Flaming Out

Was progressive think-tank Demos right to fire poverty policy blogger Matt Bruenig Friday for his use of inappropriate and bullying language on his Twitter account? If you must read one piece about the Twitter war that broke out over the last few days, involving Bruenig, Center for American Progress head Neera Tanden, Nation writer Joan Walsh, and a horde of Twitter trolls, make it Matthew Yglesias‘ report for Vox. He does a good job of explaining the explosive undercurrents of the conflict, though in my humble opinion he understates the obnoxiousness of Bruenig’s online persona, which culminated in his calling Tanden a “scumbag.”

Here’s Demos communications director Liz Flowers explaining the think-tank’s decision to part ways with Bruenig. Even if your organization doesn’t have or think it needs a social media policy, this is a cautionary tale for the age of Twitter-fueled flame wars.

There’s evidence that trolls from the depths of 4chan are also having a field day playing Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters off each other.

Life in Facebookistan: The New York Times media columnist Jim Rutenberg takes Facebook to task for failing to be transparent about how its algorithm decides what is news. Since I’ve been on this hobby horse for a long time, let’s just try a counter-factual. Is the New York Times transparent enough about how it decides what is news? (I for one would like to know how its editors decided that the right way to refer to Donald Trump’s racism was to call it “a reductive approach to ethnicity.”)

Tech and politics: The Bernie Sanders campaign built this microsite to tout its record-breaking small-donor fundraising: More than 2.4 million individual donors have made more than 7.6 million contributions totaling $212 million through April 30.

Speaking of money in politics, ExploreCampaignFinance.com, the passion project built by programmer Solomon Kahn via a Kickstarter, has just launched. The site offers beautiful visualization by sector and allows you to drill down into every single donation made to a politician or PAC, and invites users to submit their findings to politicians’ pages.

Our Christine Cupaiuolo reports on how a recent UK political debate that made use of instant audience feedback in a specially designed studio worked to produce a more engaging and dynamic program. It helped to be in a high-tech studio built by McLaren called the Thought Leadership Centre. “If James Bond called a meeting, it would be held here,” she notes.

Crypto-wars, continued: Critics of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden regularly argue that he should have tried to blow the whistle using internal channels, but as this report in The Guardian by Mark Hertsgaard shows, an earlier whistleblower who did just that, Thomas Drake, was hounded by NSA insiders for trying to do the right thing. Hertsgaard’s story is based on a new whistleblower, John Crane, a senior Pentagon official who says his colleagues repeatedly broke the law in order to persecute Drake.

Digital divide: Four out of ten Detroiters lack broadband, which means they face a steep climb as they seek jobs and education, as Cecila Kang reports for the New York Times. As she notes, “Applications for Detroit’s summer jobs program for youth and young adults are only taken online. Most listings on Michigan’s biggest private and public jobs site require email, uploads of résumés and online tests. College financial aid, unemployment benefits and public food assistance programs have shifted to online systems as fewer government offices offer in-person or phone services.”

This is civic tech: Writing for Civicist, guest contributor Willow Brugh extends an invitation to the Humanitarian Technology Festival, taking place June 4-5 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

Your moment of zen: When Candace Payne of Texas decided to share her joy in buying herself a new Chewbacca mask via Facebook Live, could she have imagined she’d reach 132 million views in just three days?