Archive: Year: 2021

A tiny provision of the act recently passed by the House gives local newsrooms a major tax breakPhoto by Bank Phrom on UnsplashThe official summary of the Build Back Better Act, which just passed the House of Representatives, is startling in its understatement. It begins: “This bill provides funding, establishes programs, and otherwise modifies provisions relating to a broad array of areas, including education, labor, child care, health care, taxes, immigration, and the environment.” A broad array indeed: the law increases our investments in safe drinking water, energy efficiency, electric vehicles, public health infrastructure, housing and rental assistance, cybersecurity, tribal infrastructure, drought relief, wildfire prevention, small business aid, public transit, and veterans services, along with providing up to six semesters of free...

Allowing elected officials and government workers to be intimidated into resigning is how fascism slowly winsThe Boogaloo Boys stand on the steps of the Capitol Building during a rally on October 17, 2020 in Lansing, Michigan. The Boogaloo boys attempted to distance themselves from the Wolverine Watchmen who plotted to kidnap Michigans Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Two of the men arrested in the plot were affiliated with the Boogaloo Boys. (Photo by Seth Herald/Getty Images)A little more than six months ago, the town of Bennington, Vermont, paid $137,500 to Kiah Morris and apologized publicly for failing to protect her and her family from racist threats and harassment. It took these steps following a report by the town’s human rights commission finding that...

“In a lot of ways Facebook is more like a government than a traditional company. . .” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook post, July 7, 2016Map of global connections between users of Facebook and its other platformsFour years ago, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, announced that “the Facebook community is now officially 2 billion people.” It took the platform a little more than eight years to reach one billion users, and just less than five years to get to the second billion. Now it is estimated to be more than 2.9 billion. Close to two-thirds of its users visit the site at least once a day.It’s not just dominant in the United States. In many other countries, including Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain,...

Like nuclear energy, social media generates power, but its use also requires strict guardrails.Photo by Vladyslav Cherkasenko on Unsplash“Facebook has taken Big Tobacco’s playbook.”— Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), September 30, 2021.“A part of me feels like I’m interviewing the head of a tobacco company right now.” — CNN’s Brian Stelter to Facebook VP Nick Clegg, October 3, 2021.“Facebook is the Big Tobacco of our generation.”— The Real Facebook Oversight Board, last week.It’s understandable why politicians, journalists and advocates have started referring to Facebook, ahem, Meta, as a tobacco company. Not just because the company is trying the Philip Morris, I mean Altria, trick of renaming itself to shed its bad reputation. One of the things that Facebook shares with tobacco companies is that...

In some places, progressives pushed their agenda forward, in others, conservatives wrested controlVirginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, who lost his re-election bid to Republican Glenn Youngkin, during an election night event on Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021. Photo: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesThe sky is not falling. No more than it was the day before yesterday.Tuesday’s elections offer a clear message for the center-left majority of Americans who elected Joe Biden in 2020: if you want to change the direction of the country, voting isn’t enough. You have to get, and stay, organized.In places where Democratic candidates and organizations worked in tandem, real gains were made this week. Likewise for Republicans. In places where candidates or organizations overreached and failed to build a broad...

(The Croton Aqueduct Trail, November 2015; author photo)“What is to be done?” I think about this question a lot. Not what is to be said, but done. A lot of writing about the contemporary world focuses on telling us how bad a problem is, or who’s at fault. OK, yes: the world is broken, politicians are often corrupted, the crises of inequality, racism and climate are intensifying. But what is to be done about that? Changing consciousness is indeed part of changing the world, but movements for change have never succeeded solely by changing consciousness, or insisting that everyone share the same world view before we act together.People are messy, imperfect, confused, distracted and often overworked. And yet, we have often...

Mark Zuckerberg with fellow tech moguls having dinner with President Obama, in happier daysLast week, I finished reading Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang’s new book An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination. By coincidence, the day I put the book down was the same day that the Federal Trade Commission filed its amended complaint against the company in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, responding to Judge James Boasberg’s June 28 ruling rejecting its initial filing. So I read that too, along with the original FTC action against from Facebook from last year. If you ask me, the FTC complaint is far more eye-opening and damning.Yes, Frenkel and Kang offer some shocking new revelations about Facebook to...

Jake Angeli (Qanon Shamon), seen holding a Qanon sign at the intersection of Bell Rd and 75th Ave in Peoria, Arizona, on 2020 October 15One of the books I finished reading recently is Mike Rothschild’s The Storm is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult and Conspiracy Theory of Everything. It’s a pretty solid overview of the phenomenon, though Rothschild focuses a tad more on the evolution Q online persona than the whole movement. But I still learned a lot from the book. My main takeaways:1) The QAnon conspiracy theory (which, remember, roughly 15% of Americans believe in) has thrived in part because of how physically isolated people have become in the digital age, and it took off even further...

Friday, civic designer Libby Falck shared her vision for bringing human centered design to the world of political organizing, and specifically to how campaigns use tech to engage volunteers. She had some tough things to say about her experience as a field organizer in Wisconsin in 2020 working with a group called Organizing Together.“Nothing mattered more to me than winning in Wisconsin, and the pandemic presented unprecedented needs that digital organizing was uniquely positioned to answer,” Falck wrote. “Unfortunately, I quickly learned that our leadership team’s top priority was not to support volunteers, but to deliver big, flashy numbers that impress funders. Claims that ‘we crushed those dials’ (regardless of the connection rate or impact of the calls being made)...

Photo by Sophie Franchi of a section of a large chalk mural by Joseph White for A Walk in the Park Cafe in historic Firestone Park.A few weeks ago, I got together with Chris Horne, the founder and publisher of The Devil Strip, a local culture and arts magazine serving the city of Akron, Ohio, for a conversation about the potential of news cooperatives like his to revive and strengthen local civic life. As we have become a “disinformation society” where tens of millions of Americans are highly susceptible to false news, conspiracies, junk information and spectacle, I’ve grown more convinced that quality news has to be supported and valued as a form of public infrastructure. The same way we...