In 2010, I had the opportunity to participate in the very first Disaster Response Working Group meeting held at Facebook. The digital humanitarian response to the tragic Haiti earthquake months earlier was the main point of discussion. Digital Humanitarians at the time had crowdsourced social media monitoring and satellite imagery analysis to create a unique set of crisis maps used by a range of responders. Humanitarian organizations to this day point to the Haiti response as a pivotal milestone in the history of crisis mapping. Today marks an equally important milestone thanks to three humanitarian groups and Facebook.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced that it would be renewing its fight for net neutrality. It will join forces with Amazon, Etsy, Mozilla, Kickstarter, Bittorrent, Reddit and dozens of other major companies for the ‘Battle For The Net‘ event on July 12th.
Technology is increasingly being proposed as a way to eliminate voting obstacles for the poor and increase turnout. But the efficacy of voting technology in boosting participation remains largely unproven; worse, implementing it on a large scale could end up undermining public policy.
The Knight First Amendment Institute has sent a letter to President Trump, arguing that blocking Americans on Twitter violates their First Amendment rights.