John, As I reflect on our latest campaigns, there is one key thing that stands out: we are writing the rules to regulate social media companies, and protecting millions of people all over the world from the harms of Big Tech. From increasing Apple’s transparency about its supply chain, to writing the EU regulation on AI – our community is having massive influence on this important and mostly unregulated sector, and I couldn’t be more proud of what we’re achieving together. See below for the details, and check out this instagram post with the key highlights! We’re writing the rules for Chatbot regulation As news of ChatGPT was exploding around the world, we were busy digging into the European Union’s proposal to regulate Artificial Intelligence. To no one’s surprise, the leading ChatGPT company OpenAI was lobbying hard to make sure chatbots were excluded from the regulation – opening the door for chatbots to spread disinformation, hate speech, and other harmful content – without any accountability from the tech companies. Very soon, we could see “Generative AI” like ChatGPT replace classic search engines – making our goal of ensuring Chatbots are included in the AI regulation even more pertinent. After doing a deep analysis of the European Parliament’s proposed policy, we drafted amendments to include Generative AI. We held a series of advocacy meetings to deliver our policy demands, and we brought along hundreds of personal messages that our community wrote urging EU officials to adopt Generative AI in its policy.
We then led an open letter signed by dozens of civil society groups across Europe backing our amendments and giving our demands even more power. All of this leadership that we were bringing on AI regulation landed us an invitation to personally brief President Macron on the key measures lawmakers must take to mitigate the threats of AI! Then, after months of policy analysis and delivering our demands in pin-pointed ways, the EU Parliament voted to adopt Ekō’s Generative AI amendments in its final text!
The European Parliament’s Rapporteur Brando Benifei, said: “The inclusion of Generative AI in the European Parliament’s final text on AI regulation is an important achievement that was helped by the work of the Ekō community. Also thanks to your commitment, the effort of some lawmakers like me to convince the others that this was needed had been successful.” The law still faces the EU’s Trialogue process between its three main bodies, and we will keep pushing to make sure Chatbots are adopted into the final AI law. We made Apple address forced labour in its supply chain Apple is deeply dependent on operations in China – with 80% of the iPhone 14 being made in “iPhone City” Zhengzhou. So when we found out that the government of China’s genocidal forced labour program is forcing hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs to work in horrific conditions, we found an opportunity to have an impact through Apple. After launching a global petition, we co-filed a shareholder resolution demanding that Apple provide transparency about Uyghur forced labour in its supply chain.
We worked closely with the Uyghur community to deliver the resolution at the company’s AGM, and we talked to major Apple investors – urging them to vote in favour. The resolution was covered by leading financial media and we published videos targeting the company – including one spoof video of CEO Tim Cook, and another street-interviews video conducted by a Uyghur activist.
All this pressure resulted in a third of Apple investors voting in favour of our resolution, and us entering direct talks with Apple. After 3 years of public pressure, direct advocacy, and persistence, the company finally agreed to provide greater transparency about its supply chain and the checks it has in place to eliminate forced labour. This alone won’t save the Uyghur community, but for Apple to agree to take serious measures to eliminate forced labour in its supply chain will certainly help make the oppression of Uyghurs and other marginalized communities less tenable. We’re writing the rules for tech in Brazil Our reports were covered by major media, and created a strong basis for direct advocacy with newly elected President Lula’s cabinet. His own cabinet advisor used one of our reports in his opening remarks to the Supreme Court in their case to regulate Big Tech. We then did a policy analysis of the draft bill to regulate the tech industry, and proposed several amendments which have made it into the latest version of the bill. Thanks to our campaigning, our investigations are also being used by the Ministry of Justice in its action against the tech industry. We’ve now become one of the main civil society groups that the Lula government is counting on for expert analysis on Big Tech regulation. And Ekō members have been at the center of this work from the beginning – from putting pressure on the tech companies ahead of the election, tweeting directly at members of Parliament, joining Twitter spaces to debate the topic with top officials gathering tens of thousands of listeners, and much much more! All of this progress in Brazil earned us major media attention – with Campaign Director Flora Rebello Arduini appearing on CNN and Brazil’s most watched news channel TV Globo.
This media attention came ahead of the Nobel Summit, where Flora represented our community on a panel about disinformation alongside other tech experts. The panel was viewed by Nobel laureates and academics from all over the world.
Regulating the tech industry is by far one of the greatest and most important challenges we face today. Social media companies are actively spreading harmful disinformation that threatens everything from tackling climate change, to protecting our democracies and public health. Because of this, our fight to rein in tech companies is becoming more urgent than ever. Let’s keep it up, and help protect both our planet and future generations to come.  Thanks for everything that you do, |
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