A Power Analysis of Platforms: Expression, Equitable Governance, and Participation
Author: Jasmine McNealy (University of Florida)
Justice Thomas acknowledged the extreme concentrations of power in social media organizations in the recent US Supreme Court case Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute in which the Court determined that a case — meant to decide whether the blocking of critics of the presidential administration from a Twitter account used by that...
| More >Data: Power or Pawn? Advancing Equity by Reimagining the Consumer-Data Relationship
Author: Amina Kirk and Mae Watson Grote (Change Machine)
Tech’s ability to accumulate and wield power is unquestionable. The dominance of the Big Four tech firms — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google — has commoditized consumer data in unprecedented ways, subjecting all of our online activity to search, analysis, and constraint. These dynamics not only perpetuate existing forces, making...
| More >The People vs. the Algorithmic State: How Government Is Aiding Big Tech’s Extractivist Agenda, and What We Can Do About It
Author: Ulises Ali Mejias (State University of New York at Oswego)
This paper focuses on forms of discrimination, including racism, that are produced and replicated when the state uses biased algorithms, and when the state fails to regulate corporations that use biased algorithms. The paper specifically asks what happens when the state—whose purpose is to guarantee the rights of...
| More >Technology, Fissuring, and Race
Author: Veena Dubal (University of California, Hastings College of the Law)
Technology platforms may be understood as the symbolic “cotton mill” in today’s rapidly growing digital economy. Just as the capital-intensive nature of unregulated factory production amidst the industrial revolution expropriated and exploited human labor, today’s platforms—with their venture capital-facilitated...
| More >Supporting Black Businesses Online with Federal Policies and Recommendations
Author: Fallon Wilson (#BlackTechFutures Research Institute)
Black businesses have been disadvantaged due to racial inequalities, as outlined in what Kapor (2018) refers to as the “Leaky Tech Pipeline,” which examines how intersecting racial tech disparities, such as the lack of access to the high-speed internet, business mentors of color, and non-dilutive capital, affects Black tech...
| More >How Platform Based Work Contributes to the Racial Wealth Gap
Author: Shelly Steward (The Aspen Institute)
Platform work, or the use of apps, websites, or intermediaries to connect workers to tasks, is an increasingly common way of arranging work in the tech sector. Platforms weaken the relationship between workers and employers by acting as a mediator between them; workers interact with an impersonal interface rather than a supervisor. These...
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