She risked everything to expose Facebook. Now she’s telling her story.

The best vaccine incentive might be paid time off

The Download Your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology A Facebook whistleblower speaks 07.19.21 Good morning! Today: we speak to Facebook whistleblower Sophie Zhang about her motivations for exposing election interference. Plus: why paid time off might be the best vaccine incentive for US workers. I'm going on holiday now until Monday August 9th, leaving you in the capable hands of my editor Niall. See you when I'm back! And in the meantime, share the love and get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day. She risked everything to expose Facebook. Now she’s telling her story.   The world first learned of Sophie Zhang in September 2020, when BuzzFeed News obtained and published highlights from her nearly 8,000-word exit memo from Facebook. Before she was fired, Zhang was officially employed as a data scientist at the company. But she had become consumed by a task she deemed more important: finding and taking down fake accounts and likes on the platform that were being used to sway elections globally.  Zhang has supplied concrete evidence to support what critics had long been saying on the outside: Facebook makes election interference easy, and that unless such activity hurts the company’s business interests, it can’t be bothered to fix the problem. After nearly a year of avoiding personal questions, Zhang is now ready to tell her story. She wants the world to understand how she became so entwined in trying to protect democracy worldwide and why she cared so deeply. She’s also tired of being in the closet: Zhang is a transgender woman, a core aspect of her identity that informed her actions at and after Facebook. Her story reveals that it is really pure luck that we now know so much about how Facebook enables election interference globally. To regulators around the world considering how to rein in the company, this should be a wakeup call. Read the full story.  —Karen Hao The best vaccine incentive might be paid time off to get a shot Tried and tested: From free doughnuts to the chance to win a million-dollar lottery, states, cities, and private companies are dangling anything they can think of to convince Americans to get a covid-19 vaccine. But so far, there’s little evidence these programs have had the impact some had hoped. What might work instead? Giving everyone paid time off. It may seem like a small perk for salaried, remote workers. But for millions of hourly shift workers, it could be the one thing that finally gets them vaccinated. Large numbers of workers haven’t got vaccinated simply because they’re too busy or too afraid to miss work. Part of the puzzle: Public health experts stress that there isn’t just one foolproof tactic for getting people vaccinated. The government could create a series of paid days off for workers in different sectors to get shots, but we’d still need to combine that with other public health strategies like going door to door. Read the full story. —Mia Sato We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet 'em at me.)   + Just look at the SIZE of this horse. And in horse-adjacent news, have you ever noticed that Adam Driver is in fact a centaur? THOUGHT NOT.   + RIP Dusty Hill, bassist for the legendary ZZ Top. Rock in peace.   + Tickle your tastebuds with these flavor ideas! As any Australian will tell you, chicken salt is the best.   + There's something irresistible about videos of celebrities showing you round their houses.   + Swimming is very good for your brain (as well as your body.)   + Explaining the banquet carved into Seville Cathedral. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Google and Facebook will require US office workers to get vaccinated Makes sense. But raises the slightly amusing possibility of people claiming they haven't been vaccinated so they can stay remote. (NBC)   + Twitter has closed its San Francisco and New York offices. (CNBC)   + Biden is expected to announce today that all federal employees will be required to be vaccinated. (CNN)   + Social media misinformation is only part of the anti-vax problem. (Wired $)   + The science behind why the Delta variant is so dangerous. (Nature)   + The number of covid-19 patients in hospitals in Arkansas is back to January levels. (Gizmodo)  2 The athletes you need to follow on TikTok It's some of the most fun footage, and it's free. (NPR)   + Simone Biles got "the twisties" in Tokyo. Here's what that means. (WP $)   + Athletes are under incredibly intense pressure. It's no wonder they're struggling. (The Guardian)   + Want to master an Olympic sport? Learn how to fall. (NYT $)  3 Israel has started investigating spyware abuse by NSO Group Amid considerable international pressure. (TR)   + One amazingly simple way to thwart hackers: turn your phone off and on again. (NBC)  4 How the Chinese government is responding to extreme flooding As per, the obsession is with controlling the message, not the reality. (LA Times)   + Does this year mark the end of the idyllic summer? (NYT $)   + Extreme heat could mean power and water shortages. (Wired $)  5 Scammers are making NFTs of a dead artist's work Right now, the market is an unregulated wild west, so it's incredibly hard to stop them. (Wired UK).    + Some artists found a lifeline selling NFTs. Others worry it’s a trap. (TR)  6 Astronomers have spotted x-rays from behind a supermassive black hole And they might help us to better understand why black holes are so powerful. (TR)   + Two strange red objects were spotted in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. (NYT $)   7 Do mental health memes help? They provide an opportunity to laugh in the face of tragedy, at least. (The Guardian)   8 Some teens are making serious dough on Debop 💰 But, as ever in our algorithmically-driven age, success can be fickle. (The Verge)   9 Good news: you could (probably) outrun this robot 🤖🏃 5 kilometers in 53 minutes is not that fast, after all. (Gizmodo)    10 This spongy fossil could be from Earth’s earliest known animal Huge if legit. Paleontologists are split. (Nature) Are you intellectually curious? Tech-obsessed? We are too. Get an insightful look into the technology of the future without getting bogged down by the jargon. Subscribe to MIT Technology Review today (subscriptions start at just $50 per year). Quote of the day “We love our jobs, but our jobs don’t love us back.” —An Activision employee tells Wired why they went on strike over allegations of rampant sexism at the company. Top image credit: Christie Hemm Klok Please send huge horses to hi@technologyreview.com. Follow me on Twitter at @charlottejee. Thanks for reading! —Charlotte Was this newsletter forwarded to you, and you'd like to see more? Sign up today Leading with Innovation. Join us virtually September 28-30. Register now Follow us: MIT Technology Review One Main Street Cambridge, MA 02142   *Manage Your Email Preferences or *Unsubscribe  Subscription Information This email was sent to Webmaster220 Bible Study Blog  *the blog owner has deleted the hyperlink intentionally