"Automation is information and it not only ends jobs in the world of work, it ends subjects in the world of learning.
It does not end the world of learning. The future of work consists of earning a living in the automation age.
This is a familiar pattern in electric technology in general. It ends the old dichotomies between culture and technology,
between art and commerce, and between work and leisure. Whereas in the mechanical age of fragmentation
leisure had been the absence of work, or mere idleness, the reverse is true in the electric age. As the age of information demands
the simultaneous use of all our faculties, we discover that we are most at leisure when we are most intensely involved,
very much as with the artists in all ages."
- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), p. 378.
Big Tech & Society: Policy & Activism
School of Media Studies
The New School
Spring 2022
Instructor: Peter Asaro asarop AT newschool.edu
CRN: 8890
Time: Tuesday, 6:00 - 7:50 pm (ET)
Location: Synchronous Online (ZOOM)
Course webpage is here: http://peterasaro.org/courses/2022BigTech.html
Course blog is here: http://bigtech2022.wordpress.com/
Course
Description
A handful of internet companies have captured vast global markets for their products and services, and leveraged their platforms to capture even more. Several are now valued at more than $1 trillion, with greater wealth and reach than many countries. These companies and their technologies have become integral to our economy and reshaped our social lives. These companies are also increasingly being accused of holding monopolistic power, violating anti-trust laws, engaging in anti-competitive practices, violating individual privacy rights, engaging in unfair labor practices, enabling anti-social behaviors, contributing to political division, and empowering violent extremism including terrorism and genocide. Given the power and resources these companies have, and the great potential for both positive and negative impacts on society, how can the public hold them accountable?
This course will examine the social and legal issues raised by the biggest and most influential of these companies, from Amazon's growing monopoly over retail sales, to Google and Facebook's growing monopoly over advertising, to the impact on traditional media from newspaper journalism to film and television, to the rise of the sharing/gig economy, to the battle over net neutrality, to social media's anti-democratic effects, and to how the algorithms these companies deploy impact society and how much of their power is derived from the collection of personal data and its often biased analysis and application. In addition to analyzing the legal and social issues raised by the practices of these companies, we will examine the various policy proposals for reigning in their power, from anti-trust laws to privacy protections, we will consider what regulations might achieve a better society. We will also look at grassroots activism aimed at confronting the power of these companies. From boycotts to worker-led initiatives and platform co-operativism, we will consider the power of the people to shape these companies outside of governmental regulation.
Students will be required to make regular blog entries based on the assigned readings, participate in online class discussions via Zoom, and write two 7-9 page papers, or create short multi-media presentations, during the course of the semester.
COURSE
REQUIREMENTS & GRADING:
Class
Attendance & Participation 30%
Blog Entries & Comments: 30%
First Paper or Media Project 20%
Second Paper or Media Project: 20%
Class
Attendance and Participation: 30%
You are expected to have
thoroughly and thoughtfully read the assigned texts, viewed the assigned
videos, and to have prepared yourself to contribute meaningfully to the class
discussions. For some people, that preparation requires taking copious notes on
the assigned readings; for others, it entails supplementing the assigned
readings with explanatory texts found in survey textbooks or in online sources;
and for others still, it involves reading the texts, ruminating on them
afterwards, then discussing those readings with classmates before the class
meeting. Whatever method best suits you, I hope you will arrive at class with
copies of the assigned reading, ready and willing to make yourself a valued
contributor to the discussion, and eager to share your own relevant media
experiences and interests. Your participation will be evaluated in terms of
both quantity and quality.
As this is a seminar, regular
attendance is essential. You will be permitted two excused absences (you must
notify me of your inability to attend before class, via email). Any subsequent
absences and any un-excused absences will adversely affect your
grade.
If you must take the class "asynchronously" due to scheduling or time-zone conflicts, you must make arrangements with me for your class participation at the beginning of the semester. In most cases this will consist of watching the posted videos of the weekly discussion, and posting an additional weekly blog entry with your reflections on the week's topic and readings (approx. 1 page or 500 words).
Blog Entries
& Comments: 30%
You will be required to make weekly blog entries commenting on the assigned readings and any additional related material you discover on your own and wish to share with the class.
You will be required to create an account on WordPress (if you
do not already have one), and will receive an email invitation to be added as an author to the private collective course blog. Everyone will be posting
to a common blog page, and this will be readable by your classmates, but not by people outside of the class. When writing and making comments, you are expected to treat other students with the same respect and courtesy as you should in the classroom, and to cite the sources of any text or quotes you use in accordance with academic honesty policies.
You are also expected to read the posts of your classmates, and encouraged to comment on other people's posts each week. Posts will not be graded but I, and other students, will read them and occasionally comment on them. There will be 12 posts worth 2 Points (on-time) or 1 point (late) required through the semester (not required on days when papers/projects are due), thus 24 points, plus 6 points for comments on the posts of other students, totalling 30% of your grade.
Blog posts will be due before
the start of each class. They are time stamped when you post them, and late
posts will only receive half credit (1 point). There is no specific assignment for each post,
but they should express your reactions to and reflections on your readings and the topic for that week.
First Paper or Media Project 20%
Second Paper or Media Project: 20%
There will be no final exam.
There are two research projects required for the semester.
There are 2 options for each: Research/Analysis Paper Option, and Media Project Option.
First Paper or Media Project Due: March 8
Paper Length: 3000-5000 words
(approx. 6-10 pages), Media Projects of equivalent effort
Second Paper or Media Project Due: May 11
Paper Length: 3000-5000 words
(approx. 6-10 pages), Media Projects of equivalent effort
Project
topics can address any aspect of the topics and materials discussed in class.
Projects should include materials beyond what is directly covered in class, as
appropriate for your topic. In other words, they should require
research. You media journal and blog entires will provide many ideas for projects, as will class discussion. You should develop one of these into a more in depth analysis through additional research to try to answer a question, or argue a position, you feel is important.
Research Paper Option
This will take the form of a 3000-5000 word (Times
New Roman, 12pt font, double spaced) term paper. You should draw upon sources
from the course readings as well as beyond the course readings. You should cite
your sources properly.
Media Project Option
Media Projects can take the form of film and video
pieces, audio documentaries, websites, interactive media, performance pieces,
infographics, a social media campaign strategy, or other ideas. In addition to
the actual media product, you will need to submit a short written piece explaining your project, its motivations, methods and what you did to realize it.
Papers should be submitted to me in electronic form by email (Word Perfect, MS Word, PDF, HTML and plain TXT are all fine). All assignments are due at 6pm at the start of class on the day they are due. Late
final papers will not be accepted, as I must turn in grades shortly
thereafter.
READINGS
All readings will be available
electronically, via the web, in PDF, MS Word, HTML, or similar format. You are
welcome and encouraged to buy any of the books used.
LECTURE/DISCUSSION VIDEOS
All of the Zoom lecture/discussion sessions will be recorded. Recordings will only be made available to members of the class through a Google Drive.
NOTE: By attending this class you consent to being recorded.
Weekly Topics & Readings
Week 1: January 25
Course
Introduction
Course Syllabus Overview
Student Introductions
How to create a WordPress Account, and make a Blog
Entry
Discuss in Class (please Watch and Explore BEFORE class):
Watch: Werner Herzog, Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World, 2016, 98 min.
Explore: Jon Huang, Karl Russell and Jack Nicas, "Apple's Value Hit $1 Trillion. Add Disney to Bank of America and... You're Halfway There," New York Times, August 2, 2018.
Week 2: February 1
Surveillance Capitalism & The Attention Economy
Required:
Shoshana Zuboff, "The Coup We Are Not Talking About,"
New York Times, January 29, 2021.
Shoshana Zuboff, "The Big Other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information Civilization,"
Journal of Information Technology, 30(1), 2015, pp. 75-89.
Watch: Jeff Orlowski, The Social Dilemma
NetFlix, 2020, 94 min.
Watch: VPRO Documentary, "Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism,"
You Tube, December 20, 2019, 50 min.
John
Lanchester, "You Are the Product," London Review of Books, August 17,
2017.
Antonio
Garcia Martinez, "I Helped Create Facebook's Ad Machine. Here's How I'd Fix
It," Wired, September 22, 2017.
Watch: Tristan Harris, "How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day," TED, July 28, 2017, 17 min.
Watch: Tim Wu, "Talks at Google: The Attention Merchants" YouTube, December 16, 2016, 35 min.
Cecilia Kang, "Democratic Congress Prepares to Take On Big Tech," New York Times, January 26,
2021.
Recommended:
Tim Hwang,
Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet, Macmillan, 2020.
Shoshana Zuboff,
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, Public Affairs, 2018.
Tim Wu,
The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads, Vintage Books, 2016.
Watch: Tim Wu, "The Attention Merchants", 2017 Grafstein Lecture in Communications, University of Toronto Law School, YouTube, April 13, 2017, 88 min.
Week 3: February 8
The History of Anti-Trust
Required:
Maurice E. Stucke and Ariel Ezrachi, "The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the U.S. Antitrust Movement," Harvard Business Review, December 15, 2017.
"History of United States antitrust law", Wikipedia.
Watch: "Google, Facebook, Amazon And The Future Of Antitrust Laws," CNBC, August 16, 2019, 12 min.
"Breakup of the Bell System", Wikipedia.
Watch: "How AT&T Doubled in Size After a Government Breakup," Tech Insider, March 2, 2018, 8 min.
Watch: "The Breakup of AT&T in the 1980s," The Communicators, C-SPAN, November 19, 2012, 27 min.
Listen: "Antitrust 1: Standard Oil," Planet Money, NPR, February 15, 2019, 23 min.
Listen: "Antitrust 2: The Paradox," Planet Money, NPR, February 20, 2019, 23 min.
Listen: "Antitrust 3: Big Tech," Planet Money, NPR, February 22, 2019, 23 min.
More on Attention Economy:Charlie Warzel, "I Talked to the Cassandra of the Internet Age," New York Times, February 4, 2021.
Recommended:
Robert W. Crandall, "The AT&T Divestiture: Was it Necessary? Was it a Success?," U.S. Department of Justice, March 28, 2007.
"Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890", Wikipedia.
"Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States", Wikipedia.
"United States v. AT&T", Wikipedia.
Week 4: February 15
Microsoft, Google & Apple Antitrust Suits
Required:
"United States v. Microsoft Corp.", Wikipedia.
Watch: "The Microsoft Monopoly,"
The Science Elf, March 9, 2019, 18 min.
Victor Luckerson (2018) "'Crush Them': An Oral History of the Lawsuit That Upended Silicon Valley," The Ringer, May 18, 2018.
Chris Butts (2010) "The Microsoft Case 10 Years Later: Antitrust and New Leading “New Economy” Firms," Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property, Vol. 8, No. 2, Spring 2010, pp. 275-291.
Watch: "Why Google is Being Sued by the Justice Department," Wall Street Journal, October 20, 2020, 6 min.
Rani Molla and Adam Clark Estes (2020) "Google's Three Antitrust Cases, Briefly Explained," Vox, December 17, 2020.
Lauren Feiner (2020) "Google's Antitrust Mess: Here are All the Major Cases it's Facing in the U.S. and Europe," CNBC, December 18, 2020.
Watch: "What Facebook, Google and Others Can Learn From Microsoft's Antitrust Case," Wall Street Journal, September 10, 2019, 8 min.
Dipyan Ghosh and Loully Saney, "Why Action Against Google is Not Enough," Foreign Policy, October 20, 2020.
Barry Collins, "Apple Accused of 'Bullying' App Developer Blix," Forbes, February 13, 2021.
Valentina Pop, "Epic Games Files Antitrust Complaint Against Apple in Europe," Wall Street Journal, February 17, 2021.
Jack Nicas, "Big Tech's Unlikely Next Battleground: North Dakota," New York Times, February 14, 2021.
Mike Isaac, Daisuke Wakabayashi, Damien Cave and Edmund Lee, "Facebook Blocks News in Australia, Diverging With Google on Proposed Law," New York Times, February 17, 2021.
Watch: "Developers vs. App Store: Apple's Fights, Explained," Wall Street Journal, October 1, 2020, 8 min.
Watch: "The Apple App Store Exposed: Worst of the Tech Industry," TechLead, June 18, 2020, 10 min.
Recommended:
Watch: "The Story of Microsoft: How A Computer Club Took Over The World," Jack Chapple, October 29, 2019, 18 min.
Watch: "How Does Microsoft Make Money? (Not Bill Gates's Microsoft Anymore)," The Market is Open, October 8, 2020, 18 min.
Watch: "The Invention And History of Google," Silicon Valley: The Untold Story Discovery UK, June 10, 2018, 6 min.
Watch: "How Google Search Works (in 5 minutes)," Google, October 24, 2019, 5 min.
Week 5: February 22
The Case(s) of Amazon
Required:
Kiri Masters (2020) "Amazon Antitrust Report Reveals 'Strong-Arm' Negotiating Tactics With Brands," Forbes, October 8, 2020.
Todd Bishop (2020) "Report: Amazon to be hit with antitrust charges as soon as next week over third-party seller data," Geek Wire, June 11, 2020.
Tyler Sonnemaker (2021) "Amazon hit with class-action antitrust lawsuit alleging it colluded with major publishers to illegally drive up e-book prices by 30%," Business Insider, January 14, 2021.
Leah Nylen (2020) "Why Amazon may have the Most to Lose from Tech’s Hill Showdown," Politico, July 29, 2020.
Lina M. Khan (2017) "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," The Yale Law Journal, Vol 126, No. 3, January, 2017, pp. 710-805.
Maureen Tkacik "What Jeff Bezos Hath Wrought," The New York Times, February 8, 2021.
Edward Ongweso Jr. "Why Amazon Is Flooding the Country With $15 Minimum Wage Ads," Motherboard, February 25, 2021.
Lauren Kaori Gurley "Secret Amazon Reports Expose the Company’s Surveillance of Labor and Environmental Groups," Motherboard, November 23, 2020.
Watch: "How Amazon Paid $0 Federal Income Tax in 2018," CNBC, April 3, 2019, 12 min.
Watch: "Amazon's Playbook for Crushing Startups," TechAltar, November 7, 2019, 10 min.
Watch: "Amazon Accused of Driving Small Companies Out of Business," Bloomberg Politics, July 29, 2020, 7 min.
Watch: "Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos," Frontline, PBS, February 18, 2020, 114 min.
Recommended:
Watch: "The Story of Amazon: How A Bookstore Conquered the Internet," Jack Chapple, September 2, 2018, 18 min.
Week 6: March 1
The Rise of Silicon Valley
Required:
Adrian Chen (2019) "The Confidence Game: How Silicon Valley Broke the Economy," The Nation, October 14, 2019.
Fred Turner (2017) "Don't Be Evil: Fred Turner on Utopias, Frontiers, and Brogrammers," Logic, Issue 3, December 1, 2017.
Farhad Manjoo (2022) "The Rise of Big Tech May Just Be Starting," New York Times, February 16, 2022.
Watch: "Silicon Valley: How Stanford, Science, and War Made Tech History," Big Think, July 22, 2019, 10 min.
Watch: "Jonathan Taplin - How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy," TTI/Vangard, May 1, 2017, 30 min.
Watch: "Silicon Valley: The Untold Story, Episode 1," Discovery Channel, July 24, 2017, 43 min.
Watch: "Silicon Valley: The Untold Story, Episode 3," Discovery Channel, June 25, 2018, 43 min.
Watch: "Silicon Valley: The Untold Story, Episode 4," Discovery Channel, June 25, 2018, 43 min.
Watch: "Joseph Gordon Levitt on Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Part 1," YouTube, February 22, 2022, 7 min.
Watch: "Joseph Gordon Levitt on Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Part 2," YouTube, February 22, 2022, 3 min.
Watch: "Joseph Gordon Levitt on Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Part 3," YouTube, February 22, 2022, 5 min.
Recommended:
Watch: "Secret History of Silicon Valley," Computer History Museum, December 4, 2008, 62 min.
Margaret O'Mara (2019) The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America," Penguin Press, New York.
Jonathan Taplin (2017) Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy," Back Day Books.
Watch: "Jonathan Taplin on Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google and Amazon Undermined Democracy," Singularity Weblog, May 15, 2018, 75 min.
Antonio Garcia Martinez (2016) Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley," Harper, New York.
Scott Galloway (2017) The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google," Penguin Press, New York.
Jacob S. Hacker & Paul Pierson (2020) Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality," Liveright Publishing Corporation, New York.
Week 7: March 8
First Paper/Project Due (no blog post)
Digital Capitalism
Required:
William H. Janeway (2015) "Unicorns: Why This Bubble Is Different," Forbes, May 28, 2015.
Watch: "If You Know Nothing About Venture Capital, Watch This First," Forbes, March 23, 2016, 2 min.
Watch: "Startup Funding Explained: Everything You Need to Know," The Rest of Us, June 2, 2016, 9 min.
Watch: "Ernestine Fu: All You Need to Know About Venture Capital," Stanford University, March 25, 2020, 40 min.
Watch: "Startup Accelerators: Are They Still Worth It?," Slidebean, October 29, 2020, 12 min.
Watch: "Venture Capital - Silicon Valley Ponzi Scheme - Chamath Palihapitiya," MAK, November 12, 2019, 13 min.
Robert H. Frank (2021) "The Economic Case for Regulating Social Media," New York Times, February 11, 2021.
Nick Srnicek, "Platform Capitalism," London School of Economics, Lit Fest, 2017.
Keach Hagey and Vivian Ngo, "How Google Edged Out Rivals and Built the World’s Dominant Ad Machine: A Visual Guide," Wall Street Journal, November 7, 2019.
Dipayan Ghosh, "How the Free Market Incentivized Facebook’s Harmful Monopoly," Center for International Governance Innovation, January 6, 2021.
Dipayan Ghosh and Nick Couldry, "Digital Realignment: Rebalancing Platform Economies from Corporation to Consumer," Harvard Kennedy School, Working Paper No. 155, October, 2020.
Keach Hagey and Suzanne Vranica, "How Covid-19 Supercharged the Advertising ‘Triopoly’ of Google, Facebook and Amazon," Wall Street Journal, March 19, 2021.
Rodrigo Fernandez, Ilke Adriaans, Reijer Hendrikse, and Tobias J. Klinge, "The Financialisation of Big Tech: Engineering Digital Monopolies," Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), December 17, 2020.
Tim Hwang,
Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet, Macmillan, 2020.
Watch: Jed Rothstein, "WeWork: Or the Making and Braking of a $47 Billion Unicorn," Hulu, 2021, 106 min.
Watch: münecat, "Web3.0: A Libertarian Dystopia," YouTube, March 19, 2022, 101 min.
Recommended:
Nick Srnicek (2017) Platform Capitalism, Polity Press, 2017.
Watch: "Chamath Palihapitiya, Founder and CEO Social Capital, on Money as an Instrument of Change," Stanford Graduate School of Business, November 13, 2017, 56 min.
Watch: The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, HBO, 2019, 119 min.
Listen: Rebecca Jarvis, The Drop Out, ABC Audio, February, 2019, 180 min.
Week of March 15
NO CLASS due to Spring Break
(Saturday, March 12 to Sunday, March 20)
Week 8: March 22
The Sharing Economy, Gig Work & Platform Cooperativism
Required:
Lia Russell, "The Silicon Valley Economy Is Here. And It’s a Nightmare," The New Republic, January 16, 2020.
Sarah Kessler, "The Unequal Geography of the Gig Economy," The Atlantic, June 5, 2018.
Jill Cowan, "The Uber Battle on California’s Ballot," New York Times, October 22, 2020.
Edward Ongweso Jr. "What Is 'IC+', Uber's New Plan to Warp Labor Laws Nationwide?," Motherboard, November 19, 2020.
Suhauna Hussain, "California Supreme Court throws out challenge to Prop. 22 ," Los Angeles Times, February 3, 2021.
Sam Schechner and Parmy Olson, "Uber Grants Vacation Pay, Pensions to U.K. Drivers in Change of Job Status," Wall Street Journal, March 16, 2021.
Patricia Callahan, "Amazon Pushes Fast Shipping but Avoids Responsibility for the Human Cost," New York Times, September 5, 2019.
Irani, L., (2015) "Difference and Dependence Among Digital Workers: The Case of Amazon Mechanical Turk," South Atlantic Quarterly, 114(1).
Watch: "The Cooperative Platform Economy: A Conversation with Trebor Scholz & Yochai Benkler," Civic Hall, February 27, 2017, 86 min.
Nick Romeo, "Should Gig Work Be Government-Run?," New Yorker, March 23 2021.
Recommended:
Watch: Brian Koppelman, "Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber," Showtime, 2022, 8 Episodes of 60 min.
Sarah Kessler (2018) Gigged: The Gig Economy, the End of the Job and the Future of Work, Random House, 2018.
Trebor Scholz (2017) Uberworked and Underpaid: How Workers are Disrupting the Digital Economy, Polity, 2017.
Trebot Scholz and Nathan Schneider (eds.) (2017) Ours to Hack and Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, A New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet, O/R Books, 2017.
Watch: Jamie Bartlett, "The Disruptors," BBC, August 6, 2017, 59 min.
"2020 California Proposition 22," Wikipedia.
Week 9: March 29
Tech Workers & Unionization
Required:
Ben Tarnoff and Moira Weigel, "Silicon Valley Workers Have Had Enough," New York Times, January 26, 2021.
Emily Birnbaum
and Issie Lapowsky, "How Tech Workers Feel About China, AI and Big Tech’s Tremendous Power," Protocol, March 15, 2021.
Elizabeth Lopatto, "To expose sexism at Uber, Susan Fowler blew up her life," The Verge, February 18, 2020.
Patricia Callahan, "Amazon Pushes Fast Shipping but Avoids Responsibility for the Human Cost," New York Times, September 5, 2019.
Michael Corkery and Karen Weise, "Amazon Union Drive Takes Hold in Unlikely Place," New York Times, January 25, 2021.
Sebastian Herrera, "Amazon Union Vote Set to Begin in New York, Which Has Challenged Company in Past," Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2022.
Lauren Kaori Gurley, "Secret Amazon Reports Expose the Company’s Surveillance of Labor and Environmental Groups," Motherboard, November 23, 2020.
David Streitfeld, "How Amazon Crushes Unions," New York Times, March 16, 2021.
Salehi, Niloufar, Irani, L., and Bernstein, M.S., "We Are Dynamo: Overcoming Stalling and Friction in Collective Action for Crowd Workers," Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, 2015.
Benjamin Wallace-Wells, "The Amazon Union Drive and the Changing Politics of Labor," New Yorker, March 25, 2021.
Watch: "Exposed: Undercover Reporter at Amazon Warehouse Found Abusive Conditions & No Bathroom Breaks," Democracy Now!, September 5, 2018, 8 min.
Watch: "You're Just Disposable": Former Amazon Workers Speak Out," PBS Frontline, February 14, 2020, 10 min.
Watch: "Leaked documents show how Amazon misled the public about warehouse safety issues," PBS NewsHour, October 13, 2020, 10 min.
Watch: "How Amazon Fends Off Unions," CNBC, August 22, 2019, 20 min.
Watch: "Alabama Amazon worker to vote on unioninzing," CBC, February 8, 2021, 2 min.
Watch: "Robin D.G. Kelley: Amazon Union Drive Builds on Decades of Black Radical Labor Activism in Alabama," Democracy NOW!, March 29, 2021, 14 min.
Nick Romeo, "Should Gig Work Be Government-Run?," New Yorker, March 23 2021.
Scott Shane and Daisuke Wakabayashi,
"'The Business of War': Google Employees Protest Work for the Pentagon," New York Times, April 4, 2018.
Google Employees,
"Letter in Protest of Project Maven," 2018.
Letter From Academic Researchers in Support of Google Employees,
"Google should withdraw from Project Maven and commit to not weaponizing its technology," ICRAC, May, 2018.
Lucy Suchman, Lilly Irani and Peter Asaro,
"Google's March to the Business of War Must Be Stopped: We stand with thousands of Google employees, demanding an end to its contract with the US Department of Defense," Jacobin, May 16, 2018.
Kate Conger,
"Google Employees Resign in Protest Against Pentagon Contract," Gizmodo, May 14, 2018.
Kate Conger,
"Google Plans Not to Renew Its Contract for Project Maven, a Controversial Pentagon Drone AI Imaging Program,"
Gizmodo, June 1, 2018.
Polina Godz,
"Tech Workers Versus the Pentagon: An Interview with Kim," Jacobin, June 6, 2018.
Recommended:
Watch: "Amazon's Union-Busting Training Video (LONG VERSION)," Whole Worker, June 22, 2019, 30 min.
Week 10: April 5
Safe Harbor: Section 230 of Communications Decency Act
Follow Up:
Paul Krugman, "A Small Earthquake on Staten Island," New York Times, April 4, 2022.
Required:
Timothy B. Lee (2020) "The Internet’s most important—and misunderstood—law, explained," Ars Technica, June 10, 2020.
Kate Klonick (2020) "Everything you need to know about Section 230," Lawfare, July 17, 2020.
Stewart Baker (2020) "
What Should We Do About Section 230?," Lawfare, February 19, 2020.
Watch: "What is Section 230 and why do people want it repealed?," 60 Minutes, CBS, January 3, 2021, 13 min.
Recommended:
"Section 230", Wikipedia.
Explore: "CDA 230: The Most Important Law Protecting Internet Speech," Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Watch: "The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet," The Cato Institute, April 27, 2019, 93 min.
Casey Newton (2020) "Everything you need to know about Section 230: The most important law for online speech," The Verge, December 29, 2020.
David McCabe "Tech’s Legal Shield Appears Likely to Survive as Congress Focuses on Details," New York Times, March 9, 2021.
Week 11: April 12
Online Speech: Encryption, Censorship, De-Platforming & Content Moderation
Required:
Rebecca Bellan, "Americans Want Transparency In Content Moderation Decisions On Social Media," Forbes, June 19, 2020.
Chris O'Brien, "NYU Study: Facebook's content moderation efforts are 'grossly inadequate'," VentureBeat, June 7, 2020.
Casey Newton, "Facebook will pay $52 million in settlement with moderators who developed PTSD on the job," The Verge, May 12, 2020.
Svea Windwehr and Jillian C. York, "Facebook's Most Recent Transparency Report Demonstrates the Pitfalls of Automated Content Moderation," Electronic Frontier Foundation, October 8, 2020.
Quinta Jurecic, Alan Z. Rozenshtein, "Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse Unlocks a New World of Content Moderation Chaos," Lawfare, November 3, 2021.
David McCabe, "How a Stabbing in Israel Echoes Through the Fight Over Online Speech," New York Times, March 24, 2021.
Brian Hauss, "Devin Nunes' Cow Has a First Amendment Right to Call Rep. Nunes a 'Treasonous Cowpoke'," ACLU, December 1, 2019.
Alex Hern, "Facebook, Apple, YouTube and Spotify Ban Infowars' Alex Jones," The Guardian, August 6, 2018.
Dipyan Ghosh, "Taking Trump Down Has Exposed Social Media’s Inherent Contradictions," Foreign Policy, January 26, 2021.
Corynne McSherry, "Content Moderation and the U.S. Election: What to Ask, What to Demand," Electronic Frontier Foundation, October 26, 2020.
Jacob Mchangama, "Rushing to Judgment: Examining Government Mandated Content Moderation," Lawfare, January 26, 2021.
Paul Rosenzweig, "Countering Harmful Content: A Research Agenda," Lawfare, March 11, 2022.
Aaron Jue and Jason Kelley, "EFF at 30: Saving Encryption, with Technologist Bruce Schneier," Electronic Frontier Foundation, December 9, 2020.
Recommended:
Anthony Nadler, Matthew Crain, and Joan Donovan, "Weaponizing the Digital Influence Machine:
The Political Perils of Online Ad Tech," Data & Society, October 17, 2018.
"The Santa Clara Principles On Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation," Content Moderation at Scale Conference, Santa Clara, CA, February 2, 2018.
"Christchurch Call to Action to Eliminate Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content Online," March, 2019.
Week 12: April 19
Privacy, GDPR & DMA
Required:
Carissa Veliz, Privacy is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data, Melville House, 2021, Intro, Chapters 3, 4, 5 & 6.
Russell Brandom, "Everything you need to know about GDPR," The Verge, May 25, 2018.
Issie Lapowsky, "Platforms vs. PhDs: How tech giants court and crush the people who study them," protocol, March 19, 2021.
Justin Sherman, "Data Brokers Know Where You Are—and Want to Sell That Intel," Wired, August 23, 2021.
Lina M. Khan, "Remarks of Chair Lina M. Khan As Prepared for Delivery IAPP Global Privacy Summit 2022," FTC.gov, April 11, 2022.
Watch: "Apple vs Facebook: The Privacy Battle" Tech Vision, December 26, 2020, 6 min.
Watch: "Data Brokers," Last Week Tonight with john Oliver, HBO, April 11, 2022, 25 min.
Jim Dempsey, Chris Jay Hoofnagle, Ira Rubinstein, Katherine J. Strandburg, "A Broader Look at Privacy Remedies," Lawfare, April 7, 2021.
Kim Mackrael and Sam Schechner, "European Lawmakers Reach Deal on Sweeping New Digital-Competition Law," Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2022.
Sreeja Chatterjee, "Digital Markets Act: A Proposal to Redefine Competition Laws In the European Union," Jurist, February 14, 2022.
Colin Wall and Eugenia Lostri, "The European Union’s Digital Markets Act: A Primer," CSIS, February 8, 2022.
Recommended:
"California Consumer Privacy Act," Wikipedia.
"The Digital Markets Act: ensuring fair and open digital markets," European Commission.
Week 13: April 26
Net Neutrality, Embedded Surveillance, and the Right to Repair
Required:
Paola Rosa-Aquino, "Fix, or Toss? The ‘Right to Repair’ Movement Gains Ground," New York Times, October 23, 2020.
Vianney Vaute, "Right To Repair: The Last Stand In Checking Big Tech’s Power Grab," Forbes, February 18, 2021.
Elizabeth Kolbert, "How Much of Your Stuff Belongs to Big Tech?," The New Yorker, March 8,
2021.
Lee Rainie and Maee Duggan, "Auto insurance discounts and monitoring," Pew Research Center, January 14, 2016.
John M. Vincent and Cherise Threewitt, "How Do Those Car Insurance Tracking Devices Work?," U.S. News and World Report, February 26, 2018.
John Hensley, "The Risks of Using Car Insurance Tracking Devices," Hensley Law Blog, October 10, 2019.
Brian X. Chen, "Apple AirTag Review: A Humble Tracker With Next-Generation Tech," New York Times, April 28, 2021.
Robert Föehl, "Police use of Ring doorbell cameras — poor ethics or public good?," The Hill, September 12, 2019.
Joseph Jerome, "Alexa, is Law Enforcement Listening?," Center for Democracy & Technology, January 4, 2017.
Shira Ovide, "The long, painful path of net neutrality," New York Times, February 25,
2021.
Klint Finley, "The WIRED Guide to Net Neutrality," Wired, May 5, 2020.
"Net Neutrality," EFF.
Joan McCarter, "Net neutrality is coming back under Biden," Daily Kos, February 11,
2021.
Andrew Perrina and Sara Atske, "7% of Americans don't use the internet. Who are they?," Pew Research, April 2, 2021.
Jabari Simama, "It’s 2020. Why Is the Digital Divide Still with Us?," Governing Daily, February 28, 2020.
Shira Ovide, "Buying Twitter, Elon Musk Will Face Reality of His Free-Speech Talk," New York Times, April 26, 2022.
Recommended:
Explore: "Advocacy,"
Repair.org, 2021.
"UK Consumer Rights Act 2015," Wikipedia.
"Digital Divide," Wikipedia.
"Electronics Right to Repair," Wikipedia.
Week 14: May 3
No Blog Entry, Work on Final Projects
The Case of Facebook
Required:
Paul Mozur, Cecilia Kang, Adam Satariano and David McCabe, "A Global Tipping Point for Reining In Tech Has Arrived," New York Times, April 20, 2021.
Watch: Frontline, "The Facebook Dilemma, Parts 1 & 2,"
PBS, October, 2018, 55 & 54 min.
Evan Osnos, "Can Mark Zuckerberg Fix Facebook Before It Breaks Democracy?," The New Yorker, September 17,
2018.
Antonio
Garcia Martinez, "I Helped Create Facebook's Ad Machine. Here's How I'd Fix
It," Wired, September 22, 2017.
Nicholas Thompson and Fred Vogelstein, "Inside the Two Years that Shook Facebook--And the World," Wired, February 12, 2018.
April Falcon Doss, "Facebook's Oversight Board Didn't Solve the Content Moderation Riddle. We Shouldn’t Be Surprised," Just Security, May 10, 2021.
Zach Wolf, "What we learned from the Facebook whistleblower -- and how Facebook responded," CNN, October 4, 2021.
Frances Haugen, "Europe Is Making Social Media Better Without Curtailing Free Speech. The U.S. Should, Too," New York Times, April 28, 2022.
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, "Facebook Doesn’t Know What It Does With Your Data, Or Where It Goes: Leaked Document,"
Motherboard, April 26, 2022.
Watch: Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim, The Great Hack," Netflix, 2019, 116 min.
Recommended:
Watch: Mark Zuckerberg Testimony to House Finance Committee,
C-SPAN, October 23, 2019, 5 hours.
Watch: Independent Lens, "The Cleaners,"
PBS, November 12, 2018, 86 min. (no longer available online)
Watch: David Fincher, The Social
Network, 2010, 120 min.
Steven Levy (2020), facebook: The Inside Story, Penguin,
2020.
Week 15: May 10
No Blog Entry, Final Project Presentations
Required:
Barack Obama, "Transcript: Barack Obama Speech on Technology and Democracy," Tech Policy Press, April 22, 2022.
Other Interesting Talks & Lectures:
FINAL PAPER/PROJECT DUE: May 11
Submit (electronically) Final Paper/Projects Due by 8pm ET, Wednesday, May
11.