Google is in the middle of a six-month, $45 million contract to amplify propaganda with Netanyahu’s office. The contract describes Google as a “key entity” supporting the prime minister’s messaging.
By Jack Poulson and Lee Fang for Drop Site News on September 3, 2025
Grok is the chatbot made by xAI, a startup founded by Elon Musk, and is the generative AI solution that is powering X (née Twitter). It has recently gained a new power to generate photorealistic images, including those of celebrities. This is a problem as its ‘guardrails’ are lacking: it willingly generates racist and other deeply problematic images.
Continue reading “Racist Technology in Action: Grok’s total lack of safeguards against generating racist content”
Amid reports of creation of fake racist images, Signify warns problem will get ‘so much worse’ over the next year.
By Raphael Boyd for The Guardian on January 13, 2025
Government involvement in content moderation raises serious human rights concerns in every context. Since October 7, social media platforms have been challenged for the unjustified takedowns of pro-Palestinian content—sometimes at the request of the Israeli government—and a simultaneous failure to remove hate speech towards Palestinians. More specifically, social media platforms have worked with the Israeli Cyber Unit—a government office set up to issue takedown requests to platforms—to remove content considered as incitement to violence and terrorism, as well as any promotion of groups widely designated as terrorists.
By Jillian C. York and Paige Collings for Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on July 26, 2024
Ever since Elon Musk took over Twitter, I and many others have been looking for alternatives. Who wants to share a platform with the likes of Andrew Tate and Tommy Robinson?
By Zoe Williams for The Guardian on September 5, 2024
Black women whistleblowers not only jeopardize their professional prospects, experts say, but often face more intense backlash.
By Ese Olumhense for The Markup on March 13, 2024
Veel media en journalisten die de haat op X tegen Slimste mens-deelnemer Akwasi zo ferm veroordelen, spreken met dubbele tong, vindt OneWorld-hoofdredacteur Seada Nourhussen. Jarenlang droegen ze bij aan die haat, zonder het racisme te erkennen dat eraan ten grondslag ligt.
By Seada Nourhussen for OneWorld on January 12, 2024
Black Twitter is vital as a space for Black folk to create, maintain, and discuss the Black everyday in a way that reaffirms connection, and often joy.
From MSNBC News on July 17, 2023
The immanent demise of Twitter after Elon Musk’s takeover sparked an exodus of people leaving the platform, which is only expected to increase. The significant increase in hate speech, and general hostile atmosphere created by the erratic decrees by it’s owner (such as Trump’s reinstatement) made, in the New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb’s words, “remaining completely untenable”. This, often vocal, movement of people from the platform has sparked a debate on what people stand to loose and what the alternative is.
Continue reading “What’s at stake with losing (Black) Twitter and moving to (white) Mastodon?”
Two Black academics discuss the rationale behind leaving Twitter or going down with the ship.
By Chris Gilliard and Kishonna Gray for WIRED on December 13, 2022
I’m sure you’ve seen the tweets, and the think pieces about how much worse Twitter is gonna get. My friend Justin Hendrix mentioned losing a few hundred followers in a case of a few hours, after Elon brought a sink into Twitter headquarters (which is the lamest bit I’ve ever seen- massive fail of a dad joke). A huge chunk of people I follow now have their Mastodon handles in their Twitter names. It’s a chunk of the influencers, academics, activists, and civil society folks- the researchers who I follow, who are actively mourning, and hand wringing, about the destruction that is to come, already in the throes of grief of the twitter that was. But the thing is- all of these folks are white.
By Caroline Sinders for Medium on October 31, 2022
Concerned about how seeing images of Black people dead and dying would affect young social media users, I conducted a study to understand how digitally mediated traumas were impacting Black girls’ mental and emotional wellness.
By Tiera Tanksley for SAGE Perspectives on January 4, 2023
Social media app, Spill, designed by former Twitter employees, Alphonzo “Phonz” Terrell and DeVaris Brown, is becoming the chosen alternative for many.
By Kumba Kpakima for POCIT on December 21, 2022
In the past few years, Black people have been inundated with the ways that technology hates us just as much as white supremacy does (then again, technology is an extension and weapon of white supremacy in many ways).
By Lelia Hampton for Lelia Hampton on December 13, 2020
Now that Elon Musk has bought the social media platform, some users fear a unique form of Black witnessing will be lost.
By Yusra Farzan for The Guardian on November 30, 2022
A conversation with Dr. Johnathan Flowers about Elon Musk’s changes at Twitter and the dynamics on Mastodon, the decentralized alternative.
By Johnathan Flowers and Justin Hendrix for Tech Policy Press on November 23, 2022
The open-source social network gained millions of new users following Twitter’s takeover. While some of its features could improve the quality of public discourse, disadvantaged communities might be excluded.
By Nicolas Kayser-Bril for AlgorithmWatch on November 30, 2022
In this issue of Logic, issue editor, J. Khadijah Abdurahman and André Brock Jr., associate professor of Black Digital Studies at Georgia Institute of Technology and the author of Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures converse about the history of disinformation from reconstruction to the present, and discuss “the unholy trinity of whiteness, modernity, and capitalism”.
Continue reading “Disinformation and anti-Blackness”
A conversation about the unholy trinity of whiteness, modernity, and capitalism.
By André Brock for Logic on December 25, 2021
Our very own Naomi Appelman was interviewed for Atlas, a Dutch television show about science and current affairs. She talked about her research into what laws and regulations democracies should develop to ensure that large technology companies don’t unnecessarily exclude people.
Continue reading “Regulating big tech to make sure nobody is excluded”
We have written about the racist cropping algorithm that Twitter uses, and have shared how Twitter tried to fix the symptoms. Twitter also instituted an ‘algorithmic bug bounty’, asking researchers to prove bias in their algorithms.
Continue reading “Proof for Twitter’s bias toward lighter faces”
Twitter opened its image cropping algorithm and gave prizes to people who could find biases in it. While interesting in itself, the program mostly reveals the impotence of regulators.
By Nicolas Kayser-Bril for AlgorithmWatch on August 17, 2021
Company pays $3,500 to Bogdan Kulynych who demonstrated flaw in image cropping software.
By Alex Hern for The Guardian on August 10, 2021
Er zitten vooroordelen in een algoritme van Twitter, dat ontdekten onderzoekers tijdens een algorithmic bias bounty-competitie op Defcon. Zo worden onder meer foto’s van ouderen en mensen met een beperking weggefilterd in Twitters croptool.
By Stephan Vegelien for Tweakers on August 10, 2021
Vox host Joss Fong wanted to know… “Why do we think tech is neutral? How do algorithms become biased? And how can we fix these algorithms before they cause harm?”
Continue reading “Are we automating racism?”
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok failing to act on most reported anti-Jewish posts, says study.
By Maya Wolfe-Robinson for The Guardian on August 1, 2021
Many of us assume that tech is neutral, and we have turned to tech as a way to root out racism, sexism, or other “isms” plaguing human decision-making. But as data-driven systems become a bigger and bigger part of our lives, we also notice more and more when they fail, and, more importantly, that they don’t fail on everyone equally. Glad You Asked host Joss Fong wants to know: Why do we think tech is neutral? How do algorithms become biased? And how can we fix these algorithms before they cause harm?
From YouTube on March 31, 2021
The Plug and Fast Company looked at what happened to the 3.8 billion dollars that US-based tech companies committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion as their response to the Black Lives Matter protests.
Continue reading “Tech companies poured 3.8 billion USD into racial justice, but to what avail?”
Twitter just made a change to the way it displays images that has visual artists on the social network celebrating.
By Taylor Hatmaker for TechCrunch on May 6, 2021
The company is considering how its use of machine learning may reinforce existing biases.
By Anna Kramer for Protocol on April 14, 2021
A recent, yet already classic, example of racist technology is Twitter’s photo cropping machine learning algorithm. The algorithm was shown to consistently preference white faces in the cropped previews of pictures.
Continue reading “Racist technology in action: Cropping out the non-white”
Yup, still racist.
By Anthony Tordillos for Twitter on December 7, 2020
Philosopher Dr. Natalie Ashton delves into the epistemic pitfalls of Facebook and the epistemic merits of Twitter.
By Natalie Ashton for Logically on November 26, 2020
Insiders say Dataminr’s “algorithmic” Twitter search involves human staffers perpetuating confirmation biases.
By Sam Biddle for The Intercept on October 21, 2020
Users highlight examples of feature automatically focusing on white faces over black ones.
By Alex Hern for The Guardian on September 21, 2020
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