Civicist

CIVIC TECH NEWS & ANALYSIS

MOVEMENT

People’s Climate Movement National Day of Action; failing because too tech-bro; and more

  • The internet declared Hillary Clinton the winner of the Democratic debate last night, Alan Rappeport reports for the New York Times, although everyone quoted works in media, with the exception of two pollsters, and the internet in this case is decidedly the medium for, not the entity itself, weighing in.

  • The Congressional Management Foundation has released a new report detailing how Congress acts and reacts on social media. Two gleaned factoids indicate that the volume of feedback can be modest, but that promptness matters. From the press release: “80 percent of staff surveyed said 30 or fewer responses to their social media posts are enough to get the office to “pay attention.” But the survey also indicates that staff tend to review only those reactions posted within the first 24 hours.”

  • An app used by Georgetown businesses and the police to photograph and share reports about shoplifting suspects is highlighting racial tensions in the community, Terrence McCoy reports for the Washington Post. More than 90 percent of the images that have been shared are of black men and women, and some of the messages exchanged have racial/racist or transphobic overtones. McCoy places Operation GroupMe in the context of other neighborhood surveillance apps that have been criticized for similar reasons, including NextDoor, SketchFactor, and GhettoTracker.com.

  • The New York Times’ Farhad Manjoo dives deep for this postmortem of Leap, the upscale bus service that failed in San Francisco. “Tech deaths often go unstudied,” Manjoo observes. Aside from the goodbye posts on Medium, they don’t often get the critical examination—which might be of use if entrepreneurs want to avoid making the same mistakes twice. Leap’s root problem? “Too-close an association with Silicon Valley’s tech-bro sensibilities,” writes Manjoo.

  • John Hermann writes “Notes from the Platform’s Edge” for The Awl. It’s about media and social media and the morass that is media and social media. I clearly haven’t had time to truly process it yet but it seems worth reading!

  • Today is a National Day of Action organized by the People’s Climate Movement. Read my latest report on how the Movement is finding its legs, in spite of neglect and indecision following the wildly successful demonstration last year, and find an action near you.