Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
- —Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
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Life in Facebookistan: The company has invited two outside reviews, one of its impact on underrepresented communities and communities of color, to be led by civil rights leader Laura Murphy, and the other on whether it has an anti-conservative bias, to be led by former Arizona Senator Jon Kyl and colleagues Covington and Burling, the lobbying powerhouse, Sara Fischer reports for Axios.
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The civil rights audit is a response to pressure from a broad coalition of racial justice organizations, who welcomed the decision. “Right now, Facebook is not a safe platform for communities of color. Black activists regularly have content removed that mentions racism or white supremacy. Law enforcement agencies like Immigrations and Custom Enforcement access the Facebook data of immigrants without due process or cause. Perceived Muslim and Arab users on the platform face constant threats and harassment.” said Malkia Cyril, executive director and co-founder of the Center for Media Justice. “At the same time, White supremacists have been allowed to thrive on Facebook, violating civil rights and promoting hate speech without repercussions. It’s time for platform accountability. It’s time for data protection.”
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Obviously Facebook likes Walt Whitman. As Gizmodo’s Rhett Jones points out, Kyl once said on the Senate floor that “performing abortions is “well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does,” and when his office was confronted over the inaccuracy of that statement, it replied that his floor comments were “not intended to be a factual statement but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, an organization that receives millions in taxpayer dollars, does subsidize abortions.” If this the range of “truth-telling” that the company believes qualifies someone to perform an audit of its political biases, what should we make of whatever Kyl reports? Jones notes that fortunately, since Kyl is now a lobbyist for hire, he will probably give Facebook whatever it is looking for.
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Related: Cambridge Analytica and its parent company, the SCL group, are shutting down, Gizmodo’s Melanie Ehrenkranz reports.
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But, as Ben Collins, Anna Scheccter and Vladimir Banic of NBC News report, many of Cambridge Analytica’s senior executives are “preparing to staff up a separate data firm” under the name Emerdata. Rebekah Mercer and her sister Jennifer have joined its board, and in her filing Mercer listed her address as the same one used by CA in New York, they note.
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Monopoly man: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is so rich he wants to burn his billions on space exploration, but his company just announced that it is halting all construction in its downtown Seattle expansion in response to a pending city council vote to impose a per-employee tax of $500 per year which is aimed at generated $75 million to pay for more homeless services and affordable housing, Matt Day and Daniel Beekman report for The Seattle Times.
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Brave new world: Set aside some time to read Aaron Timms rollicking memoir in the Baffler of his time inside AI start-up Predata, which is trying to use social media archival data and machine learning to predict all sorts of future events, ranging from terrorist attacks and election outcomes to financial market moves.
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This is civic tech: Writing for Technical.ly, Kim Lyons profiles Pittsburgh’s decentralized civic tech community.
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Apply: The folks at Meedan, which builds digital tools for global journalism and translation, are looking to hire a user experience designer.