An oversight board of 20 well-known, reputable individuals has been (publically) convened to make final decisions about contested content removal from the platform.
Critics note that content removal is not the only ethical issue Facebook has, and Siva Vaidhyanathan notes that the proprietary algorithm that shows people content is a serious issue over which this board has no authority.
Joan Donovan notes that the slow legalistic pace will not keep up even when damaging content is a serious ethical issue, as even only a few hours is sufficient for viral digital content to reach huge audiences:
Joan Donovan, the research director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center and an expert on media manipulation, raised concerns that the board would become “weaponized” by bad actors, who will use it as another opportunity to get their issues into the press.
“This theory of oversight is heavily informed by legal scholarship, which is slow and administrative and technical in nature, when we need something much more suited to the speed of the technology itself,” she said. “They’re going forward with this really long drawn out procedural mechanism that doesn’t address what the problem is – which is that viral content only needs to be on the internet for 4-8 hours for it to do its damage.”
Looking at the scale of the “infodemic” facing Facebook amid the coronavirus pandemic, Donovan said that the much more pressing concern is to solve the problem of “information curation, especially in a place like Facebook, that helps guide the user toward correct content and information rather than putting them in the middle a landfill and saying, ‘You sort it out’.” The oversight board is ultimately a distraction from “what really needs to happen”, she said, “which is to design technology that doesn’t allow for the expansive amplification of disinformation and health misinformation”.
Policy brochures to publicize mitigation, “sustainable” activities, and community investment programs. Global companies often anticipate/precede the local government regulations.
Use the fact that the government’s actual regulations are obscenely loose or nonexistent to say they are “Much more responsible than the law dictates” - a quote from a community liaison officer she interviewed. P71. Even if their levels are bad they can hide behind being “Better” than the standards.
Signing the contract is a symbolic acknowledgement of the indigenous people’s rights to the land and to bargain with the company. (Though, of course, their water is still being totally wrecked, and the company lies to them).
Lots of science - data - new technology to measure more accurately - scientists presenting, holding the reporting meeting
Tried to use photo evidence - but it was rejected because the indigenous people in the audience recognized that they were using the same photos from three years ago - which then caused additional “rejected the authenticity of the material that was being presented” -p75
Using the word “stable” (estable) to say it’s ok or that the impact is negligible - when in fact this can’t be known and it’s deeply improbable that it’s true - and even if the damage is “Stable” and not escalating, it is probably already at an unacceptable level.
The manager of social relations person put his body in between the questioning indigenous person rejecting the truth value of the data and the scientist.
Asking for feedback -because they know the community members are suspicious of their scientific data
The visit to the new drilling site - though it seemed like they were secretly extracting and they didn’t tell much and they couldn’t do anything about the fact that the corporation had already drilled way more than what they initially proposed they needed to drill to “monitor”
The interactions the corporation has with the indigenous people and the relationships they try to make are attempts to morally legitimate the extraction
The certifications, following through with trainings that were asked for, and doing the certification ceremony for an audience
Rhetoric of benefit-sharing
The high levels of buy-in; the quotes from locals themselves supporting the dam and the company, they can honestly boast strong local support of the projects - what better proof than that people have dug up their life savings from the ground to buy the stocks?
They rename the things that people accuse them of, even as they acknowledge the accusation. They keep using the term “biosolids” instead of “hazardous waste” or “toxins”. They produced reports that denied each allegation. From their Our Environmental Values 2003 report: “In our opinion, the balance of evidence including testing and analysis by independent laboratories and the Indian government shows that the allegations against Coca Cola have not been substantiated.” They also tried to show progress against the accusations with their CSR initiatives - including reduction of water use ratio, rainwater harvesting, HIV AIDS projects - cooperating with USAID and UN. They also build up an image of corporate philanthropy with sponsoring sports, especially the Olympics and FIFA, and just branding by having their vending machines on college campuses.
They tried to suppress a report that shows how toxic their waste is, and that it is useless as fertilizer (I did like the “extraordinary practice of distributing toxic wastes to the farmers as fertilizers” quote on 108).
Apple ”released its Supplier Responsibility Progress Report in February 2011 to show the remedial measures taken by Foxconn, its largest supplier, in the aftermath of the suicides. However, none of the ‘remedial measures’ addressed such core issues as speed-up, illegal levels of compulsory overtime work, dangerous conditions in the Foxconn factories, the humiliation of workers, and illegal practices associated with the use of student interns as workers.” -p1263
Their scientists have neutralized the environmental damage their practices do - defining tailings as nontoxic
Enviro-rituals - (Gusterson) - -Flamboyantly lick, eat, bathe in the tailings - for media, on road shows… Rituals demonstrate but also produce their belief in the harmlessness - cites Geertz 1973 and Althusser 1971. This is also a kind of diversion - because maybe the tailings are not toxic to a human’s licking them, but they destroy the marine life the way they are dumped into the ocean, and they may react with other things in such a way that the end result is extremely toxic to humans, not to mention that it is certainly extinguishing a staggering amount of marine life by nature of crushing, before anything else
Charismatic species - they hand-release sea turtles near a resort, very publically, a very feel-good moment that “Feels like social action”, and produce narratives of unenlightened locals being the ones bad for the environment because they eat turtles and turtle eggs - criminalize subsistence - attribute to poverty and ignorance, so they spend corporate $ on environmental education, and tell the kids that what their families do is bad. (The subsistence activities are often social - so people do them even if they can afford to buy food differently)
In-house corporate anthropologist - debunking the idea of the “ecological noble savage” as something first world activists made up - of course there are different ways to be ecologically-minded…
Things that compete with mining corporations for resources or charismatic cases that are easily blamed on the mine are the environmental issues they talk about and they work to address - missing is greenhouse gas, for example.
Claim they focus on Western corporations to get Western funding - claim they’re not transparent whereas corps have annual reports to shareholders. Various defaming of the NGOs - saying they are in the hands of “international anti-development” NGOs, that they infiltrate and only create illusion of local resistance, say their clear goal is “to bring international mining companies to their knees” - [which is almost funny]
Clandestine strategies: instead of suing, put the NGO on a watch list of bad/ non transparent NGOs, use the NGO as a workshop case study of bad NGO, held by a different cooperative and influential NGO that allies with the corporation secretly; op-eds “placed” into newspapers calling for regulation of NGOs
Basically turning transparency and accountability against the NGOs
Control of information flow - circulating the inaccurate NGO bulletin to rile up anger at the NGO -
The publication of standards, inspections, certification, decertification, branding - connection to policy for organic certification
Bind that the workers are in - they have to perform the ethicalness and pretend their working conditions are ok when inspected because they know that their job (and the whole country’s export industry) depends on this performance of ethicalness and goodness of the factory
Performed Inspections provide proof, as do their HIV-treated bodies
Bono - celebrities promoting - people and at the stores purchasing/consuming branded RED products - blatantly baking “ethical” into the branding of consumer goods.
Obscure bad working conditions with success of HIV treatment
Enforcing consensus: Credibility and viability to compete for funding of your NGO is gone if you protest or dissent → performed consensus by silencing “stone throwing” NGOs or irrational opposition because you’re “actually trying to do something”, so the new unethical is the NGO who is just being stubborn or petty;
Creating ads to educate consumers or communities on how to live responsibly [responsibilization]: flow of ethical expertise, from business/govt thru media to community/consumer
Awards for CSR accomplishment is like moral capital; it also is ritualized like gift giving, reciprocal gratitude; circuit of exclusive events generates and legitimates this discourse, celebrity speakers, positive vibes
Confession of past sins plus highly visible partnerships with well-known NGOs, a very branded activity
The “free press” generated by social media sharing of the gamified achievements of the app users, which were branded with Telefonica
The publicity video for downloading the app was also shared on social media and was posted to the author’s facebook by her presumably nonacademic friend; the video is also on Telefonica’s YouTube channel, perhaps it was an ad on TV or internet as well? The project was also described on the company’s website, although I think that is no longer available.
All users of their prepaid phones being invited to “symbolically vote” against child labor when refilling, by sending a text - 1 million votes was to trigger the “campus party” (hackathon), which then brought together people who came up with the surveillance app
Denuncia-thon which enforced offline connections of the ‘digital activists’ - euphoric
Statements to the academics about moving beyond philanthropy, and about sustainability and leadership, naturalizing their goodness, in contrast to mining companies