(The New York Times) The law, called the Digital Services Act, is intended to address social media’s societal harms by requiring companies to more aggressively police their platforms for illicit content or risk billions of dollars in fines. Tech companies would be compelled to set up new policies and procedures to remove flagged hate speech,…
(Friends of the Earth) A new scorecard released today by Avaaz, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace USA shows that social media companies are leaving the public in the dark about how they’re curbing the spread of climate change dis/misinformation on their platforms. The report comes as the UN’s latest climate report named climate disinformation…
(Vox) Let’s play a little game. Imagine that you’re a computer scientist. Your company wants you to design a search engine that will show users a bunch of pictures corresponding to their keywords — something akin to Google Images. On a technical level, that’s a piece of cake. You’re a great computer scientist, and this…
(Crunchbase News) Now, the sums going into climate software aren’t huge as a portion of venture capital investment overall. Rounds for the 27 companies on our list, for instance, account for less than a quarter of a percent of total venture funding. What stands out, however, is how quickly this smallish space has been scaling…
(Crunchbase News) Reflecting on all the achievements of Black investors, I am encouraged by our progress. However, I also believe venture capital needs to set the example on how to continue this positive momentum and to evolve the approach toward increasing diversity in investment management. In the old model, VCs went to the same schools,…
(The New York Times) The debate took less than four minutes. In the Florida House last month, legislators swiftly gave final approval to a bill that makes it easier to buy and sell cryptocurrency, eliminating a threat from a law intended to curb money laundering. One of the few pauses in the action came when…
(Time) Decades ago, the state of California tried to strike a major blow against climate change, and failed. The state passed an ambitious rule in 1990 mandating car companies slowly begin replacing their offerings with electric vehicles (EVs). But in 2002, the state backed off the policy. Part of the reason was political—car companies, aided…
(Bloomberg) Users of a little-known crypto platform called Toucan now account for purchases of more than a quarter of all carbon credits by the world’s largest verifier of offsets. This newest crossover between crypto and the climate is having unexpected consequences that appear to be backfiring. Crypto enthusiasts aren’t usually among the top buyers of…
(Grist) In February, the White House published a beta version of its new environmental justice screening tool, a pivotal step toward achieving the administration’s climate and equity goals. The interactive map analyzes every census tract in the U.S. using socioeconomic and environmental data, and designates some of those tracts as “disadvantaged” based on a complicated…
(Protocol) Pinterest is taking a stand against climate change misinformation, as it did with COVID-19 vaccine myths. And while Pinterest isn’t really the first platform anyone thinks of when it comes to the spread of fake climate news, its stance could push other social media companies to be more aggressive. The platform announced Wednesday that…