CfA's October 2, 2020 Newsletter

This Week:

• Petition Calling on Facebook to Stop Group Recommendations: This week, CfA's Tech Transparency Project signed on to a petition created by Accountable Tech to encourage Facebook to stop Group recommendations on its platform until the U.S election results are certified. Facebook's recommendation algorithm often serves only to entrench users within their pre-existing beliefs, even if those beliefs are rooted in misinformation. As the election draws closer, the risk of Facebook's own tools contributing to the spread of misinformation and extremism grows greater.
  • Sign the petition!

What We're Reading:

• Lack of Oversight and Transparency Leave Amazon Employees in the Dark on COVID-19: "Amazon’s lack of transparency, combined with the lack of federal protections for U.S. workers who contract infectious diseases in the workplace, make it almost impossible to track the spread of COVID-19 at one of America’s largest employers during a coronavirus-led boom in online retail. This has left some of its 500,000 warehouse workers at its 110 U.S. fulfillment centers — deemed essential during lockdown — attempting to fill the information gap." (NBC News, September 30)
• Right-wing Voices are Dominating Facebook After the First Presidential Debate: "Conservatives have complained that social media companies are unfairly censoring their posts, but on Facebook their posts regularly outperform those of the competition. According to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned analytics tool, 20 of the top 30 posts with the most interactions, including nine of the top 10, came from right-leaning accounts, including posts from firebrand Ben Shapiro, Trump’s account and Dan Bongino, a Trump acolyte." (Washington Post, September 30)
• Long-concealed Records Show Trump's Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance: "As the president wages a re-election campaign that polls say he is in danger of losing, his finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million." (NYTimes, September 27)

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