e.Woke #49: Rest In Pieces, Cambridge Analytica!

Welcome to e.Woke #49: Rest In Pieces, Cambridge Analytica!

This week has been a little too good to be true! And it is! Facebook seeks redemption, Cambridge Analytica ceases to exist, and Twitter shares all of our passwords! But before you read this amazing newsletter, go change your Twitter password!

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Exclusive: Facebook commits to civil rights audit, political bias review

Facebook is finally doing something right! After all, that happened with Cambridge Analytica, and the accusations of discrimination, it’s refreshing to see Facebook tackle an issue like this head-on. “To address allegations of bias, Facebook is bringing in two outside advisors — one to conduct a legal audit of its impact on underrepresented communities and communities of color, and another to advise the company on potential bias against conservative voices.”. Past accusations were from Conservatives claiming that Facebook was censoring them by not including them in “Trending Topics” and from minority groups who witnessed ads for “Jew Haters” and were unable to see certain housing opportunity ads. Facebook will be working with Laura Murphy (a national civil liberties and civil rights leader), Relman, Dane & Colfax (a prominent law firm), The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, former Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, Covington and Burling (a Washington law firm), and The Heritage Foundation (a conservative public policy think tank). This is kind of like a modern day Kerner Commission…except its goal is to help Facebook not be biased.

(via Axios / Engadget / Colorlines )

Cambridge Analytica Has Closed All of Its Offices

Goodbye and good riddance! Cambridge Analytica is closed for business. “On Wednesday, all employees at Cambridge Analytica—the company behind the recent Facebook data scandal—were told to turn in their key cards immediately.” This all came after it was revealed that C.A was helping with Donald Trump’s campaign and collecting data from Facebook. Also apparently employees thought it’d be funny to share memes and music while the company was falling apart “Screenshots from the company’s internal chat service obtained by Gizmodo show a darkly comic mood in anticipation of the call. One employee shared bleakly titled Spotify playlists in Slack featuring songs like “High and Dry” by Radiohead, “The End” by The Doors, and “Help!” by The Beatles. Another employee posted a still from Titanic showing the ship’s band playing their instruments as the vessel sinks.”…so there’s that.

(via Motherboard / The Washington Post / The Wall Street Journal )

Go Change Your Twitter Password Now

Twitter is having a BIG “My bad!” moment. “Due to a “bug” in its system, some 330 million Twitter users’ passwords may have been temporarily exposed, CTO Parag Agrawal announced on the official Twitter blog Thursday afternoon.”. Did anyone happen to get Kanye’s password? *cough* asking for a friend. *cough*.

(via Gizmodo / The Verge / TechCrunch )

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