The report card by Color of Change stacks up lawmakers on panels with jurisdiction over issues like algorithmic discrimination, data privacy and internet access against their stances on specific proposals the group says advance racial justice.
That includes whether they back letting regulators block mergers that have “disproportionate anti-competitive impacts on Black workers,” creating a new privacy watchdog to tackle “data-driven discrimination” and requiring tech companies to vet their systems for biases.
The scorecard, shared in advance exclusively with The Technology 202, builds off the “Black Tech Agenda” that Color of Change released in September to urge lawmakers to rally behind a series of legislative proposals aimed at reducing racial disparities.
“The Black Tech Agenda Scorecard exposes which members of Congress are taking their job seriously and which are giving Big Tech a big pass — serving as the enablers of profoundly negative impact on Black lives,” Color of Change President Rashad Robinson said in a statement.
While it’s exceedingly common for advocacy groups in Washington to issue ratings for lawmakers on how much their policies align, few as wide-reaching and direct have been released in the tech policy space.
Democrats generally fared far better than Republicans on the report card, the rubric for which factored in support for a mix of Democratic-only bills and bipartisan proposals.
Out of the 148 lawmakers surveyed, eight Democrats nabbed a perfect rating from the group, meaning they fully backed six out of six measures: Reps. Anna G. Eshoo (Calif.), Cori Bush (Mo.), Jamie Raskin (Md.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash.) and Yvette Clarke (N.Y.) and Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.), Edward J. Markey (Mass.), and Elizabeth Warren (Mass.).
More than 40 Republicans received a score of zero from the group for not backing any of their proposals, while dozens more were close to zero, including Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio), the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.), the top Republican on House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The highest any Republican scored was 1.5 out of 6. They included Sens. Roger Wicker (Miss.) and Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), the top Republicans on the Senate Judiciary and Commerce panels, respectively. Wicker and Grassley both received some support for pushing to expand internet access, while they also drew points for leading privacy and tech antitrust efforts, respectively.
Republicans have pushed back against some of the proposals the group factored into its rubric as overly burdensome regulations that would hamper innovation.
One of the metrics factors in support for a Democratic-led push to give the Federal Communications Commission sweeping powers to regulate the telecom industry, which Republicans largely oppose. Another is devoted to how misinformation may contribute to racial disparities. Republicans largely reject calls for platforms to crack down more on speech.
While no Democrat drew a score of zero, some fared worse than Republican leaders, including Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and Jon Ossoff (Ga.), who got a score of 1 out of 6.
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), the chairs of the House and Senate Commerce panels, each scored 3.5 out of 6, while the heads of the Judiciary panels, Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), scored 2.5 out of 6.
Spokespeople for the chairs and ranking members did not return requests for comment.
Of the six policy areas Color of Change analyzed, it found the broadest support for expanding net neutrality regulations and investing in broadband infrastructure, with 78 and 92 lawmakers supporting those efforts, respectively, according to the group’s tally.
Support was more limited on Capitol Hill for the measures the group supports to tackle algorithmic biases, discriminatory data uses and anti-competitive practices.
Musk tells Delaware court he expects to scale back Twitter focus
Elon Musk’s testimony on Wednesday covered his 2018 Tesla compensation package, the time he’s spending on Twitter and Tesla’s daunting situation in 2017, Will Oremus reports. Musk also said he soon expects to scale back his time at Twitter and will find someone else to run the company. He also defended bringing in Tesla engineers to evaluate Twitter workers ahead of mass layoffs. Musk said the engineers’ participation was “voluntary,” “after hours” and “a minor thing,” and that he couldn’t recall any Tesla board members suggesting that the practice was problematic.
“The trial highlights Musk’s singular position as a top executive of five companies at once, and calls into question whether the unorthodox terms of his leadership at Tesla are in the best interests of the automaker’s shareholders, or of Musk himself,” Will writes. “It’s the second time in two years Musk has testified in a trial stemming from a Tesla shareholder lawsuit. In a 2021 case that questioned his role in Tesla’s 2016 acquisition of his cousins’ solar panel company, SolarCity, Musk prevailed.”
House lawmakers plan hearing on FTX collapse next month
The House Financial Services Committee said it “expects” to hear from cryptocurrency exchange FTX’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, as part of its inquiry, which could expand as it considers potential legislation, Tony Romm reports. Pressure on FTX is ramping up, with a new proposed class-action lawsuit targeting Bankman-Fried and 11 paid endorsers, including Tom Brady and Shaquille O’Neal.
“The fall of FTX has posed tremendous harm to over 1 million users, many of whom were everyday people who invested their hard-earned savings into the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, only to watch it all disappear within a matter of seconds,” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who leads the committee, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, this event is just one out of many examples of cryptocurrency platforms that have collapsed just this past year.”
Senate committee report chides social media companies over extremism
Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee wrote in a report that “social media companies have failed to meaningfully address the growing presence of extremism on their platforms,” and that major social media companies’ business models “are based on maximizing user engagement, growth, and profits, which incentivizes increasingly extreme content,” ABC News’s Luke Barr reports. The report also criticized the FBI and Department of Homeland Security over their responses to threats; both agencies defended their practices to ABC News.
The report examined the practices of Facebook and Instagram parent Meta, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube. YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi told ABC News that the company has policies against hate speech and extremism, and that it recommends “authoritative content.” TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter told the outlet that the company looked forward to working with Congress, and that it is “dedicated to identifying and removing content that incites or glorifies violence or promotes violent extremist organizations.” Meta and Twitter didn’t respond to the outlet’s request for comment.
Twitter users were able to read FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s direct messages with Vox’s Kelsey Piper after Piper published them in a story. Writer Cyrus Farivar:
“typically, people under investigation by both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice don’t return requests for comment” https://t.co/p6PBylVnrE
— Kate Aronoff (@KateAronoff) November 16, 2022
Editor Robin Wigglesworth:
“Sometimes life creeps up on you.”
Something you say when you discover that first devastating gray hair, or when you’ve “accidentally” disappeared about $8bn of other people’s money? https://t.co/FXCtopAutO
— Robin Wigglesworth (@RobinWigg) November 16, 2022
- A House Education and Labor Committee panel holds a hearing on warehouse workforce protections today at 10:15 a.m.
- Doreen Bogdan-Martin, the newly elected secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union, and National Archives and Records Administration innovation chief Pamela Wright speak at an American University event on Friday at 8:30 a.m.
Finnegan is resting and taking medicine for his tummy, while slowly getting better. Meanwhile, Seamus is keeping him entertained ?? #dogsoftwitter
PS: thank you for all your kind messages xx❤️ pic.twitter.com/BfLBhleC8j— ?Lynn&Finn&Seamus? (@lynn2wine) November 16, 2022
