techactivism

[techactivism]

Interesting

[techactivism]

Want to use technology for the public good? The #MoreThanCode report (2018) distills a lot of data into what works and what doesn't. 

Practitioners identified the following six key threats to the communities they work with: state violence and surveillance; politically-motivated targeted digital attacks; marginalization based on race, class, gender identity, and sexual orientation; unequal access to digital technology; unaccountable corporate infrastructure; and limited resources. Additionally, practitioners pointed out that these threats, for the most part, are not new: they are long-standing systemic issues, amplified by new tools and platforms. For example, in the case of surveillance, practitioners noted that well-meaning white technologists have secured most of the available resources with narratives about “new” threats, even though Black, Indigenous, Muslim, Latinx, and Queer/Trans communities have always faced state surveillance in the United States. 

[techactivism]

When Twitter changed the scope of its blocking functionality on December 12th, 2013, they made it easier for low-grade harassers to pursue their targets. The change allowed blocked users to continue to “follow” their targets, and to interact with their target’s content by retweeting and favoriting it. Previously, these types of interactions were not permitted by blocked users. In attempting to solve the problem of users being retaliated against for blocking, Twitter missed other ways that harassers operate on their service. Retweeting, in particular, is often used by harassers to expose the target’s content to the friends of the harasser – potentially subjecting the target to a new wave of harassment. With the blocking functionality changed to work as “mute”, targets lost the ability to stop their harassers from retweeting them.

When the unannounced change was noticed, users and commentators argued that a determined harasser could have always copied-and-pasted a target’s tweets, set up new accounts, or otherwise worked around the existing blocking functionality, and that the original blocking functionality represented a false sense of security. These arguments ignored the value of that functionality for dealing with unmotivated, low-grade and opportunistic harassers…

Twitter responded quickly to the massive wave of criticism which emerged in large part from marginalized communities, who are disproportionately affected by online abuse. My contribution to the discussion alone saw nearly 9,000 pageviews. In a blog post explaining that they had reverted to the original functionality, Twitter VP of Product Michael Sippey explained that the change had been an effort to protect users who experienced retaliation from users they had blocked. The mistake that Twitter made was in thinking that this retaliation was because of the blocking functionality itself, rather than an all-too-typical response when people - particularly women - attempt to enforce boundaries. Unfortunately, more motivated harassers would not likely step down their campaigns given either implementation.

[techactivism]

I just started listening to this podcast, The Intersection of Things, hosted by Marianela Ramos Capelo & Ruth Coustick-Deal and it’s incredible. It is “about technology and human lives on the Internet, all with an intersectional feminist twist [...] with the Internet, with gender, with race, and sexuality”.

Here is their latest episode: 

“Who do we put up on our 'rockstar' pedestals? How does genius status and disruption ideology in the tech sector create the conditions for workplace harassment and abuse? "Move fast, and break things" was Facebook's motto -  does the attitude include people too? We interview whistleblower, security expert and all-round badass Leigh Honeywell for her wisdom on these challenging questions, and talk about our experiences with power dynamics in the tech sector. Content warning: This episode contains discussions of sexual abuse and bullying.”

[techactivism]

In the nearly 25 years that EFF has been defending digital rights, our belief in the promise of the Internet has only grown stronger. The digital world frees users from many limits on communication and creativity that exist in the offline world. But it is also an environment that reflects the problems in wider society and grants them new dimensions. Harassment is one of those problems.

[techactivism]

A quick guide of internet safety tips before sharing your #MeToo story to protect against hacking, doxxing and other online harassment. 

[techactivism]

What do you call it when employers use Facebook’s advertising platform to show certain job ads only to men or just to people between the ages of 25 and 36?

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"When you don't have that diversity of experience and opinion, you get people thinking that the kind of harassment that women get online is an edge case as opposed to … more than half of your users," Galperin said Thursday during a keynote address at CyberStarts Boston, hosted by Kaspersky Lab. 

Most of the people running social media platforms are well intentioned and interested in protecting people, Galerpin said, but just aren't sure how to go about doing that. Too often, Galperin said, only middle-class white men are in the room when major privacy, security or user protection decisions are being made, resulting in tools that predominantly address risks faced by that demographic group. 

[techactivism]

It’s one thing to willingly install Alexa in your home. It’s another when publicly owned infrastructure — streets, bridges, parks and plazas — is Alexa, so to speak. There’s no opting out of public space, or government services, for which Sidewalk Labs appears eager to provide an IT platform. An integral component of the proposal for Quayside is an identity management system: a “portal through which each resident accesses public services,” whether library cards, drivers’ license renewals or healthcare.

Who will own the data streaming from sensors in every park bench, lamppost and dumpster in Quayside? No one at Sidewalk Labs, nor in local government, has given a straight answer to that question yet.

Wylie doesn’t see it as a topic for debate. “Data produced by the public should be publicly owned and managed transparently,” she said. “A lot of the urban problems that smart-city projects propose to address don’t require a technological solution. Toronto’s affordable housing crisis isn’t going to be solved with more data — it’s political will that’s lacking.

[techactivism]

From mass surveillance of political dissidents in Thailand to spyware attacks on journalists in Mexico, cyberattacks against civil society organizations have become a persistent problem in recent years,” says Steve Weber, Faculty Director of CLTC. “While journalists, activists, and others take steps to protect themselves, such as installing firewalls and anti-virus software, they often lack the technical ability or capital to establish protections better suited to the threats they face, including phishing. Too few organizations and resources are available help them expand their cybersecurity capabilities.