2021
Accountable Tech has recently filed a petition for an FTC rulemaking that would ban “surveillance advertising” as an “unfair method of competition.” The group cites the ad practices of surveillance ad giants like Facebook, Google and Amazon.
Victoria Vinall This sharp contrast between the naming rights and the amount of funding dedicated to the metaverse was pointed out by @Accountabletech on Twitter. Accountable Tech is a not-for-profit and is all about taking on big companies like Facebook and Twitter, basically, holding big tech accountable.
Victoria Vinall It's pretty rich for a company to roll out new protections and proposals to protect kids online just hours before a congressional hearing, when they've known about these harms for years according to their own internal research.
Zach Praiss Facebook is the top spender on lobbying in D.C. They do exactly the opposite of what Mark Zuckerberg says he supports in public when Facebook says they support government regulation.
Zach Praiss "A coalition of advocacy groups — including Fairplay, Accountable Tech, the Center for Digital Democracy and Common Sense — are today launching Designed With Kids in Mind, a campaign calling for a design code to protect children online."
Kenya Juarez "'I think in general Facebook, unfortunately — as born out in the Facebook papers and documented by their own researchers — is willing to make tremendous sacrifices on as far as societal costs in order to maximize their own profits,' Jesse Lehrich, the co-founder of Accountable Tech."
Kenya Juarez "Accountable Tech has launched a database that compiles news outlets’ coverage of the Facebook Papers leaked by Haugen."
Kenya Juarez "'We are writing to encourage your offices to focus next on the monopoly power wielded by Big Tech,' a coalition of 13 groups, including Accountable Tech, the American Economic Liberties Project and Demand Progress, said in a letter this morning to Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer."
Kenya Juarez “I do think they’ve burnt a lot of bridges,” said Jesse Lehrich, the co-founder of advocacy group Accountable Tech.
Kenya Juarez "In this op-ed, Gen-Z for Change and Accountable Tech calls on Facebook to release all of its internal research on the effects of Instagram on teen mental health."
Kenya Juarez We're seeing growing momentum in Congress for legislation to rein in Big Tech's harms.
Zach Praiss Each of these platforms use so many of the same design tactics as Instagram, which have been shown to negatively harm kids according to even their own internal research.
Zach Praiss It’s time for Facebook to release the remainder of its internal research on the effects Instagram has on young people. We stand ready to support all efforts to build a safer space for all of us.
Zach Praiss "Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of advocacy group called Accountable Tech, told POLITICO that "it is a fatal flaw of Facebook as a company that their team in charge of lobbying governments clearly is empowered to intervene on product and content decisions in ways that make it impossible to do good work."
Kenya Juarez "'It is a fatal flaw of Facebook as a company that their team in charge of lobbying governments clearly is empowered to intervene on product and content decisions in ways that make it impossible to do good work,' said Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of advocacy group Accountable Tech and former spokesperson for Hillary Clinton."
Kenya Juarez "Accountable Tech is launching Main Street Against Big Tech, a project aimed at highlighting the impacts of major tech companies on small business owners."
Kenya Juarez "But counter to the warm and fuzzy anecdotes that Big Tech has rolled out over the years, some business owners struggle with relying so heavily on massive, opaque corporations and often have little recourse if things go wrong. Those struggles are the kind of thing that tech watchdog group Accountable Tech wants to draw attention to with its new awareness push, 'Main Street Against Big Tech.'”
Kenya Juarez Accountable Tech launched “Main Street Against Big Tech,” a six-figure national campaign and storytelling effort to demonstrate the variety of ways in which Big Tech squeeze and exploit small businesses across the country.
Zach Praiss Congress can pass a historic bipartisan package of antitrust bills to rein in Big Tech's abuses of monopoly power.
Zach Praiss This is what damage control looks like. This is exactly what Philip Morris did in the past and oil companies have done the same in the past.
Zach Praiss "I’d be shocked if this Congress manages to pass a sweeping federal privacy law,” said Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of Accountable Tech, a progressive-leaning nonprofit dedicated to reigning in social-media giants. “But I do think bills like the KIDS Act that take direct aim at those manipulative features are suddenly in play.”The Wall Street Journal: "I’d be shocked if this Congress manages to pass a sweeping federal privacy law,” said Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of Accountable Tech, a progressive-leaning nonprofit dedicated to reigning in social-media giants. “But I do think bills like the KIDS Act that take direct aim at those manipulative features are suddenly in play.”
Kenya Juarez "More than 40 human rights organizations have launched HowToStopFacebook.org, a campaign calling on legislators to investigate the company using subpoena power...Members include Fight for the Future, Accountable Tech, the Center for Digital Democracy and Fairplay."
Kenya Juarez Amid historic polarization in Washington, this bipartisan show of force sends an unmistakable message that the era of impunity is over.
Zach Praiss There are a lot of similarities between Big Tech and Big Tobacco, but Big Tech's harms are more pervasive and far-reaching.
Zach Praiss I think this is Facebook's attempt to stave off regulation. This rollout from Facebook is a PR play. If they were really interested in helping kids, they would have done these changes years ago.
Zach Praiss Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of the left-leaning advocacy group Accountable Tech, said he’s not banking on lawmakers advancing new facial recognition and biometric rules this Congress."
Kenya Juarez Bloomberg: "According to Rishi Bharwani, policy director for Accountable Tech, a group that advocates for reforms to social media, 'these companies are so large that no single legislative intervention will fully mitigate their societal harms.'”
Kenya Juarez “It’s the focus on the business model at the crux of this, because that is what ties all of these scandals together,” Rishi Bharwani, director of partnership and policy at Accountable Tech, told The Verge in an interview Monday. “It’s why Facebook is profiting off of and playing a determining role in the Rohingya genocide. It’s why Facebook is allowing the continued spread of COVID mis- and disinformation. It’s because they’re profiting off of it.”
Kenya Juarez For the first time since Facebook's inception, during Facebook's outage there was no dangerous disinformation being spread on the platform.
Zach Praiss We can no longer rely on Facebook to be forthcoming with the information that they have, we need to demand it.
Zach Praiss "Forcing Facebook to be a better steward of its immense power will take a combination of all these legislative strategies, according to Rishi Bharwani, policy director for Accountable Tech, a group that advocates for reforms to social media."
Kenya Juarez "Sen. Blumenthal and his colleagues are worlds ahead of where Congress was in 2018 when it comes to understanding Big Tech and the urgency of upending the perverse incentives of the broken status quo," said Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of Accountable Tech, an organization that says it seeks to 'tackle the existential threat' that social media companies pose to society."
Kenya Juarez "Accountable Tech launching a six-figure national TV ad buy this morning and planning a post-hearing rally with other groups, including Fairplay and the so-called Real Facebook Oversight Board."
Kenya Juarez This morning, Accountable Tech launched a six-figure national cable ad urging Congress to investigate Facebook over recent revelations that the company concealed internal research.
Zach Praiss "This week, the progressive-leaning advocacy group Accountable Tech petitioned the agency to ban 'surveillance advertising' as an unfair method of competition, defining the practice as targeted advertising based on consumers’ personal data."
Kenya Juarez "Dozens of civil society groups, including Accountable Tech...urged leaders of the House Science Committee in a letter dated Monday to take action against Facebook over its decision to revoke access to the NYU researchers."
Kenya Juarez "Accountable Tech, a progressive tech advocacy group, is urging the FTC in a new petition to write new rules to prohibit what it calls 'surveillance advertising' — or the pervasive use of hyper-targeted ads by dominant tech platforms."
Kenya Juarez Accountable Tech filed a significant rulemaking petition Thursday urging the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to ban surveillance advertising.
Zach Praiss “Users logging off creates momentum that feeds into the need for greater regulation,” says Rishi Bharwani of Accountable Tech, a Washington-based tech reform advocacy group that is part of the coalition working on the Logout campaign. “These things all reinforce each other and create a groundswell of support for meaningful change.”
Kenya Juarez There is nothing more chilling than turning one’s back on a child who’s in harm’s way. Yet, this is what Facebook and Instagram executives do every day.
Zach Praiss "They are constantly finding new ways to slice and dice data to advance their preferred narratives about their products," Accountable Tech's Jesse Lehrich told Axios. "But quarterly reports showing YouTube and Amazon were the most-viewed domains do nothing to help us understand the fast-changing threat landscapes on vaccine disinformation, political extremism or anything else meaningful."
Zach Praiss Facebook is teeming with deadly vaccine misinformation. You don’t have to take my word for it – just spend a few hours on the platform.
Zach Praiss The other side: Critics blasted Facebook, with Accountable Tech executive director Nicole Gill saying that "Facebook is teeming with deadly vaccine misinformation."
Victoria Vinall Accountable Tech released a new national poll of 1,000 parents of school-aged children – conducted by GQR Research – measuring their sentiments about the behavior of major tech platforms and key issues facing kids and teens online.
Zach Praiss "These long overdue changes are an important acknowledgment from Facebook of the many harms kids and teens face on their platforms, from manipulative product designs and pervasive surveillance advertising to unwanted contact from predators," said Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of Accountable Tech, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit. "It should not take years of tireless advocacy from child safety and tech accountability NGOs to earn bare minimum protections for platforms' most vulnerable users, but it nonetheless speaks to the unprecedented pressure Big Tech is facing over their exploitative business practices."
Victoria Vinall The renewed push from the groups, Accountable Tech, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), Media Matters and the Tech Transparency Project, comes the day before the House select committee holds its first hearing and as the federal government continues to clamp down on the spread of misinformation on social media platforms.
Victoria Vinall According to the social media watchdog Accountable Tech, 11 out of the 15 top results on Facebook regarding vaccines last week were disinformation or anti-vaccine content.
Victoria Vinall According to the social media watchdog Accountable Tech, 11 out of the top 15 vaccine related-posts on Facebook last week contained disinformation or were anti-vaccine. Another leading post on Facebook about the Covid-19 vaccines last week was a deeply inaccurate anti-vaccine rant from the rightwing Candace Owens, according to FWIW, a newsletter which tracks digital ad spends.
Victoria Vinall “This includes appointing a senior White House official who would be exclusively dedicated to mobilizing a whole-of-government response to this crisis, in close cooperation with Congress, civil society, and federal agencies,” wrote Rebecca Lenn, a senior adviser for the online activist group Avaaz, in an email to POLITICO. In late December, Avaaz and Accountable Tech led a coalition of 50 nonprofits and consumer advocacy groups in urging Biden to place a disinformation specialist on his pandemic team.
Victoria Vinall Today, Accountable Tech launched an investigation into Facebook’s coordination with the Trump Administration by filing a series of FOIA requests with agencies across the federal government.
Zach Praiss But Warner and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in a joint statement that the bill would allow consumers to move their data away from dominant platforms that are “often insensitive to consumers’ privacy, content or platform security expectations,” and advocacy group Accountable Tech shared similar sentiments in a memo Tuesday.
Victoria Vinall The House Judiciary Committee just advanced five separate bipartisan bills that would break the Silicon Valley stranglehold on American commerce, consumers, and communications.
Zach Praiss “They make cosmetic tweaks, whatever they think is enough to signal that they are taking things seriously. But they don’t actually care,” said Jesse Lehrich, the co-founder of Accountable Tech, an outside political organization that pressures social media giants to make structural changes. “I have zero expectation that they’ll make any meaningful changes to prevent another catastrophe.”
Victoria Vinall The group Accountable Tech is launching a $50,000 digital ad buy today to thank eight original cosponsors who support multiple pieces of the House antitrust package, while urging three House Judiciary Democrats — Reps. Greg Stanton of Arizona, Ted Lieu of California and Deborah Ross of North Carolina — to declare their support. The ads will run in D.C. and the lawmakers’ congressional districts.
Victoria Vinall Today, Accountable Tech is launching a new $50,000 ad campaign supporting the House Judiciary Committee’s bipartisan legislative package to rein in Big Tech ahead of Wednesday’s markup.
Zach Praiss The Digital Services Act’s provisions on risk assessment and audit must stay and be improved if we are to hold tech companies accountable for harmful business models and rights violations.
Zach Praiss Last July, Forbes.com reported that only 20% of registered voters had a favorable view of Zuckerberg, according to a survey conducted by Accountable Tech and GQR Research. Forbes reported, “Zuckerberg’s favorable rating has dropped by 28% since 2016, and he is viewed unfavorably by both[political] parties—leading GQR Research to note that while President Donald Trump is also viewed unfavorably by 56% (favorably by 39%), Zuckerberg is less popular, as he does not have any strong base of support.”
Victoria Vinall Republicans and Democrats are coming together to bring an end to this era of impunity. The historic legislative package to rein in Big Tech is the culmination of two years of bipartisan work.
Zach Praiss The overwhelming bipartisan support for Professor Lina Khan to serve as Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reflects the urgent need and strong public desire to hold Big Tech accountable.
Zach Praiss The ad featured a letter signed by the groups, including Media Matters for America, Accountable Tech, the Anti-Defamation League, Avaaz and the Black Lives Matter Global Network, to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg calling it “unconscionable” to even consider giving Trump a chance to return.
Victoria Vinall Media Matters for America, a left-leaning nonprofit organization, and Accountable Tech are running online ads with quotes from Facebook employees criticizing the company’s announcement that it would allow Trump to return to the platform in 2023, after the company banned him in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. The advocacy groups are directing the ads to people who list Facebook as an employer or are located near the company’s offices.
Victoria Vinall To mark the occasion, the groups Accountable Tech and Media Matters for America are running a full-page ad in today’s New York Times, as well as digital ads, calling on Facebook to keep the former president off its platform permanently. Mobile billboards paid for by those two groups will also circle Facebook’s D.C. office and Capitol Hill — a sign that progressive groups are concerned the social media company could allow Trump back on as soon as today.
Victoria Vinall The new $200,000 campaign by nonprofits Accountable Tech and Media Matters for America urges Facebook not to reinstate Trump's accounts. The two groups say they're prepared to spend more on future campaigns depending on what Facebook does.
Victoria Vinall "When a company establishes its own quasi-judicial global ‘supreme court’ for self-regulation, that’s not a constraint on its power – it’s an absurd embodiment of it," said Accountable Tech co-founder Jesse Lehrich in a statement provided to Mashable yesterday. "The Facebook Oversight Board is a corporate PR tool designed to shirk responsibility and stave off actual regulation."
Victoria Vinall “It is a corporate PR tool designed to shirk responsibility and stave off actual regulation,” Jesse Lehrich, the co-founder of activist group Accountable Tech, said in a statement.
Victoria Vinall First, let’s be absolutely clear: When a company establishes its own quasi-judicial global ‘supreme court’ for self-regulation, that’s not a constraint on its power – it’s an absurd embodiment of it.
Zach Praiss Nonprofit group Accountable Tech is running a new ad campaign urging users to opt out of Facebook tracking their activity across the internet. The ads, which will run on Facebook and target iPhone users in D.C. and the Bay Area, are timed to coincide with a new Apple software update that will prompt users to opt out of cross-app tracking.
Victoria Vinall The new coalition of 38 advocacy groups and nonprofits signed a letter calling for a ban on what it called “surveillance advertising.” It said that online ads powered by personal data and behavioral history have enabled radicalization and given tech platforms a dominant advantage over traditional ads bundled with journalism
Victoria Vinall “I was frankly shocked by how much appetite there was for this, and by how receptive folks were to the pitch,” said Jesse Lehrich, a cofounder of the advocacy group Accountable Tech. According to a January poll commissioned by Accountable Tech, 81 percent of respondents said they would be in favor of reforms to “ban companies from collecting people's personal data and using it to target them with ads.” By contrast, only 63 percent said they supported breaking up companies like Facebook and Google, another idea that has been proposed by lawmakers like Elizabeth Warren.
Victoria Vinall "Privacy-minded companies including search engine maker DuckDuckGo and Proton, creator of ProtonMail, backed the legislation along with organizations including the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the Anti-Defamation League, Accountable Tech and Common Sense Media."
Kenya Juarez “Without any impetus to serve the public good, these companies are going to keep amplifying extremist positions,” said Jesse Lehrich, a co-founder of the nonprofit organization Accountable Tech.
Victoria Vinall 
Big Tech companies are some of the most powerful and profitable companies in history, presenting new threats to the safety of communities and the health of democracy. We’re taking them on through legislation, regulation and direct advocacy.