JUNE MONTHLY ROUNDUP - Latest in Media, Tech and Innovation

Greetings!

Welcome to my monthly roundup of media, tech and innovation news. 

The month of June has been dominated by the murder of George Floyd and the resulting fury and rage toward law enforcement. The intense global reaction in support of people of color is promising, but whether that intensity carries forward is a question to be answered in the coming months. 

"You are lucky we black Americans are out for equality and not revenge". This was a powerful statement from Kimberly Jones, an African American report, writer and long time activist for equality. Watch here.

This month I have included BLM-related content as well as links for donations.

IBM abandons facial recognition technology

IBM’s move has received positive responses from members of Congress, civil liberty defenders and in-house employees. 

• The move was quickly followed by Amazon suspending their Rekognition software for one year

• Microsoft also followed suit, suspending sales of its technology to law enforcement agencies until federal regulations are in place

IBM was the same company whose tagline “Smarter Cities” were responsible for pushing facial recognition technology for a number of years.

Hopefully this acknowledgment is a step in the right direction, not just a PR stunt.

Tech and Advertising industries replace racially insensitive terms

Over the past couple of weeks, advertising and media executives and staffers have been doing a lot of overdue soul-searching about racism, inequality and how companies can better foster diversity within their ranks.

• Github announced plans to change “master” and “whitelist” terminology

• Renaming the terms "whitelist" and "blacklist" as specific terms in blocking and accepting sites and brands.

Unilever leads a mass exodus from Advertising on Facebook

Facebook’s lack of willingness to crack down on hate speech and misinformation has prompted dozens of advertisers to say they’ll stop spending on the platform. Here are last year’s advertising spends from some of the biggest companies involved.

• Unilever $42.4 million

• Verizon $22.9 million

• REI $22.5 million

• Coca-Cola $22.1 million

• Patagonia $6.2 million

Holding big tech giants accountable for their actions (or lack thereof) and decision-making is a welcome development. I would like to see these brands go one further and invest in advertising beside BLM and Covid-19 content to support important journalism.

Premier League Restarts with an Important Message

The Premier League is back this month with all games played in empty stadiums. Broadcasters are getting creative, offering listeners the option to watch with enhanced sound.

• EA SPORTS has sampled 92 different ways of cheering

• Samples taken from previous matches in actual stadiums

The Premier League has stepped up and taken the opportunity to lead on race, justice, and equality. EPL has temporarily replaced all player names on jerseys with Black Lives Matter. Players have also been kneeling after the kickoff as a show of support for the movement.

TikTok is Banned in India

The Indian government has banned TikTok and dozens of other Chinese-made apps it says were "prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defense of India, security of state and public order".

• A number of apps were "stealing and surreptitiously transmitting users' data in an unauthorised manner".

• India is TikTok's biggest foreign market, with an estimated 120 million users.

An engineer who reverse engineered TikTok shared his results here. This is an early warning particularly to those who have kids using the platform. If the claim that TikTok is

If it is what the claim says “a data collection service that is thinly-veiled as a social network”, you may want to reconsider its usage. I use it mainly for product research at the moment, but will reconsider if these claims prove to be true.

COMPANY DONATIONS

NIKE - $40M over the next 4 years to support the black communities
APPLE - $100M racial equity and injustice commitment
GUINNESS - $1M donation to organisations fighting racial inequality
NETFLIX - $100M lending plan to Black-owned businesses

NON-PROFIT DONATIONS

1. Equal Justice Initiative - EJI works to end mass incarceration, excessive punishment, and racial inequality.

2. Color of Change Education Fund INC - Helping people respond effectively to injustice in the world around us.

3. NAACP Legal Defense & Educ - LDF focuses on issues of education, voter protection, economic justice and criminal justice.