Victoria Vinall
While X executives blame the ADL in particular for the advertising boycott, numerous civil rights and advocacy groups had been part of the campaign, including GLAAD, Media Matters for America, Free Press, Accountable Tech and Color of Change. They used the hashtag #StopToxicTwitter.
Victoria Vinall Clearly, Facebook and Twitter no longer seem like the scariest bogeymen around town, with D.C. conversation around artificial intelligence, “sucking up all of the oxygen,” conceded Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of Accountable Tech, a tech watchdog group. “The fact that just this week—even with a government shutdown looming—you’ve got three separate Congressional hearings…really underscores the extent to which AI has consumed Capitol Hill.”
Victoria Vinall “Big tech has shown us what ‘self-regulation’ looks like, and it looks a lot like their own self-interest,” said Bianca Recto, communications director for Accountable Tech. “Senators must go into this week’s AI hearings with their eyes wide open – or risk once again getting fooled by savvy PR at the expense of our safety.”
Victoria Vinall Kaili Lambe, director of policy and advocacy at Accountable Tech, another coalition leader, said Musk’s tactics are bad for X and bad for the internet as a whole.
Victoria Vinall Accountable Tech, AI Now, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) released the Zero Trust AI Governance Framework in response to self-regulatory approaches popular among top AI companies. The framework laid out overarching principles for future regulation. These included a call for policymakers to apply existing laws to the industry such as anti-discrimination, consumer protection, and competition laws alongside clarifying Section 230’s limits. The framework also suggested establishing clearly defined policies without room for subjectivity such as prohibiting facial recognition used for mass surveillance and fully automated hiring processes. Finally, the framework placed the burden on AI companies to prove that their systems are not harmful with systems subject to pre- and post-deployment harm mitigation requirements.
Victoria Vinall A recent report by Accountable Tech, a nonprofit that advocates for better security and integrity in big tech, found that 360 of Trump’s posts on Truth Social would be in violation of Facebook’s Community Standards, dozens contained election-related disinformation and more than 100 posts amplify followers or supporters of QAnon.
Victoria Vinall Nonprofits Accountable Tech, AI Now, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) released policy proposals that seek to limit how much power big AI companies have on regulation that could also expand the power of government agencies against some uses of generative AI.
Victoria Vinall The Center for American Progress (CAP), a progressive DC-based think tank, and a group of civil society groups that includes Accountable Tech, AI Now Institute, and EPIC, released their respective priorities to coincide with the AI Cyber Challenge kickoff.
Victoria Vinall Accountable Tech Co-Founder Jesse Lehrich who’s previously led campings calling on Meta to do more to remove harmful content from its platforms, echoed those concerns, calling the OII research as almost comically overbroad.
Victoria Vinall Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of Accountable Tech, an advocacy group focused on information controls for social media, said it was “a little bit absurd” to draw conclusions from studies that altered a single facet of a user’s social media experience over a three-month period.
Victoria Vinall Social media critics — many of whom have spent years sounding the alarm about the ways it has changed American politics — suggested the studies were too limited, and too close to Meta itself, to be persuasive, including Frances Haugen, the former Facebook executive who leaked internal company files in 2021, and Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of Accountable Tech, an advocacy group focused on information controls for social media.
Victoria Vinall “An independent regulatory commission tasked with challenging the monopolistic power of Big Tech companies will not only provide the additional oversight needed to keep the industry in check, but also complement the work of our existing regulatory bodies,” Nicole Gill, Accountable Tech executive director and co-founder, said in a statement to The Verge on Wednesday.
Victoria Vinall It could possibly prompt tech companies to cut back encrypted message features just as they’re continuing to grow in use and popularity, said Jesse Lehrich, a co-founder of Accountable Tech, a civil society organization working to bring about long-term structural reform regarding surveillance and social media companies. “The last thing we should be doing in this moment is killing end-to-end encryption,” he said, “and deputizing Big Tech with massive new surveillance mandates.”
Victoria Vinall The letter — led by Free Press, Accountable Tech, and Media Matters for America — says the groups have already seen indications that "new users have been testing the boundaries of the platform's moderation and enforcement."
Victoria Vinall Media Matters and other groups including Free Press and Accountable Tech urged advertisers to stop spending on Twitter when Musk took over last fall, citing an increase in hate speech and other concerns.
Victoria Vinall As recently as May, however, two investigations, one by advocacy group Accountable Tech and the other by the Washington Post, found Google continued to track and store location history for trips to abortion clinics.
Victoria Vinall Right now, protecting personal data is a zipcode lottery given the "patchwork of state laws", said Kaili Lambe of Accountable Tech, an advocacy group pressuring tech companies to stop collecting data on pregnancy and abortion-interest online.
Victoria Vinall Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of the left-leaning advocacy group Accountable Tech and a former spokesman for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, said that tech companies are “much more comfortable inviting widespread societal unrest than pissing off conservatives.”
Victoria Vinall Accountable Tech Co-Founder and Executive Director Nicole Gill agreed with that sentiment and told Gizmodo Meta’s “willingness to silence” its critics reinforced the critics of abuse and monopoly power lodged against them in the first place.
Victoria Vinall Nicole Gill, the executive director and co-founder of the group Accountable Tech, penned an op-ed for Fast Company last week where she compared Altman to Meta’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg writing: “Lawmakers appear poised to trust Altman to self-regulate under the guise of ‘innovation,’ even as the speed of AI is ringing alarm bells for technologists, academics, civil society, and yes, even lawmakers.”
Victoria Vinall Nicole Gill, executive director of the left-leaning advocacy group Accountable Tech, said in a statement that Musk’s “full-throated embrace of Ron DeSantis … is a new low for what was once one of the world’s most important communication platforms.”
Victoria Vinall “Elon Musk has already turned Twitter into a hellscape of hate and conspiracy. But his full-throated embrace of Ron DeSantis – only weeks after Tucker Carlson announced he would revive his Fox News show on Twitter – is a new low for what was once one of the world’s most important communication platforms,” said Nicole Gill, co-founder and executive director for Accountable Tech, in a statement Wednesday.
Victoria Vinall A separate review by the left-leaning advocacy group Accountable Tech generated similar findings, with Google failing to delete location data in more than half of their visits. “No one should be tracked or targeted for their personal health decisions. But that’s exactly what Big Tech’s business model of surveillance advertising right now is designed to do,” Accountable Tech policy manager Aditi Ramesh told Geoffrey.
Victoria Vinall Nicole Gill, co-founder and executive director of tech watchdog group Accountable Tech, said companies are running a two-track campaign. She said they’re making design changes that may make minor safety improvements for kids, “while at the same time, their government relations teams — up to their CEOs — are directly lobbying Congress and state legislatures to do absolutely nothing to regulate them.”
Victoria Vinall But since he took over, Musk has reinstated notorious election deniers, overhauled Twitter’s verification system and gutted much of the staff that had been responsible for moderating posts. Those choices have allowed falsehoods to flourish, said Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of Accountable Tech, a nonprofit watchdog group.
Victoria Vinall "I have an anxiety disorder, and I have OCD," Lembke told Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., in March 2022, during a roundtable hosted by the nonprofit Accountable Tech. "I was never warned that entering these online platforms would only amplify the things that I already struggle with."
Victoria Vinall Congress’s slowness to deal with those and other major issues related to Big Tech “certainly undermines our ability to now grapple with something like generative AI, which is moving at such a rapid pace,” said Jesse Lehrich, co-founder and senior advisor at Accountable Tech, a tech watchdog group.
Victoria Vinall Critics’ say: Nicole Gill, executive director of tech watchdog group Accountable Tech, said the companies “are directly lobbying Congress and state legislatures to do absolutely nothing to regulate them.”
Victoria Vinall In the climate Musk and Tucker built for themselves, tying your ad money to their projects could generate public condemnation. Representatives from the advocacy groups Free Press, Media Matters, Accountable Tech, and the Center For Countering Digital Hate all told Gizmodo that Carlson’s new show will be even worse for the reputation of any brand that chooses to advertise on Twitter.
Victoria Vinall I’m not the only one who’s spotted Google’s failure. Aditi Ramesh, a policy manager with the advocacy group Accountable Tech, has been doing her own version of this test over the last several months and found similar results. In about 60 percent of her tests, Google failed to delete location data.
Victoria Vinall Left-leaning advocacy group Accountable Tech has hired five new staff members: Robbie Dornbush as its chief of staff, who previously served as chief of staff and special assistant to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. Bianca Recto as its communications director, who previously served as communications director for media start-up More Perfect Union. Nash Alam as its senior aampaign manager, who previous was a digital organizer for Groundwork Collaborative. Alison Rice as its campaign manager for youth initiatives, who previously worked with the Hub Project and NextGen America. Alyssa Sanchez as its operations manager, who previously worked with Oregon Futures Lab.
Victoria Vinall “Throughout his career, Musk has had an almost pathological need to promise grand visions and make himself the center of attention,” says Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of Accountable Tech, an advocacy group. “He’s very Trumpian in his need to capture media attention with constantly-shifting promises, which everyone in the media covers, and then it never happens.”
Victoria Vinall Even civil rights leaders, from organizations like Media Matters, Free Press, Accountable Tech and Color of Change, called on advertisers last fall to stop spending on the platform in response to increased hate and offensive speech and other changes since Musk’s takeover, per reports. (By December, ad spend fell on Twitter by over 70%, per Reuters — Musk blamed activist group pressure on advertisers.)
Victoria Vinall “The data has shown us, time and again, that various online platforms, such as social media, contribute to a myriad of issues including depression and anxiety and are highly addicting,” said Nicole Gill with Accountable Tech. “We firmly believe that a child’s safety should be paramount and that platforms should enact the highest privacy protections when designing, developing and providing that feature. Through the passage of AB 320 in Nevada, we hope to see that belief become a reality. "
Victoria Vinall Advocacy organizations Accountable Tech and LOG OFF conducted a poll with 912 American teenagers to understand social media usage habits. They found that:
Victoria Vinall The companies that punished Trump for his prior antics have little reason to believe his behavior will change. His Truth Social posts are littered with examples to the contrary. Advocacy group Accountable Tech wrote in a recent report that it found over 350 Trump posts on Truth Social that would violate Facebook’s safety rules.
Victoria Vinall “No parent should have to deal with the horrific reality of losing a child to online bullying, illegal or harmful substances sold over social media, or from falling prey to dangerous online communities,” the groups wrote. Tech Oversight Project, Accountable Tech, the Center for Digital Democracy, Fairplay, Parents Together, Common Sense Media, Tech Transparency Project, Eating Disorders Coalition and Friends of the Earth.
Victoria Vinall "The very same day Trump released a video calling the 2020 election ‘stolen’ and [demanded] January 6th insurrectionists be released from prison, YouTube decided to let him back on their platform," Nicole Gill, executive director of the advocacy group Accountable Tech said in a statement provided to Mashable.
Victoria Vinall More than 350 of his Truth Social posts would have violated Facebook's rules, including posts amplifying the conspiracy theory QAnon and pushing false claims of election fraud, liberal advocacy group Accountable Tech said in a December report.
Victoria Vinall Advocacy group Accountable Tech found that hundreds of Trump's posts on Truth Social would violate most social media companies' community standards. The group said Trump released a video on the site on Friday that falsely alleges the 2020 election was stolen and that the Jan. 6 insurrectionists should be released from prison.
Victoria Vinall Besides 5Rights and Accountable Tech, the coalition backing the age-appropriate design bills also includes Parents Together and Design It For Us. Advocates insist the law is needed to better protect children from harmful online content and to block features like Autoplay that encourage youth to spend hours online.
Victoria Vinall Others, like Ohio Democratic Rep. Greg Landsman, feared the bill would make it even more difficult to spot and remove disinformation posts attempting to spread foreign propaganda. Jesse Lehrich, the co-founder of tech advocacy group Accountable Tech, similarly said the GOP bill appears to solve problems already handled by the First Amendment right to speech.
Victoria Vinall "Today, Meta chose to put its own profits above American democracy and the real-world safety of its users," said Nicole Gill, co-founder and executive director of the advocacy nonprofit Accountable Tech in a statement provided to Mashable. "I want to be very clear: there is absolutely no justification for allowing Donald Trump back on Facebook...This is a man who used the platform to incite a deadly insurrection against the United States – and whose behavior has only gotten more dangerous in the years since. Trump has repeatedly used Truth Social to fuel violence, spread election lies, and promote domestic terrorist organizations like QAnon."
Victoria Vinall “The rapid escalation of the AI arms race that ChatGPT has catalyzed really underscores how far behind Congress is when it comes to regulating technology and the cost of their failure,” said Jesse Lehrich, a co-founder of the left-leaning watchdog Accountable Tech and a former aide to Hillary Clinton.
Victoria Vinall If and when Trump starts posting again on Facebook and Instagram, prepare to see more of what he’s been sharing on Truth Social: From April 28 through October 8, Trump shared 116 posts amplifying “followers and sympathizers of QAnon,” and 239 posts containing “harmful election-related disinformation,” according to the tech watchdog group Accountable Tech. He’s also made comments promoting election fraud conspiracy theories that critics say encouraged harassment of election workers, such as threats of hanging, firing squads, torture, and bomb blasts.
Victoria Vinall It’s nothing unusual for Trump. A research report published earlier this month by the watchdog group Accountable Tech found that Trump had written more than 200 posts containing “harmful election-related disinformation” since he was banished from Meta’s platforms.
Victoria Vinall A mobile billboard, deployed by Accountable Tech, outside the Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on Jan. 17.
Victoria Vinall Watchdog group Accountable Tech criticized Facebook for prioritizing its bottom line. “Today, Meta chose to put its own profits above American democracy and the real-world safety of its users,” said Nicole Gill, the group’s executive director, in a statement.
Victoria Vinall “I want to be very clear: there is absolutely no justification for allowing Donald Trump back on Facebook,” said Nicole Gill, co-founder of the tech-focused advocacy group Accountable Tech. “Two years ago, Meta said it would only reinstate Trump if his presence on the platform no longer carried a threat of violence. Today’s decision reveals that promise for what it was: another empty publicity stunt by a company more concerned with making money than with democracy, safety, or even internal consistency.”
Victoria Vinall The advocacy groups Accountable Tech and Media Matters for America estimated last month that more than 350 of Trump's Truth Social posts would directly violate Facebook's rules against QAnon content, false election claims and harassment of marginalized groups.
Victoria Vinall Accountable Tech and Media Matters for America last month launched a “Keep Trump off Facebook” ad campaign along with a report highlighting hundreds of Trump’s posts on Truth Social they said would violate Facebook’s rules. The posts amplified followers and sympathizers of the QAnon conspiracy theory and contained “harmful” election-related disinformation.
Victoria Vinall “Is [Trump’s rhetoric] safer, or is it that it wasn’t being broadcast to hundreds of millions of people on Facebook that kept it safer?” said Accountable Tech’s executive director, Nicole Gill, whose anti-Big Tech advocacy group has run digital and television advertisements urging the company not to reinstate Trump. “The absence of violence after the midterms is not at all reason to let him back on.”
Victoria Vinall The tech watchdog nonprofit Accountable Tech is advocating for Meta to continue its ban on Trump’s accounts and has launched a billboard campaign outside of Facebook offices in Washington, Menlo Park, Calif., and New York City. "If Facebook looks at what Trump has been putting out publicly in the past few years, it is clear he is not a reduced threat to safety, If anything, he has gotten more emboldened,” Executive Director Nicole Gill told The Financial Times.
Victoria Vinall Accountable Tech and Media Matters for America released a six-figure digital and TV ad buy last month for a "Keep Trump Off Facebook" campaign.
Victoria Vinall A study published last month by left-wing free speech advocacy group Accountable Tech suggested that more than 350 of Trump’s posts on Truth Social would have violated Facebook’s policies, including his baseless election denial allegations, his promotion of far-right conspiracy group QAnon, as well as posts that would violate Facebook’s harassment against marginalized groups policy.
Victoria Vinall Nearly half of Trump's posts and reposts on Truth Social in the week after the 2022 midterm elections pushed claims of election fraud and amplified QAnon accounts or content, according to December research from Media Matters. Another study by Accountable Tech found more than 350 of Trump's Truth Social posts would violate Facebook's safety guidelines.
Victoria Vinall Nicole Gill, executive director of tech watchdog group Accountable Tech, said Musk’s reinstatements “are actively threatening the safety of Twitter users.”
Victoria Vinall “Unless and until Musk can be trusted to enforce Twitter’s prior community standards, the platform is not safe for users or advertisers,” the #StopToxicTwitter coalition led by Accountable Tech, Free Press and Media Matters for America said in a statement. “For those still advertising on Twitter right now: know that you are contributing directly to an erratic billionaire’s decimation of Twitter and its rapid devolution into utter chaos.”
Victoria Vinall Maybe Twitter will find a path forward. But the road ahead looks quite arduous. As the non-profit watchdog Accountable Tech put it Thursday evening: “This hellscape is going to get more hellish. More hate speech and harassment. More deception and impersonation. More privacy and security risks for all of us. We would once again tell advertisers to jump ship, but at this point, no CMO in their right mind needs that advice.”
Victoria Vinall “He’s a man who now has incredible unilateral power to shape our information system and how information is shared,” Nicole Gill, executive director of the nonprofit Accountable Tech, tells TIME. “He controls the dials that determine whose voices are heard in what he fashions is the modern public square, and now he’s openly putting his thumb on the scale and elections.”
Victoria Vinall “We are witnessing the real-time destruction of one of the world’s most powerful communications platforms,” said Nicole Gill, the executive director of the nonprofit group Accountable Tech, on the call. “Unless and until Musk can robustly enforce Twitter’s existing community standards, the platform is not safe for users or for advertisers.”
Victoria Vinall “We are witnessing the real-time destruction of one of the world’s most powerful communication systems,” Nicole Gill, executive director of Accountable Tech, one of the groups in the coalition, said in a statement. “Elon Musk is an erratic billionaire who’s dangerously unqualified to run Twitter.”
Victoria Vinall Jesse Lehrich, a founder of Accountable Tech, an industry advocacy organization, said the layoffs amounted to an arbitrary purge just days before the midterm elections on Tuesday.
Victoria Vinall “I had every reason to believe that this would be problematic: Elon taking over one of the world’s most influential global communications platforms,” said a former Clinton foreign policy aide, Jesse Lehrich, a co-founder of the left-leaning watchdog Accountable Tech. “But I didn’t expect him to be tweeting insane conspiracy theories at Hillary Clinton about Paul Pelosi as the speaker survives an assassination attempt within the first 72 hours.”
Victoria Vinall Jesse Lehrich, the co-founder of watchdog nonprofit Accountable Tech, said Musk's firing of Vijaya Gadde — a top Twitter legal and policy executive who headed the team that decided to remove Trump from the platform — was a "long-term catastrophe," calling Gadde the company's "moral compass," Politico reported.
Victoria Vinall "Elon Musk's plans for Twitter will make it an even more hate-filled cesspool, leading to irreparable real-world harm," said the Stop the Deal Coalition, an alliance of groups that includes Accountable Tech, Friends of the Earth, Public Citizen, and the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. The coalition has urged Congress to investigate Musk's acquisition of Twitter. (The purchase is reportedly already facing an investigation by federal regulators.)
Victoria Vinall The watchdog group Accountable Tech said Musk's erratic behavior and tweets about Ukraine and Russia make this acquisition a national security threat. It wants Congress to investigate.
Victoria Vinall Concurrently, watchdog group Accountable Tech placed a $250,000 national television and digital ad buy starting this week, criticizing Meta for what the group describes as rolling back election integrity safeguards prior to the midterms.
Victoria Vinall "The bill focuses on establishing a floor of safety and security for young people," Nicole Gill, co-founder and executive director of Accountable Tech, which supports the legislation, told Axios.
Victoria Vinall Accountable Tech, an advocacy group that has criticized large tech platforms, called the bill’s signing “a monumental win.” “This new law will upend the status quo and take real steps to stop pervasive surveillance, profiling, and manipulation of kids online,” said Nicole Gill, the group’s executive director. “It also will serve as a transformative model for other states and countries, so that every child is protected from Big Tech’s abuse and exploitation – not just those in California.”
Victoria Vinall Accountable Tech, a group that has backed federal antitrust legislation targeting Big Tech platforms, also lauded the news. “If signed into law, this historic legislation would represent a seismic shift in the fight for online privacy,” co-founder and Executive Director Nicole Gill said in a statement.
Victoria Vinall “I think they’ve just come to the conclusion that this is not really a problem that they can tackle at this point,” said Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of Accountable Tech, a nonprofit focused on technology and democracy.
Victoria Vinall “These tech giants have accumulated an unfathomable amount of sensitive data on each and every one of us,” Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of Accountable Tech, told The Post. “They are going to dutifully comply with subpoena requests like this in a post-Roe world.”
Victoria Vinall Jesse Lehrich co-founder of tech watchdog Accountable Tech, reacted to a description of the draft bill by raising concerns about child privacy. "It’s a massive invasion of children’s privacy and freedom to learn and grow," he said. "And it creates nightmarish scenarios, like an LGBTQ kid being outed by these apps, or data being weaponized against a teen who needed an abortion in a state where it’s been criminalized."
Victoria Vinall A left-leaning watchdog group said Musk’s filing highlights why the deal has been fraught from the start. “While the fallout from Musk’s latest move still unfolds, one thing is clear: this chaotic crusade is nothing short of a five-alarm fire drill,” said Accountable Tech Executive Director Nicole Gill in a statement. “Our information ecosystem, safety, and democracy cannot remain at the whim of unaccountable billionaires — whether it’s Elon Musk or anyone else.”
Victoria Vinall Earlier this week, the advocacy groups Accountable Tech and Giffords urged Zuckerberg to replace the policy with a “more decisive two-strike policy” instead, according to a letter obtained by The Post.
Victoria Vinall Accountable Tech, a left-leaning watchdog group advocating for antitrust legislation targeting giants like Apple and Amazon, recently partnered with a group of TikTok creators “interested in supporting historic bipartisan legislation to #ReinInBigTech,” the group tweeted. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Victoria Vinall Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of Accountable Tech, expressed “cautious optimism” that this Congress would pass both the self-preferencing bill and a separate bill that is more specifically targeted at how companies display apps in mobile app stores.
Victoria Vinall The Stop the Deal campaign, shared exclusively with CNBC, includes plans to put pressure on government agencies to review the acquisition, persuade Tesla stockholders to take action against it ask advertisers to pull spending from the platform. Participating nonprofits include Accountable Tech, Center for Countering Digital Hate, GLAAD and MediaJustice.
Victoria Vinall Other new parents on Instagram tell me they also feel they’re being recommended posts that prey on our specific insecurities, from breastfeeding to vaccination. “I found Instagram to be particularly devastating to my already fragile mental state in the postpartum period,” says Nicole Gill, the co-founder of Accountable Tech, a progressive tech advocacy group. “Getting suggested posts on ‘how to lose baby weight in 6 weeks,’ for example, almost immediately after having my daughter was not pleasant.”
Victoria Vinall Other organizations spearheading the letter campaign include the technology advocacy organization Accountable Tech and the feminist group UltraViolet. Meanwhile, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the National Hispanic Media Coalition and the digital rights group Free Press also signed the letter in support of the effort.
Victoria Vinall “Replatforming Trump would thrust us back into the world in which our entire political discourse is perpetually upended by his tweets,” said Jesse Lehrich, a former Hillary Clinton spokesman who helped found a nonprofit focused on tech companies and political speech.
Victoria Vinall Accountable Tech, a left-leaning advocacy group, argued in a policy memo comparing U.S. and E.U. tech reforms that Europe’s incoming regulation “reads like an omnibus bill written by top American lawmakers” because of its overlap with many U.S. proposals.
Victoria Vinall The letter is signed by 60 advocacy organizations, including Fairplay, the Center for Digital Democracy, Accountable Tech and the American Academy of Pediatrics. It was addressed to the top lawmakers of both parties in the House and Senate.
Victoria Vinall Kaili Lambe is Accountable Tech’s new policy and partnerships director. She previously worked as a senior campaigner at the Mozilla Foundation.
Victoria Vinall More broadly, the tech companies have not been transparent about real-time actions they’ve taken to dispel Russian state-run disinformation, according to Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of Accountable Tech, a watchdog group, and former spokesperson for Hillary Clinton.
Victoria Vinall “It’s just mind-blowing that on a platform like Google — which portrays itself as having gone above and beyond with ad transparency — you can pop up out of nowhere and run millions of dollars of blatant scam ads without raising any red flags,” said Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of the nonprofit Accountable Tech.
Victoria Vinall Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of Accountable Tech, a nonprofit that pushes for reforms at social media companies, expressed surprise and dismay at Twitter’s Friday comments. “I actually praised Twitter when they rolled out a new civic integrity policy in 2021, which prohibits false claims about election results and includes a clear strike system for repeat offenders. To learn they decided explicitly to stop enforcing it two months later, and told nobody, is infuriating – especially for a platform that constantly plays up its commitment to transparent decision-making,” Lehrich said in a message to CNN. “They’ve managed to undermine faith in our democracy and their own credibility all at once.”
Victoria Vinall 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 The other side: Critics blasted Facebook, with Accountable Tech executive director Nicole Gill saying that "Facebook is teeming with deadly vaccine misinformation."
Victoria Vinall "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 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 “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 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 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 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 “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 “There is no panacea for the information crisis — no simple bill or regulation that will alone cure its noxious society-wide impacts,” said the letter, which was signed by Accountable Tech, Greenpeace, the Center for American Progress, and others. “We must instead fight it with government-wide strategies.”
Victoria Vinall Between the lines: Organizers, which include Accountable Tech, MapLight and Avaaz, say the goal of the effort was to figure out what's doable in an administration with a lot on its plate — understanding that tech priorities may not be first in line.
Victoria Vinall On Thursday, Accountable Tech co-founder Jesse Lehrich called Zients a “talented problem-solver” but said Facebook’s role in spreading anti-vaccine misinformation could not be ignored. “Facebook must be held accountable for amplifying misinformation that has undermined our pandemic response and sown baseless distrust in vaccines,” Lehrich said. “In order to guard against conflicts of interest, Mr. Zients should immediately divest of the significant equity he earned in Facebook from his service on the Board and commit to hiring an online misinformation expert to handle his team’s engagement with major social media platforms.”
Victoria Vinall Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of nonprofit Accountable Tech, which is critical of social-media companies, said Mr. Zients’s time on Facebook’s board raises concerns because of the way some users have turned to the platform to spread conspiracy theories about vaccines and the coronavirus.
Victoria Vinall “If Facebook and Google are truly incapable of reviewing and safely running Georgia Senate ads without opening the floodgates of paid disinformation across their platforms, it’s a damning indictment of their own business model,” said Nicole Gill, executive director of tech policy advocacy group Accountable Tech, said in a statement. “These companies are already failing to curb the viral spread of conspiracy theories designed to delegitimize our elections. As has always been the case, deceptive organic content — boosted by toxic algorithms – continues to drive social media’s disinformation crisis; not paid content. Preventing campaigns from running ads to inform Georgians about how and why to participate in these critical runoff elections is actively harmful to democracy.”
Victoria Vinall And the trend is set to continue: Accountable Tech, which as its name suggests is trying to hold Big Tech companies accountable, will broadcast an ad slamming Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. It will air during the final presidential debate on Thursday night.
Victoria Vinall A new video is set to air on TV that night targeting the Facebook founder. The organization behind the clip, Accountable Tech, is spending $250,000 on the ad buy. The ad starts with a clip of Zuckerberg talking to CNN Money. "I really just care about building something that my girls are going to grow up and be proud of me for," he says.
Victoria Vinall Accountable Tech, a nonprofit run by a former Hillary Clinton campaign spokesperson and the former executive director of Tax March, hopes to focus that attention with an ad spot during Wednesday's debate on, according to CNN. The ad, embedded above, focuses on Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg's noted failures to live up to its and his stated goals.
Victoria Vinall A television ad attacking Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for his company’s handling of hate and misinformation will air during Wednesday’s vice presidential debate coverage, the group behind the ad — Accountable Tech — tells CNN Business.
Victoria Vinall A new ad from Accountable Tech, a nonprofit group that includes former Facebook employees, former election officials and members of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, uses Zuckerberg’s own remarks to highlight what the group sees as failures at Facebook to protect the country from dangerous disinformation and violent criminals.
Victoria Vinall “Their announcement acknowledged several important truths — that enforcement at the individual post level cannot counter hate and disinformation; that content need not explicitly support violence to bring about real-world harms; and that without aggressive deterrence, these platforms will continue to serve as critical organizing and recruitment tools for extremist movements,” said Accountable Tech’s co-founder Jesse Lehrich in a statement.
Victoria Vinall 79%. That’s the percentage of respondents who said social media companies should do more to protect democracy, according to a recent Accountable Tech/GQR Research poll. The poll also found that 62% of respondents are not confident in social media companies’ ability to prevent election misinformation from influencing the November election, with 42% saying they have no confidence in Facebook specifically.
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.