Diversity

Tech and politics: The Open Debate Coalition, which we are a partner of, got a nice call out from debate moderator Chris Wallace during last night’s presidential debate (as the preface to him using one of its top voted questions, on guns), but as David Leonhardt points out for the New York Times, the debates overall failed to cover many important issues (compared to how much time was spent on political jousting). Most notably, there wasn’t a single question on climate change (which was fourth on the coalition’s top voted list).

Related: Our Christine Cupaiuolo reports on the rise of real-time debate fact checking tools in her latest Rethinking Debates round-up.

Could the election be hacked? Writing for Politico, Darren Sameulsohn and Hadas Gold look at how a hack on the Associated Press’ live results tally could wreak havoc.

You can now endorse political candidates on Facebook, so your friends can see who you planning to vote for, Alex Heath reports for Business Insider.

Facebook board member Peter Thiel’s continued support for Donald Trump—he just gave him another $1.25 million— is driving a deep wedge in the tech industry, Natasha Tiku and William Alden report for BuzzFeed. “This is someone who wants a fascist, racist sexual predator to be president of the United States,” says Catherine Bracy, co-founder and executive director of the Oakland-based TechEquity Collaborative (and longtime friend of Civic Hall). “If that’s the kind of judgment you want on your board or advising your company, that’s fine. You’re free to keep associating with him. I, and others who are under threat from a Trump presidency, am also free to judge you for it.”

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook is defending Thiel’s presence on his board as an example of diversity (the political kind), report David Streitfeld and Mike Isaac for the New York Times.

Marco Arment, the lead developer of Tumblr and creator of Instapaper, is criticizing Y Combinator, where Thiel is a partner, writing on his blog: “We have so many diversity and hostility problems (that the industry is finally working to fix) that Y Combinator should be leading the way toward inclusive, progressive solutions. Instead, they’re defending the large-scale support of racism, bigotry and sexual assault by an influential partner and adviser to their start-ups as its own form of ‘diversity.’”

This is civic tech: Here’s a nice update from Nathan Schneider on “the rise of a cooperatively-owned internet,” in The Nation.

Related: On November 13th, Civic Hall is hosting an unconference connected to this year’s Building the Cooperative Internet,” conference. RSVP here.

The third annual Silicon Harlem conference is tomorrow. You can still register here.

Civic Hall Labs is recruiting a second round of volunteers for its Delta.NYC project. We’re looking for a range of digital professionals in NYC to collaboratively use digital know-how and execute well-scoped, short-term projects for NYC nonprofits.

Life in Facebookistan: Caitlin Dewey of the Washington Post reports on how Facebook’s Trending News algorithm often produces bizarre results.

Life in Emailistan: Need more proof that email chains are a terrible way to make team decisions? Farhad Manjoo deftly mines the hacked Clinton emails to make the point.