New Tech Transparency Project research demonstrates the need for sustained scrutiny of online platforms.
Campaign for Accountability
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** CfA's May 20, 2022 Newsletter
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This week, as Campaign for Accountability and the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) joined a coalition of advocacy organizations in the #MakeMarkListen ([link removed]) campaign to demand accountability from Meta’s upper management, TTP put out a series of reports demonstrating the need for sustained scrutiny of online platforms.
* A TTP report ([link removed]) exposed Facebook’s efforts to avoid increased oversight through its funding of the anti-regulatory dark money group, American Edge Project (AEP). After a year-long effort to track AEP’s spending across all advertising mediums in 2021, TTP worked with The Washington Post on an exposé ([link removed]) of the group to put its Big Tech influence tactics into context. The group’s Form 990 filings, which TTP uncovered and provided exclusively ([link removed]) to The Post, expose how a web of Facebook-funded grants pay for increased enthusiasm against antitrust legislation from AEP member groups, who regularly recycle the group’s talking points in op-eds and on social media to create the façade of widespread support.
* Another TTP investigation ([link removed]) revealed that Instagram remains a dangerous place for teens to find and connect with drug dealers, months after CEO Adam Mosseri was confronted by TTP’s original research ([link removed]) on the topic during his Senate testimony in December. The new findings show little has changed and it is still easy for a teen user to find drugs ranging from xanax to fentanyl on the platform, with some instances of Instagram's own algorithm recommending accounts claiming to sell drugs.
* Also this week, TTP worked with The New York Times to show that Facebook is monetizing the searches ([link removed]) of users trying to find videos of the recent livestreamed mass-shooting in Buffalo, New York. This finding shows that Meta is not only failing to remove these horrific videos from the platform, but is actively profiting from them.
+ Facebook’s failure to remove mass-shooting videos from the platform stretches back years. In 2020, TTP published a report ([link removed]) showing that videos of the 2019 mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand remained on the platform over a year after the attack.
+ Earlier this week, The New York Times confronted Facebook with the fact that three of the videos ([link removed]) identified in TTP’s 2020 report were still on the platform, more than two years after we revealed them, and three years after the attack.
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Be on the lookout for more updates about our work in the upcoming weeks. Thanks again for signing up to be a part of CfA!
Sincerely,
Michelle Kuppersmith
Executive Director, Campaign for Accountability
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