Hi team --

Accountable Tech relies on support from concerned folks all around the country and the world. With your help, we were able to make our largest impact yet in 2022, and I wanted to share some of my favorite highlights from our work this year.

But before I do, I want to put in a plug for our end-of-year fundraising campaign. We’re only 89 donors away from hitting our grassroots goal, and your support has helped make accomplishments like these possible:

• Passing the California Age Appropriate Design Code – Accountable Tech collaborated with partners and youth organizations to pass a first-of-its-kind law in California that will require online platforms to prioritize young people’s safety and privacy by design and default. This bipartisan legislation offers a roadmap for other states to follow suit with greater protections for kids, teens, and young people online.
• Fighting Back Against Elon Musk’s Twitter – Although our campaign to stop Elon Musk from buying Twitter didn’t work, we immediately pivoted to an advertiser focused campaign, urging them to stop buying ads on the platform and fueling Elon’s decisions to roll back Twitter’s safeguards. Since we co-launched the #StopToxicTwitter campaign more than half of Twitter’s top 100 advertisers have stopped running ads on the platform in a major blow to the company’s revenue.
• Calling on Google to Protect the Privacy of Abortion Seekers – After the leak of the draft Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, we called on Google to stop collecting and retaining location data for the threat it poses to those seeking reproductive care. When Google announced a vague update to the location data retention policy for users who might visit an abortion clinic, we had questions. So our team set out to find answers and our resulting research shows that Google is still failing to meet its committed changes about location data deletion. We followed up by delivering over 160,000 petition signatures directly to Google HQ in DC and calling on them to finally stop collecting and retaining users’ location data.
• Elevating and Empowering Young People – We are supporting youth activists and organizations like the LOG OFF Movement by sharing the stories and the lived experiences of young people facing the challenges of Big Tech’s harms. We hosted a youth roundtable with Sen. Richard Blumenthal and partnered with young diverse digital creators to amplify their demands to rein in Big Tech.
• Taking on Big Tech’s Monopoly Power from Every Angle – As the European Union finalized the most significant global legislative package to rein in Big Tech’s societal harms and monopoly power, we worked with American leaders to rally support for this historic legislation that has already resulted in significant changes from companies like Apple. We’ve advocated for similar legislation in the U.S. In 2021 we filed a rulemaking petition urging the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to ban surveillance advertising as an unfair method of competition controlled by too few Big Tech companies. One year later, in August of 2022, the FTC "announced it is exploring rules to crack down on harmful commercial surveillance and lax data security” and cited our rulemaking petition in their announcement.

Our outsized impact this year was made possible by folks like you who joined Accountable Tech’s advocacy campaigns, spread the word to friends and family, and helped hold Big Tech companies to account.

So, can you pitch in a grassroots donation to continue this work into 2023 and beyond as we scale our impact? A gift of $5, $10, or $25 will support the successful rollout of our 2023 strategy so together we can continue protecting our digital information infrastructure from the likes of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

Thanks for pitching in, team. We couldn’t have done all of this important work to hold Big Tech monopolies accountable in 2022 without the power of people — like you! — behind us.

— Kenya, Digital Manager at Accountable Tech

Democracy depends on common truths. Social media giants are eroding our consensus reality and pushing democracy to the brink. Accountable Tech is fighting back by urging social media companies to serve the public good by strengthening the integrity of their platforms and our democracy. Make a donation to fund our work →

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