Climate and tech advocacy groups are pressing the Biden administration to address concerns about the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on climate change...The letter was signed by 17 groups, including Friends of the Earth, Accountable Tech and the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
The groups sent a letter to the White House urging the Biden administration, including national climate advisor Ali Zaidi, to add more climate-centered policies in its AI executive order released earlier in October. Seventeen groups signed the letter, including Accountable Tech.
“Given the stakes of this election, I just think that you have to be part of the conversation wherever it’s playing out, even if in the long run you would like to see platforms that facilitate healthier political discourse,” said Jesse Lehrich, a spokesperson for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and cofounder of Accountable Tech. “When democracy is on the line, you don’t want to lose democracy for the sake of taking a principled stand.”
Academics and government officials aren’t the only ones shifting strategy. Jesse Lehrich, cofounder of the advocacy group Accountable Tech, says the last year has also required his organization to “adapt to the realities of the moment.”
A whopping 86% of voters support congressional action, and 82% believe social media platforms should be required to take concrete steps to protect young people online, according to a poll by Accountable Tech.
As we’ve long said, Elon Musk has turned Twitter into a hellscape of hate and conspiracy, and any company advertising on his platform must reckon with the reality that they are simultaneously funding that bile and putting their brand at severe risk.
As long as Big Tech chooses to operate under their toxic business model, we should expect more of these disturbing reports to come to light.
We applaud President Biden’s Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence for its commitment to protecting the safety and well-being of people in the face of rapid AI development and deployment.
In addition to the trust and safety personnel layoffs, “they’ve rolled back basic features of the platform that helped deal with things that will obviously pose threats to the integrity of elections around the world,” says Jesse Lehrich, cofounder of the advocacy group Accountable Tech. This includes “removing labels on government officials and state-run media accounts, and obviously Twitter Blue has been a total disaster,” he says, noting that the platform’s new revenue-sharing model could add to the chaos. “There’s a financial incentive to post outrageous or sensational content to go viral and potentially profit from it.”
Various civil society groups issued statements in support of the bipartisan lawsuit against Meta. Accountable Tech executive director Nicole Gill applauded the state attorneys general’s effort to “curb Big Tech’s unchecked power over our daily lives” as Meta operates “without any regard for their role in the youth mental health crisis, focusing solely on maximizing their profits by creating addictive design features.”
The letter was signed by 20 groups, including the Athena Coalition, Public Citizen, Accountable Tech and the Open Markets Institute. As Congress drafts regulations, the groups urged lawmakers to prioritize the heath, safety and wages of data workers that develop and train AI.
The lawmakers first introduced the AI Labeling Act in July and on Tuesday are unveiling a list of supporters backing the effort, including consumer groups like Common Sense Media, Public Citizen and Accountable Tech.
We applaud today’s bipartisan lawsuit by state attorneys general to curb Big Tech’s unchecked power over our daily lives and protect young people from the online harms they face every day.
Aditi Ramesh, policy manager at nonprofit watchdog Accountable Tech, said she hopes there is a "domino effect" as more states consider new rules of the road for tech with the end-goal of "putting increased pressure on Congress to create a more unified approach to tech regulation."
Accountable Tech, Al Now and the Electronic Privacy Information Center put forth an Al governance framework in August that accused Al companies of calling for regulation while 'privately lobbying against meaningful accountability measures. "Given the monumental stakes, blind trust in their benevolence is not an option," the groups wrote.
So far, a coalition of ten civil society groups, including Accountable Tech, the Center for American Progress (CAP), and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) have all signed onto the framework.
“With authoritarianism on the rise, and dozens of countries set to hold high-stakes elections next year, democracy is facing an existential threat,” says Jesse Lehrich, cofounder of the nonprofit Accountable Tech. “And Elon Musk continues to tip the scales in the wrong direction."
With more than 50 countries set to hold elections in 2024, a coalition of leading civil society organizations at the nexus of democracy and technology today announced a new election integrity framework that focuses on content-agnostic recommendations for online platforms to mitigate the threats of election manipulation.
Today’s lawsuit filed by the FTC and state attorneys general is a watershed moment. We applaud these regulators for bringing this case, which signals a historic commitment to holding Big Tech monopolists accountable.
The endless collection of personal data to micro-target ads is the very core of Big Tech’s toxic business model and a powerful driving force behind the rise of extremism and misinformation, in addition to a myriad other societal harms.
By calling for safety by design and privacy by default, the Age-Appropriate Design Code serves as a road to accountability for tech companies. Instead, today’s decision gives tech companies a free pass to put profit over kids’ safety online.
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.
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.”
Today, Accountable Tech launched a digital ad buy and a new report highlighting Big Tech’s alarming history of making and then breaking their own public commitments on privacy and safety.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
This is a company that spent more than a decade integrating itself into the news production and dissemination system. Like it or not, they're a part of how news is shared across the globe.
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.
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.
With Big Tech jockeying to secure a new era of self-regulation amid the AI arms race, leading civil society organizations Accountable Tech, AI Now Institute, and EPIC jointly released a new “Zero Trust AI Governance” framework Thursday.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.”
At a moment when policymakers are racing the clock to harness the potential and curb the dangers of AI, we applaud the Biden Administration for its leadership in bringing the largest AI companies together around a set of basic voluntary safeguards.
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."
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.
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.
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.
Virtually everything we do online is tracked by companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, from what we buy to the news we read. This type of surveillance isn’t just a byproduct of these companies’ products — collecting and monetizing user data is a fundamental part of their business models. Now, it could land abortion-seekers in jail.
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.”
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.
Today’s decision demonstrates how much power Big Tech has over our communication systems and the distribution of news, and how little they care about anything other than profits.
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.”
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.”
Today, Democratic senators sent a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, demanding more information on the company’s data practices after Accountable Tech’s exclusive research found that Google continues to track and retain sensitive location history data from abortion seekers.
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.
“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.
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.
This is a consistent issue we’ve seen with Meta over the last decade plus, where their business model is premised on collecting enormous amounts of personal data and weaponizing it to do surveillance advertising for colossal profits.
I think they're being singled out for good reason. Meta is one of the worst privacy violators of all time.
Once again, elected officials have sided with Big Tech, choosing to prioritize their interests over the safety of Minnesota children.
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.”
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.
"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."
Instead of welcoming Altman with a bipartisan steak dinner in his honor, Congress must subject the new Zuckerberg to the scrutiny his technology merits and the public deserves.
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.
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.”
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.
People who use Google Maps to search for abortion care for themselves or others are at risk of seeing their data turned over to prosecutors due to Big Tech's collection and retention of this sensitive data.
Today, Accountable Tech and a coalition of advocacy partners led a Day of Action calling on Google to stop collecting and retaining sensitive user data that can be used to prosecute people seeking abortion care in post-Roe America.
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.
The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) represents a critical step towards protecting our kids and teens online. Big Tech companies are shamelessly cashing in on a perverse business model that harms young people.
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.
These new bills in state houses across the country represent a threat to young people's privacy. Rather than restrict young people's access, we can make these platforms safer for kids through design requirements and standards.
We have an opportunity right now to protect kids online with meaningful legislation. We should take it.
“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.”
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.)
By traveling to an abortion clinic, we can show in real-time how Google is collecting and retaining sensitive location data despite their policies saying otherwise.
Today, Accountable Tech released new field research – documented in real-time by an NBC News crew – revealing that Google continues to collect and retain location data from individuals visiting abortion clinics, which could be weaponized by prosecutors, despite the tech behemoth’s repeated claims to the contrary.
Big Tech designs their platforms to hook and addict users, which poses a serious threat to young people's mental health and well-being.
“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. "
Advocacy organizations Accountable Tech and LOG OFF conducted a poll with 912 American teenagers to understand social media usage habits. They found that:
The rapid escalation of the AI arms race really underscores how far the U.S. has fallen behind in regulating Big Tech.
New polling released today by Accountable Tech and LOG OFF finds that the design of social media and online platforms is actively harming U.S. teens — adding further evidence for why design reforms outlined in the Age Appropriate Design Code are desperately needed to protect kids online.
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.
“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.
In January, while giving Trump the keys to his Facebook account, Meta claimed the threat he posed to public safety had ‘subsided.’ On Friday, YouTube followed suit, citing a ‘careful’ evaluation of the risk of violence.
The very same day Trump released a video calling the 2020 election ‘stolen’ and demanding January 6th insurrectionists be released from prison, YouTube decided to let him back on their platform.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
“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.
Tomorrow, youth activist Emma Lembke – a former Accountable Tech intern who continues to work closely with the organization – will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about Big Tech’s ongoing exploitation of our children for profit.
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.
Accountable Tech applauds President Biden’s bold demand to hold social media companies to account for their broken profit model, calling for long overdue safeguards that force online platforms and apps to prioritize the safety, health, and privacy of their users – especially children and teens.
Today, Meta chose to put its own profits above American democracy and the real-world safety of its users.
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.
A mobile billboard, deployed by Accountable Tech, outside the Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on Jan. 17.
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.
“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.”
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.
We applaud this much-needed action from the Department of Justice, and will continue our work advocating for structural reform to hold Big Tech monopolies like Google accountable.
Mobile billboards from Accountable Tech are circling the national mall and Meta offices in Menlo Park, New York City, and Washington, DC today urging Facebook to uphold its ban of former President Donald Trump.
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.
“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.”
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.
This ruling is a landmark victory in the fight against tech giants who extract users’ personal data without consent, manipulate us, and warp public discourse in service of their toxic business model.
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.
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.
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.
As the leaders of two tech and media watchdog groups, we’ve closely tracked Trump’s online behavior since he incited that deadly insurrection, and we can unequivocally say: There is no justification for allowing Trump back on Facebook.
Tonight, companies that have continued to advertise on Twitter face a choice: Do you want to be complicit in the real-time censorship of free press in America?
Accountable Tech released new research finding that more than 350 posts from Donald Trump’s “Truth Social” account – the equivalent of two posts per day – would directly violate Facebook’s Community Standards.
These updates show why passing laws that change the incentive structure for Big Tech is imperative. The California Age Appropriate Design Code is already pushing companies like Meta to proactively enhance their existing limited privacy and safety measures for children and teens.
Nicole Gill, executive director of tech watchdog group Accountable Tech, said Musk’s reinstatements “are actively threatening the safety of Twitter users.”
“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.”
In his three weeks as Twitter CEO, Elon Musk has orchestrated a mass exodus of safety experts and turned the platform into a hellscape of misinformation, hate, and extremism. Now he has decided to hastily and unilaterally replatform Donald Trump — the man who incited a deadly insurrection against the U.S. government.
Elon Musk is incinerating his new $44 billion toy like it’s a self-driving Tesla, and the rest of us are engulfed in the flames.
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.”
Elon Musk's changes to Twitter's verification system undermines authoritative news sources and opens the floodgates to disinformation on the platform.
“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.”
The #StopToxicTwitter coalition, made up of more than 60 civil rights and civil society groups, issued an urgent call to Twitter advertisers, demanding they stop buys on the platform in the wake of Elon Musk’s sweeping layoffs.
Elon Musk's ties and business dealings with foreign actors should be a warning sign as he assumes control of Twitter.
“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.”
“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.”
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.
An open letter to the CEOs of the top advertising companies on Twitter from Accountable Tech and other partner organizations.
On Tuesday, more than 40 civil-society groups called on Twitter’s top-20 advertisers to inform Elon Musk that they will suspend all advertising on the platform if he follows through on plans to undermine the social network’s community standards and content moderation.
“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.”
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.
Elon Musk is going to have unilateral control over one of the most powerful communication platforms in the world.
"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.)
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.
Elon Musk’s plans for Twitter will make it an even more hate-filled cesspool, leading to irreparable real-world harm. Musk’s plans will leave the platform more vulnerable to security threats, rampant disinformation, and extremism just ahead of the midterm elections.
It’s also difficult to overstate the national security threat that this deal poses. Musk is a Putin propagandist with a pattern of close ties to hostile foreign governments – many of whom have financial and strategic interests in the deal.
Big Tech watchdog Accountable Tech announced a $250,000 national TV and digital ad buy slamming Facebook for rolling back election integrity safeguards ahead of the upcoming midterms.
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.
Despite all the headlines about the online and real-world danger Musk’s control of Twitter could cause, one is getting overlooked: Elon Musk owning Twitter is a national security risk to the United States.
An Elon Musk takeover of Twitter would provide a megaphone to extremists, threaten public safety, and devastate our already fragile democracy.
Meta’s indication that Donald Trump will be allowed back on the platform – despite his increasingly dangerous behavior since – would be equivalent to handing a flamethrower to an arsonist.
"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.
In signing the California Age Appropriate Design Code Act into law, Governor Newsom is sending a clear message to Big Tech: Put our children over your profits.
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.”
This landmark legislation would require online platforms to prioritize the safety and well-being of kids by design and by default for them.
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.
Today California took a massive step forward in securing a future in which the internet is fundamentally designed around the best interests of young people.
“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.
Accountable Tech announced a multi-state TV ad-buy urging the Senate to pass the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) and the Open App Markets Act (OAMA) this fall.
Today’s announcement by the FTC represents a critical first step toward cracking down on the egregious intrusions and exploitation of the ever-expanding surveillance economy.
Today’s vote in the California Senate Appropriations Committee brings us closer than ever to securing a future in which the internet is fundamentally designed around the best interests of young people.
“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.”
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."
The devastating Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade has turned Big Tech’s surveillance tools, and the troves of sensitive data they collect, into a weapon-in-waiting that will be deployed against people seeking reproductive care.
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.”
From the start, Musk has made it clear that his vision for Twitter would pose a dire threat to user safety and democratic ideals. That’s why Accountable Tech led the ‘Stop the Deal’ campaign with more than a dozen nonprofit partners – and it’s why we have fought tooth and nail to upend this agreement.
We’re grateful to President Biden for taking these necessary steps to help protect patients and keep Big Tech from profiting off the criminalization of reproductive health care.
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.
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.)
Student Defense and Accountable Tech today called for a full investigation into reports that the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) released personally identifiable information from an unknown number of federal aid applicants to Facebook.
Accountable Tech sent a letter to Twitter general counsel Vijaya Gadde on Wednesday imploring the company to resist Elon Musk’s demands for access to sensitive data on millions of users.
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.
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.
Today, a diverse coalition of nonprofit advocacy organizations launched “Stop The Deal” – a multifaceted campaign designed to upend Elon Musk’s hostile takeover of Twitter, and stave off the myriad harms inherent to Musk’s vision.
If Roe v. Wade is overturned and states enact draconian anti-abortion laws, Big Tech could be further weaponized to target people seeking reproductive care.
With today’s unanimously approved policy statement, Chair Khan and the FTC have sent a powerful message that they will use every tool at their disposal to safeguard our kids from exploitative tech companies.
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.”
Let’s be clear: Donald Trump was banned from Twitter in January 2021 for inciting and glorifying violence. His tweets – particularly after the January 6th insurrection – were in clear violation of Twitter’s policies.
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.
Rolling back Twitter's content moderation would give raise to more hateful and harmful speech on the platform now under Elon Musk's control.
Given Elon Musk's plans to rollback Twitter's content moderation systems in favor of free speech, this would provide a megaphone to extremists who spread hate and disinformation online.
Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter will further toxify our information ecosystem and threaten public safety, especially for those who are already most vulnerable.
“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.
In his keynote address at Stanford University’s “Challenges to Democracy in the Digital Information Realm” Symposium, President Barack Obama outlined Big Tech’s role in supercharging disinformation and undermining democracy across the globe.
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.
The agreement struck Thursday finalizing the Digital Markets Act (DMA) is a transformational moment in the movement to rein in Big Tech’s monopoly abuses – not just in the EU, but globally.
Big Tech has thrown everything at the wall already, but now, Europe has the chance to pass this sweeping legislation to rein in Big Tech's harms and monopoly power.
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.
Accountable Tech hosted a roundtable with five youth activists and U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) on social media’s impact on young people’s mental health.
Kaili Lambe is Accountable Tech’s new policy and partnerships director. She previously worked as a senior campaigner at the Mozilla Foundation.
We applaud President Biden for recognizing the inconvenient truth Big Tech executives continue to deny—that their products and platforms now play an important role in defining the future of this country.
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.
“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.
There's been a lot of talk for years on Capitol Hill, but Congress has the chance now to rein in Big Tech's harms.
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.”
The FTC received dozens of submissions from a diverse cross-section of leading advocacy organizations, businesses, lawmakers, and experts – along with more than 2,000 grassroots supporters – urging the Commission to promulgate new rules to prohibit this unfair method of competition.
The critical vote served as a forceful bipartisan message to Big Tech executives and lobbyists in the face of their frenzied and dishonest campaign to sink the bill.
Big Tech will continue stoking discrimination, division, and delusion until we upend this perverse incentive structure – which is exactly what Reps. Eshoo and Schakowsky, and Sen. Booker’s Banning Surveillance Advertising Act would do.
If Donald Trump's past products are any indication, I wouldn't bet much on his new social media platform.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
"'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."
"Accountable Tech has launched a database that compiles news outlets’ coverage of the Facebook Papers leaked by Haugen."
"'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."
“I do think they’ve burnt a lot of bridges,” said Jesse Lehrich, the co-founder of advocacy group Accountable Tech.
"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."
We're seeing growing momentum in Congress for legislation to rein in Big Tech's harms.
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.
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.
by 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."
"'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."
"Accountable Tech is launching Main Street Against Big Tech, a project aimed at highlighting the impacts of major tech companies on small business owners."
"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.'”
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.
Congress can pass a historic bipartisan package of antitrust bills to rein in Big Tech's abuses of monopoly power.
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.
"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.”
"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."
Amid historic polarization in Washington, this bipartisan show of force sends an unmistakable message that the era of impunity is over.
There are a lot of similarities between Big Tech and Big Tobacco, but Big Tech's harms are more pervasive and far-reaching.
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.
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."
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.'”
“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.”
For the first time since Facebook's inception, during Facebook's outage there was no dangerous disinformation being spread on the platform.
We can no longer rely on Facebook to be forthcoming with the information that they have, we need to demand it.
"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."
"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."
"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."
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.
"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."
"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."
"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."
Accountable Tech filed a significant rulemaking petition Thursday urging the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to ban surveillance advertising.
“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.”
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.
"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."
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.
The other side: Critics blasted Facebook, with Accountable Tech executive director Nicole Gill saying that "Facebook is teeming with deadly vaccine misinformation."
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
The House Judiciary Committee just advanced five separate bipartisan bills that would break the Silicon Valley stranglehold on American commerce, consumers, and communications.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
“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.
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.
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.
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
“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.
"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."
“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.
“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.”
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.
It’s a tremendous honor to join the Onward Together family, and to have the opportunity to work alongside such a dynamic coalition of leaders in the fight for a more just future.
The lawsuits filed today send a strong message to Facebook that their era of impunity is coming to an end. For years, Facebook has exploited its gatekeeper status to further entrench its monopoly power.
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.”
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.
While Jeff Zients is rightfully renowned as a talented problem-solver, his recent service on Facebook’s Board of Directors raises serious concerns about how he’ll navigate his role as the incoming administration’s COVID-19 czar.
“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.”
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.
It’s infuriating to see Facebook’s ineptitude and aversion to transparency once again inflict avoidable damage during the final stretch of an election.
Platforms must do more to address these harms before users are exposed, and they have the tools to do it. Facebook and Twitter already use proactive detection and enforcement, combining AI and human review to preempt other violations.
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.
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.
Today, Accountable Tech is launching a new $250,000 ad buy calling out Facebook for facilitating the spread of misinformation and hate with real-world consequences.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
Facebook Groups pose a singular threat to this election season. They’ve become hidden breeding grounds for disinformation campaigns and organizing platforms for extremists. And Facebook’s AI actively grows these dangerous networks by promoting them to vulnerable users.
The survey, commissioned by Accountable Tech, questioned 1,000 registered voters in early September.
Nearly three years after Mark Zuckerberg set into motion plans for a so-called ‘Supreme Court’ – and after months of sustained pressure for the Oversight Board to grapple with urgent Facebook debacles around the globe – board members have embarked on a press tour about their impending launch.
A new Election Integrity Roadmap released by the nonprofit group Accountable Tech shows that a different path is possible. Created in conjunction with leading technologists, civil rights leaders, and disinformation experts, the Roadmap outlines tangible steps that platforms can take to defend the integrity of the November elections.
Accountable Tech launched a comprehensive Election Integrity Roadmap for social media platforms as they navigate an election season fraught with unprecedented challenges.
Today, Accountable Tech released a new report examining how Facebook’s algorithms operated during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic and in the wake of George Floyd’s killing – and found they played a toxic role at each of these inflection points.
Facebook says it brings the world closer together, but its own research shows it divides us.
President Trump’s posts this morning should be a blaring red siren for social media platforms, whose woefully inadequate election misinformation policies continue to undermine the integrity of our democracy.
Jesse Lehrich, the co-founder of the nonprofit Accountable Tech, which is pushing Facebook to tighten its rules on harmful speech, warned that by doing nothing social media companies could exacerbate the problem of misinformation online.
Big Tech companies serve as information and market gatekeepers, but they have consistently abused that status to maximize profits at the expense of the public good. As today’s hearing made clear, their monopoly-like power begets more anti-competitive behavior and removes the incentives to act responsibly.
On July 24th, a coalition of nine progressive groups, including Demand Justice, Freedom From Facebook and Google, and Accountable Tech, released a statement calling on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to recuse himself from a case involving Facebook due to his close friendship with the company’s vice president of public policy, Joel Kaplan.
According to new exclusive polling conducted by GQR, Americans overwhelmingly agree that social media companies should do more to combat online hate and misinformation, that Big Tech companies have too much power, and that the Stop Hate For Profit campaign is demanding much-need reforms.
As Facebook faces sharp scrutiny and a growing advertising boycott amid the coronavirus pandemic, racial justice movement and impending November election, a new poll of 1,000 registered voters nationwide from Accountable Tech and GQR Research conducted July 15-19 finds that American voters have turned against Facebook, believing the company does more harm than good and broadly disapproving of CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the power he wields.
“A new policy-focused nonprofit that emerged from the recent wave of big tech scrutiny is calling for members of Facebook’s Oversight Board to either step up or step down,” TechCrunch reports on the group Accountable Tech.
A broad coalition of civil rights, free press, environmental, and tech accountability groups has released an open letter to the U.S.-based members of the Facebook Oversight Board urging them to resign in protest unless they are empowered to swiftly address the platform’s facilitation of voter suppression and climate denialism.
Amid growing outrage over Facebook’s refusal to crack down on hate and disinformation, Accountable Tech launched a multi-pronged campaign Tuesday targeting their toothless Oversight Board.
An American non-profit has started an online ad campaign to try to force the Oversight Board to speak up.
Accountable Tech, a progressive nonprofit, launched a campaign Tuesday to persuade the members of Facebook's independent oversight board to demand more authority over content decisions.
Nicole Gill, executive director of Accountable Tech, joins to discuss how the new group plans to fight misinformation on social media platforms.
Jesse Lehrich, the co-founder of Accountable Tech, a new nonprofit group pushing Facebook to tighten controls on its platform, suggested that the two men have a tacit nonaggression pact. “Trump can rage at Big Tech and Mark can say he’s disgusted by Trump’s posts, but at the end of the day the status quo serves both of their interests,” Mr. Lehrich said.
On the one hand, it’s encouraging to see Mark Zuckerberg preview a seemingly robust effort to help Americans vote in November – and that progress is a testament to the relentless advocacy from Facebook employees, civil rights activists, and many others who have made their voices difficult to ignore in recent weeks.
Accountable Tech launched a five-figure ad buy Tuesday aimed specifically at reaching Facebook employees on their own platform, as more and more boldly express their outrage over the path being charted by the company’s leadership.
The targeted ads went live today on Facebook and come from newly launched Accountable Tech, which is spending "five figures" on the effort, Axios has learned. The campaign follows yesterday's employee walkout and rising internal dissent over Facebook's handling of President Trump's tweets.
It’s encouraging to see Twitter continue to uphold its standards and provide transparency about the actions they are taking, and their warning labels provide important context without amounting to censorship.
Jesse Lehrich, a former spokesman for Hillary Clinton, announced that he was teaming with Nicole Gill, another liberal activist, to form Accountable Tech, an advocacy group aimed at pressuring tech companies to fight “the proliferation of online misinformation, deception, and manipulation.”
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.