Blameful Post Mortem: Enough is Enough of Twitter’s Inaction

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Blameful Post Mortem

As Gamer Gate rages on, driving women from their homes, gaming and the Internet, Twitter, Reddit and other platforms still staunchly refuse to address terrorism and abuse on their services. Twitter’s “report abuse” functionality is particularly broken, responding weeks and weeks post-report and making it clear again and again that it doesn’t consider explicit death and rape threats to be against its terms of service. Meanwhile, it has added no new features to allow victims of online abuse to better control their experiences.

What will it take for social networks to build better tooling to combat endemic harassment? We are already losing too much to their inaction.

Tech, Culture and Diversity News

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Here’s an important Storify about captioning at tech conferences. “Captioning is vital for speakers and attendees with hearing loss, but also useful for visual learners, people who speak other languages, or anyone who might experience a moment of inattention.”

Interesting article on San Francisco’s public spaces and the incursion of tech companies… and their employees.

There’s a new report out from Catalyst on the gender divide in tech-intensive industries. The study shows that despite having the same education, women MBAs working in tech begin their careers at a lower level and are more likely to leave the industry – over 50% attrit after their first post-MBA job. And women in tech disproportionately cite a lack of role models, feeling like an outsider and unclear evaluation criteria as obstacles in their careers.

A US Department of Labor investigation has revealed a Bay Area tech company with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue paid some of its workers $1.21 an hour. According to the NBC Bay Area: “The Labor Department said about eight employees of Fremont-based Electronics For Imaging were flown in from India and worked 120-hour weeks to help with the installation of computers at the company’s headquarters… ‘It is certainly outrageous and unacceptable for employers here in Silicon Valley to bring workers and pay less than the minimum wage,’ said Alberto Raymond, an assistant district director for the United States Department of Labor.” The company will have to pay back wages but a mere $3,500 fine.

We’re a bit late to this, but here’s a fast read on building successful women in tech initiatives within tech companies.

A $160-million mobility initiative will provide the NYPD with tablets and handheld devices outfitted with a mobile version of the Domain Awareness System. For a more in-depth read, writer Davida Small discussed racial profiling, surveillance and the Domain Awareness System in our most recent issue.

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