insider trading case related to NFTs
AP reports on electronic warfare in Russia’s war against Ukraine
Great new paper alert: Luke Start and Jevan Hutson are set to release Physiognomic Artificial Intelligence:
…but the Bad AI Hype continues:
Exciting work to come that will surface the true human labour cost of algorithmically-driven feeds:
Looking forward to reading this paper estimating what volunteer reddit moderators would be paid if they were clickworkers. I frankly wasn't expecting the number to be this low, but maybe that reflects how badly commercial content moderation is compensated and supported.Very proud of this work with @hanlinliii and @bhecht! Our conservative estimates suggest that Reddit mods contribute over $3 mill USD/year of labor. These papers give voice to moderators by characterizing and quantifying labor that often happens behind the scenes. Please read/RT! https://t.co/6b1Lgz2PBIDr. Stevie Chancellor @snchancellorThere’s no such thing as apolitical tech: