Good morning! Today: how technology perpetuates racism, why filming police violence has done nothing to stop it, Chinese manufacturers hope domestic buyers will fill the export void, and an antibody drug may save covid patients' lives. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day.
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Of course technology perpetuates racism. It was designed that way.
The situation: Today the United States crumbles under the weight of two pandemics: coronavirus and police brutality. We often call on technology to help solve problems. But when society frames people of color as “the problem,” those solutions often do more harm than good.
The question: Will we continue to design and deploy tools that serve the interests of racism and white supremacy? It’s a decades-old trend, fueled by the rise of “criminal justice information systems” during the 1960s. They proliferated through the decades, laying the foundation for racial profiling, predictive policing, and racially targeted surveillance. They left behind a legacy that includes millions of black and brown women and men incarcerated.
What can be done: If we don’t want our technology to be used to perpetuate racism, then we must make sure that we don’t conflate social problems like crime or violence or disease with black and brown people. When we do that, we risk turning those people into the problems that we deploy our technology to solve, the threat we design it to eradicate. Read the full story.
—Charlton McIlwain
Why filming police violence has done nothing to stop it
After years of police body cams and bystander cellphone video, it’s clear that evidentiary images on their own don’t bring about change. What’s missing is power. Over 10 years, from 2005 to 2014, only 48 officers were charged with murder or manslaughter for use of lethal force, though more than 1,000 people a year are killed by police in the United States. If there’s one thing that Americans—particularly people of color—have learned from George Floyd, Philando Castile, and Eric Garner, it’s that individuals armed with images are largely powerless to make systemic change. Read the full story by Ethan Zuckerman.
+ The latest trend? Tech companies “black power-washing.” (Fast Company)
+ Black tech leaders are rallying to fight racial injustice in the Bay Area. ( TechCrunch)
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First the trade war, then the pandemic. Now Chinese manufacturers are turning inward.
The situation: China’s access to international markets has become increasingly unreliable, thanks to the US-China trade war and now covid-19. Exports have tanked. To make up for lost sales, companies are targeting consumers inside China.
An initiative: In 2018, Pinduoduo, an e-commerce giant, launched an initiative to connect manufacturers with the domestic market. Under a so-called “consumer-to-manufacturer” model, the platform began using its massive pools of data and AI algorithms to help Chinese manufacturers predict consumer preferences and develop brands specifically for a domestic audience. Pinduoduo told manufacturers not only how to customize their products—down to the wash of a jean or the length of a sock. This helped both the platform and manufacturers alike tap into a rapidly growing middle-class consumer base.
A growing trend: Other Chinese e-commerce giants, including Alibaba-owned Taobao and JD, are now offering C2M services. It’s not clear whether domestic markets alone will be able to compensate for China’s variable access to international markets over the long run. But it’s provided smaller manufacturers with a greater sense of resilience. Read the full story.
—Karen Hao
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A drug that cools the body’s reaction to Covid-19 appears to save lives
The problem: The pandemic viral disease is infecting millions, and for those who end up on a ventilator in an ICU, the odds are grim. More than half are dying.
The drug: Doctors at the University of Michigan set out to control the haywire immune reaction that pushes some covid-19 patients into a death spiral. To do it, they gave 78 patients on ventilators the drug tocilizumab, which blocks IL-6, a molecule in the body that sets off a reaction to an infection.
The result: The doctors say in a non-peer reviewed preprint that patients who got the drug were 45% less likely to die than those who didn’t. But there’s a big caveat, which is that the doctors knew which patients got the drug and which didn’t. Their picks for the drug-taking group could have been biased— people more likely to improve anyway, for example—so further studies are needed. Read the full story.
—Antonio Regalado
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We can still have nice things
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The top ten must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Facial recognition is the new weapon that police are wielding against protesters
And worryingly, some of it is live. ( OneZero)
+ Cameras are both a help and a danger for protesters. ( WP $)
+ The DEA has been granted sweeping new powers to conduct secret surveillance. ( Buzzfeed)
+ Police tracking and secret messaging apps are surging in popularity. ( Recode)
+ How to blur faces and remove metadata from your photos. ( The Next Web)
2 What Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and Donald Trump have in common
They are leaders who make arbitrary, defensive choices based on instinct and self-preservation. ( TR)
+ Facebook’s Oversight Board won’t review Trump’s “shooting starts” posts. ( CNBC)
3 Tear gas could worsen the coronavirus pandemic
Two crises collide. ( NYT $)
+ Mexico has overtaken the US in daily reported deaths. ( Reuters)
+ Texas, Arizona, and Oregon have seen spikes in new covid cases. ( Axios)
4 SpaceX can now send humans to space. It just needs a market. 🚀
There aren’t a whole lot of people with a spare $55 million lying around. ( TR)
5 A major hydroxychloroquine trial found no preventative benefit 💊
Taking it in the hope it’ll reduce your chances of catching covid is pointless. ( Stat)
+ Data from a tiny US company led the WHO and several governments to change their policies on covid treatments. ( The Guardian)
6 Snapchat has said it will no longer promote Trump’s account
“We will not amplify voices who incite racial violence and injustice.” ( The Verge)
+ A bot experiment shows how Twitter treats Trump differently. ( Ars Technica)
7 Anti-racism sites have been hit by a surge of cyber attacks
Imagine thinking this represents a good use of your time. ( BBC)
8 A new way to transport vaccines doesn’t require cooling 💉
This could (hopefully) come in handy before too long. ( Scientific American)
+ The White House has selected five vaccine candidates as finalists. ( NYT $)
9 How Iceland avoided a covid crisis
There was no lockdown, and no mask-wearing mandate. Here’s what it did instead. ( New Yorker $)
+ The man behind Sweden’s more relaxed policy has admitted it led to too many deaths. ( BBC)
10 This is the first ever “Black Birders Week” 🐦
Black bird watchers are raising visibility and awareness of their beloved hobby. ( Earther)
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“Every step of progress in this country, every expansion of freedom, every expression of our deepest ideals have been won through efforts that made the status quo uncomfortable.”
—Barack Obama, speaking from his home last night, offered support to the protesters and demanded police reforms.
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