Digital Cages

hella fucking rich. And what pisces me off beyond belief about this continual fallout is one his bullshit statement that he put out this week that basically says, oh that Francis doesn't know what she's talking about, because you know, evidently she can't read their own internal Facebook reports that tell us exactly what it is that they've been doing.

That they were able to fix algorithms so that they could skew against misinformation for the twenty twenty election, but then once the election was done, they could flip the switch, change the algorithm back so that people were continuing to get misinformation, spread hate, and do all of the vile things that we know that people are doing on social media. And once again he is taking absolutely no responsibility for it and feigning dumb. And my question, now, folks, is this,

does he think that we are all stupid? Like? This is what is happening with these people right who make a ton of fucking money. We know that in order to become a multibillionaire, chances are you're not doing it on the up and up. Now, I'm not saying that Zuckerberg is a criminal, but I'm saying that what bleeds leads, right, So we know that hate groups, we know that, you know, Russian misinformation, China interference, all of these things are happening,

and they could do something about it. But at the end of the day, it would disrupt Facebook's profits. Now here's the thing. They're not saying they wouldn't make money. It's not as if doing right and having morals and values would stop them from making money. No, they just wouldn't make as much, right, And so one of the questions that I want answered is exactly how much money would they stand to lose? Like? Are they still making billions upon billions of dollars a year? I'm pretty sure

that they fucking are. And so the desire here to once again try and pretend that they don't know what they're doing. That, oh, Francis couldn't possibly read these reports, and because she wasn't sitting in these groups, doesn't know what we all know, which is that social media also harms young people. How is that, Oh, I don't know.

Because when you're inundated with images of beauty or beauty expectations that are outside of normal bodies, then yeah, you're going to start to look at yourself and say that there's something wrong with you. The reality, folks, is, at the end of the day, Facebook needs to be regulated, right, algorithms need to be regulated. This mega monopoly that they have needs to be broken up, and Francis has provided the roadmap for Congress to do so. The question is

whether or not they will. I want to bring up a recent report that all in Together, Women Leading Change put together to showcase the polling. Folks, again, we're talking about twenty twenty two midterm elections, and I've been talking about this because it's right around the corner. We only have but a couple of months left in twenty twenty one. Can you believe that let me just pause for a second. It is, folks, going to be twenty twenty two, meaning that we've been living in the midst of a global

health pandemic for going on two years. Like, let's wrap your mind around that. But the All in Together poll shows young people and I want people to pay attention, feel less motivated ahead of twenty twenty two election cycle.

So let me read you this directly from All in Together's page, and then we'll discuss The nonpartisan advocacy group All in Together has teamed up with Lake Research in Emerson College Polling to explore what is motivating people as we look forward to the twenty twenty two men terms. This survey looked at a thousand registered voters nationwide from September twenty second to the twenty fourth, with a three

negative three point one margin of era. This survey also oversampled two hundred Black women, two hundred Latin women, and two hundred Asian American Pacific Islander women. The oversamples were weighted down to reflect their actual proportion of women. The survey was conducted using a mixed method of IVR online and SMS to the web. Here is what they found and this is what is concerning. According to All in Together, there is an enthusiasm gap in voting among young voters.

AI TS New Poland shows a massive enthusiasm gap between generations. Younger voters are at least motivated age group to vote. Only thirty five percent of eighteen to twenty nine year old voters are very motivated to vote, and only twenty eight percent are almost certain to vote next year, compared to fifty two point nine percent and fifty one point two percent, respectively of the overall electorate. This is after

they say record youth turnout in twenty twenty. So here's one of the things that I want to unpack, which is this, This is the problem that Democrats are going to be facing as they go into twenty twenty two, because you see Republicans set up right the fact that they are an obstructionist group. They don't actually give a fuck about governing, and quite honestly, they're terrible at it. Because Donald Trump within his presidency added roughly seven trillion

dollars to the national debt. Every single time that a Republican is in power, our debt rises right astronomically. But here's the thing. Republicans also don't promise you shit. They don't promise you policy change. They don't promise to make your lives better, right. What they do offer is to roll back rights and to assume to create a Christian fundamentalist authoritarian society. This is what they propose. So you see, folks don't look to the Republican Party for anything really.

But the problem is that Democrats and Joe Biden in particular, when he was campaigning, said that he was going to be the adult in the room, that we were going to what build back better together, that he was going to be the one that was going to be able to negotiate with the domestic terrorists that we call the GOP, and that he was going to be able to get the job done of putting America back on the map. Well,

here's the thing, folks. We have yet to put together the infrastructure bill, right, the three point five trillion dollar bill. We just reached a decision, right, an agreement on raising the debt ceiling, but that just kicked the can down the road until December. Mitch McConnell did, in fact blink. But again, this is not an overall fix. It's a band aid on a broken leg. Because we should not need to have an active Congress or a vote to

continually raise our debt ceiling. It should be something that automatically kicks in, right, and we know that the debt ceiling was raised three times under the Trump administration so that they could spend fucking widely and offer up all of their tax cuts to the uber wealthy. I digress. The fact of the matter is that Democrats are the party of promises. They promise us a lot, and unfortunately, going against the reality of an obstructionist right wing party,

they are not able to deliver. So when young people risk their lives and people of color in twenty twenty to have a historic turnout, they did so not just because they wanted to get rid of Donald Trump, but because they needed someone to take control of COVID nineteen. Well, here we are, folks, where we have reached. Seven hundred thousand Americans have died of COVID nineteen. The vaccination rate

has reached a plateau. We have a little bit more people getting vaccinated, but that's really just people getting the booster shots. Right. Fizer has has just asked the FDA to certify the vaccinations for five to eleven year olds, right, and to ramp that up so that that could possibly have twenty eight million more people vaccinated if we expand it to that age group again. But there is still folks, a substantial amount of Americans that are not vaccinated, and

the rollout has been up and down. One minute, we're told to wear a mask, the next minute we're told not to. One minute, we're told to social distance, the next minute we're told not to. One minute, we're told that the fis of vaccination is one hundred percent great, and then the next minute we learned maderna is better. I'm not saying that it is not our responsibility as an educated citizensury not to be intellectually nimble. We need that.

But the reality is is that the entirety of the vaccination rollout hasn't gone according to plan because I don't think that Democrats once again had their eyes wide open to what it was that Republicans were going to do. That there was going to be an entire network like Fox News that was going to be an anti vaccine network that has tens of millions of people that are

viewing it every single day. The other reality, right, we don't have the infrastructure bill, and so when we're going to the polls, when Democrats are getting ready to campaign. What the fuck are they campaigning on? Because we've lost women's rights right in Texas right now. We know that a judge has intervened, The federal judge in Texas has

put a stop right on the band. But that's just going to be kicked to the Fifth Circuit Court, which we know is extremely conservative, and then we'll make its way up to Trump's Supreme Court. Right, So, what is the likelihood that we don't lose women's rights all together? And mind you, just let me mind you that December first is going to be when the Supreme Court starts hearing the Mississippi case, which is about a fifteen week

abortion ban. Right then, on top of that, we can't pass the John Lewis Voting Rights at and we can't do anything about the over three hundred bills that have been pushed out across a majority of the states in this country to suppress the vote. So when young people are looking at their fucking future right now, does it look bright to anybody? No, it does it. It looks like they're inheriting a lot of bullshit baggage from the

boomers and down. So when we're looking at these numbers, I don't want us to turn around and start blaming young people, right, because this is where it goes. If Democrats lose in mid terms, who you think it's going to be the scapegoats. It's gonna be black people, and it's gonna be young people, as opposed to saying, here's the thing, you haven't delivered. Shit, We delivered you Congress and the fucking White House and you can't get dick done.

So how is it that we're supposed to be the ones that are creating the enthusiasm when we have a democratic administration and a democratic Congress that is at a what a stalemate with themselves? So of course you have eighteen to twenty nine year olds that are looking around and saying, fuck this, what am I voting for? And it's not just them, And I can't say that I

blame them because again, we're looking around. It has been nine months, nine months into this administration, and we have gotten very little done, and our democracy is on the fucking line, and people are looking around and saying, we can't address climate change head on. We don't have massive legislation for that. There's only a piece of that within the infrastructure bill. But remember Joe Mansion wasn't comfortable with

climate language. Mister Cole doesn't like us creating infrastructure and demands of companies to, you know, combat this pressing crisis that we are in. He doesn't like the dollar amount, so he doesn't want the American people's own tax dollars right to be invested back into the American people. Then you have Curs in cinema who won't even get on camera to talk about what the fuck she is for

or against, so we don't know. You have her own constituents chasing that bitch down in the bathroom and her deciding to say, oh, this is inappropriate. You know what's inappropriate being a senator and not doing anything for the people that actually voted and campaigned to get you into office, and doing an about face on whether or not you're going to be a part of our democracy's future or

its demise. So, of course, when we are looking at these numbers, it makes sense to me that young people are looking around and saying, what am I voting for? And that is a huge problem for Democrats because they're the ones who, once again, do you know what issues that these folks care about? Well, let me tell you So the number one issue for women eighteen to twenty nine, No shock, he is abortion. Thirteen percent of women. That is their number one issue of young people in this

age group. Of course, it is because if they can't control when and how they have a family, how are they going to be able to control their careers. How are they going to be able to control whether or not they're able to access higher education if they're saddled with kids that they can't afford. So that's a major issue. And again, what is it that this administration is doing to ensure that all people that are able to birth have access to safe, right and readily available abortions. So

that's another thing. The second thing that folks are really concerned about as an overall, right, men and women are concerned about twenty four percent of women and twenty percent

of men say that COVID nineteen is their number one issue. Well, of course it is because all of our lives have been turned upside down of parents playing Russian roulette with their children's lives by sending them back to school, not knowing when in fact they're going to be told that the school is shutting down or the kid has to stay home for two weeks because of a COVID outbreak, right, And again we have all of the information, but we

are not disseminating it. Democrats are not disseminating in a way that it's a breaking through the misinformation. This has been a problem since twenty sixteen, folks, and we didn't do anything about it then. So again you're looking at the issues that matter to young people. On top of that, it is rising prices, right, and increased debt. The Biden administration only eliminated student debt for certain groups of people, and it was those from the disabled community and a

few others. That's not eliminating student debt, right. That is crushing people. That is not allowing them to invest in buying homes. That is having them live at home with their families, right, and their parents because they can't afford to live on their owns. That is stopping people. Because here's another study that I want to bring up as well, which is just fucking wild. But here's another report that ties in to the fact that young people are not

enthusiastic about voting. According to Time Magazine and a recent Pew Research analysis, this is the title of this article, men are now more likely to be single than women. It's not a good sign. And in the Pew research data, what they are finding is that men are more likely to be living at home with their parents. Single men, and that they're not making nearly as much money as they once were, and that they're not as educated as

the women are. You see, because society has set up in a way that men, by virtue were always going to make more money and therefore didn't need to go and get higher Edgy women, on the other hand, needed to build up their resumes be just to be treated as equal. And we still are not paid as equal or treated as equal in the workplace. But now this is trickling down. Let me read you this piece. Almost a third of adult single men live with a parent.

That is startling. Single men are much more likely to be unemployed, financially fragile, and to lack a college degree than those with a partner. They're also likely to have lower median earnings. Single men earned less in twenty nineteen than in nineteen ninety, even adjusting for inflation. Single women meanwhile,

earned the same as they did thirty years ago. Because we don't have a fucking Equal Pay Act in this country and so we can continue to pay women less for the same job, but those with partners have increased their earnings by fifty percent. There are some of these or some of the findings in the new Pew Research analysis of twenty nineteen data on the growing gap between adults American adults who live with a partner and those

who do not. While the study is less about the effect of marriage and more about the effect of a changing economic circumstances, circumstances that have an effect on marriage, because here's the idea, are you going to be actively dating, actively wanting to join your life with somebody else when you are living at home with your parents and don't have a stable income. Once again, this all comes back to our failing economy. The reality is this that it

is very expensive to live in America right. It is

very expensive to go to go to college. You're talking about average people raking in debts of six figures for a higher education that is not necessarily going to command them the salary that is going to help them to pay off that debt, So why go This is why another study came out and said that more men are not going into going to higher education, that more men are dropping out of college because what is happening here is that our economy is not keeping pace right and

people are not making as much as they used to. Let me go on to show this because there was another startling issue here that I found. And of course when we look at communities of color, these numbers are even worse. I'll go on. The trend has not had an equal impact across all sectors of society. The Pew study, which uses information from the twenty nineteen American Community Survey, notes that men are now more likely to be single than women, which was not the case thirty years ago.

Black people are much more likely to be single get this fifty nine percent than any other race, and Black women sixty two percent are more likely to be single of any sector. Asian people twenty nine percent are the least likely to be single, followed by whiteset thirty three

and Hispanics at thirty eight percent. Most researchers agree that the trend lines showing that fewer people are getting married and that those who do are increasingly better off financially, have a lot to do with the effect of wealth and education on marriage, then vice versa. People who are financially stable are just more likely to find and attract a partner. So again this goes back to what are we doing to ensure that people are not having crippling debt?

What are we doing to increase and make certain that we have good paying jobs. I did a debate recently with a conservative, right wing Republican who said, I don't know what this study is talking about because there are so many jobs. I see many job openings, and I'm like, just because you see job openings in your neighborhood does

not mean that that translates to the nation. And also, their reason why there are so many job openings in retail, for instance, right now, is because it doesn't fucking pay and it doesn't have health benefits. And when you're living in the midst of a health pandemic, having health insurance and health benefits is really fucking good. So why would you be at a job that pays you minimum wage or below and doesn't provide you with benefits. You're better

off not going into those positions. So when we're talking about whether or not people are going to be able to leave home, we're talking about the reality that here's the thing. We need, better jobs, good paying jobs for all people, because right now folks are opting out and

that's the problem, folks. I am so excited to welcome to the show for the very first time the campaign director of CHIROS, the Digital First organizers behind Tech Is Not Neutral campaign and the recently launched Facebook Logout campaign,

Gilanni Drew Davie. Gilanni, can you talk to us about your initial reactions to the Facebook whistleblower Francis Hagen and what we have learned We're I mean, because I will tell you this, I don't know if I needed the internal documents to tell me that Facebook was putting profits over people and that they were more concerned with making money than they were with stopping hate groups and white supremacy.

But what were your reactions and the reactions of CAIROS. Yeah, so I'm first super excited to talk to you and be here about it. I think that, you know, the first reactions that we had as CHIROS, as an organization who's been kind of doing this work for a while and both both in the campaigning organizing realm, but also building up organizers to do digital organizing and do it on tech issues, I think it was the same. You know,

I didn't really need the internal documents. I didn't really need to hear the whistleblower Francis saying the things that she was saying, and it was reiterating a point that you know, civil rights groups to accountability groups have been saying for for years and for as us as users have been experiencing for years. And so, you know, very very appreciative all ways of whistleblowers, especially from Silicon Valley, but it's very hard to you know, come out and

say the things and be public about it. So very appreciative that also, I think, you know, it wasn't a surprise at all. You know, I think that one of the things that we are all learning, which is really disconcerning, is the fact that white supremacy, right hate, homophobia, transphobia, all of these things have no boundaries. Right. They now have algorithms, Right, we have a way of being able

to tap into people's worst instincts. And we're using now platforms that were originally i think created to bring people together, to bring families and communities and students and all of these different types of people seven billion people right together. And now what we have seen, at least through the activation of these hate groups using Facebook is just an increase in tribalism, an increase in how things go viral

or what makes things go viral. Talk to us about the Tech is Not Neutral campaign and why it's important for us to have these conversations about who is actually creating the tech, who is creating the artificial intelligence, who is creating these algorithms, and through what perspective they're doing. So, yeah, for sure, I think, you know, tech company products have

real life consequences for people, for real people. And when I say that too, I also want to put a little like asterisk of the people who experience the most harm are also the same people who experienced the most harm offline, and those are going to be like marginalized communities, black and brown people, LGBT people, etc. And so, you know, it is so so important to call out and realize who is making these products, who was writting these platforms,

who was making the decisions when it comes to things like content moderation, disinformation, even just the way that the platform is like functioning. And so, you know, the Tech is Not Mutual campaign that we launched last year, we was really in response to seeing tech companies jumping on

this bandwagon of black Lives Matter. I was seeing, you know, an Amazon um black Lives Matter statement, and I was like, that's really that's really rich because Amazon is doing so many harmful things to communities of color around the world, and so for them to put up their little black square, it was like no. And same thing with Google, same thing with next Door and and Microsoft for example, saying those statements and also playing with our lives, playing with

our democracy, and so you know, we launched that campaign to point out the the I guess like hypercritical nature of those of those statements and then also get people to start thinking about tech not being neutral. So it's a campaign, but it's also a framework. It's a way of thinking around technology, and also it's a way of thinking about a vision of the world that we do want to see. We want to create a world where

tech works for us. We want to create a world where we are not told by Silicon Valley that this place, this platform, this product is neutral when that's just not the truth. That all sways one way or the other. You know, what's so funny is that every time that I hear somebody say something that is neutral, it is almost an alarm that goes off in my head for me to be like, oh, so it's the opposite of

what it is that you're saying. I think that, you know, one of the frustrating points, too, is that we wanted to believe that technology was going to be the great equalizer, right, was going to be this this democratized space the Internet, where everyone was going to be able to have the same amount of access, was going to be able to post in the same way, you know, And that's not

the case. What we what we know right is from I would even go with the content creators on TikTok, the black content creators on TikTok who went on strike, who are just like, so, we're not putting our information out there. I follow so many sites who are talking about white supremacy and they're having their content pulled down as hate speech, and they're the and they are talking about the harms of white supremacy and how it is spreading, and yet they are the ones that are being blocked

or banned or having their accounts disabled. How do you think that we deal with those issues the fact that you know, we're looking for Congress, right. I think that the whistleblower has laid out a kind of you know, trail of gingerbread crumbs right for them to develop a case right against Facebook, but it's like, do they even understand what algorithms are? Do they even understand what needs

to be regulated? And if if cairos, if your organization had it, they're wig, what are some waste in which we would ensure that the internet is free, that it is democratize, that people are safe. Yeah, so I think the whistle blower definitely laid out a bunch of ways, and I think this moment in time is a bit different because we've now seen from January sixth to now all the Wall Street Journal files the whistle blower, how Facebook and technologies like Facebook or like harming our children,

our society or democracy, you name it. They're touching it. And I think that you know, this is both This is both a Congress issue and a way where users can also have power. And so I think about it.

I think, Okay, a campaign we're running now, the Facebook blogout, is really getting users to harness their own power, to realize their own power as people who make Facebook and Instagram run like those are our engagement, that's our data that they're using to make more money, and if we take that away, then they start making money, and therefore we can demand the things that we want from them.

Users are also the same people as constituents, and so lawmakers, I think also need to realize that users are constituents, and so they need to listen to the things that we're saying and listen to the harms that you're laying out that you know, places like Facebook have have done to us. And as far as like you know, do they even know what to regulate? Do they do they

know what algorithms are. I think We've come a long way since I've started this work and the hearings and the kind of like memes that have come out and the interesting quotes that have come out of those hearings, and I think we's leve a way to go. And I think that you know, lawmakers need to start also listening to groups like CAIROS and our partners SPURB. We're saying, like, here are the things that we want to see from you.

We want to see you know, better things on privacy, like protecting children like we saw on the hearings this week, and just being able to regulate technology and on value in a way that doesn't take everything from people in the way that it is. Right now, we experienced a blackout of sorts right when Facebook went down, then taking down with it all of the entities in which they have gobbled up and own. Three and a half billion

people were affected. Now we have the you know, the jokes that people in the United States make about, oh, well, I guess I'll just get more work done today because I can't scroll through Instagram and you know, like, oh look at me, like I'll clean my house, or there are a bunch of babies that were being born because you know, nobody had anything else to do with their time.

The reality is, though, that globally, for instance, What's app is used as a survival tool for many in the LGBTQ community, particularly activists in very hostile countries, and so what seems like a funny meme to us when these platforms go down for a few hours is life threatening and consequential to others. Do you think that we have enough of a conversation about how these tools have become utilities? Right Like, it isn't just a nice to have that it actually is a need for people that are at

risk and for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Yeah, so I think the Facebook, the Facebook down, Instagram down moment of I believe it was my day at the beginning of my week ends. You know, I think it was who knows what data is at this point, but I think, you know, that really highlighted a couple of things. I love the memes, you know, we're quick on a on Twitter. The spirit Halloween signs over the Facebook thing really killed me.

And yeah, it like it really was horrible for a lot of small business owners, for organizers who use Facebook for maybe their local elections that are happening now, and people across the world, like you said, in addition to what'sapp being like main communication source, also people open the internet to just Facebook in places outside of the US. Right, we are incredibly privileged to be able to even go onto Twitter and have a key key about you know,

Facebook is down. This is what I'm doing, making the memes all that kind of stuff. But taking a step back, Facebook operates as a public utility, yet they don't, you know, communicate as one. They don't take users seriously as as

a public utility should. And I think that is really where our kind of a unique stance is is like We're not saying delete Facebook if you want to as an individual, sure, And the conversation shouldn't be like, well, if you don't like it, just get out and if you don't, you know, and if you are on it, then you should deal with it. No, Like, this is the thing that people use and need. It's probably the

biggest way to communicate at this point. And as users we can basically strike and say, you know, we will strike until we get the thing that we need because this is the place where we are doing the things

that we need to do. And so yeah, I mean, I don't I don't think that we have a kind of like maybe maybe it's large, maybe it's a nuanced conversation about the ways on which Facebook is actually helpful to people, especially globally, And that is a conversation that like it's kind of rows were interested in like continuing

to have. And then I think that all of us need to start having given right, how many people around the world, billions of people are on Facebook's platform, worms, how effective do you think it can be for folks to just log out? Like if small businesses rely on this thing, entrepreneurs rely on this platform, organizers, activists rely on this platform. How effective is it to just say, well, we need to opt out or we need to log out to your point, not to delete it, but to

log out until our demands are met. M I think the focus of the campaign is so is much about showing people power as impacting like Facebook's bottom line. And so I think that it's this balance of we are impacting Facebook's bottom line by like opting out of seeing the ads and really digging into where how much they get their revenue, which is like ninety eight percent advertising at this point, and we're showing people power by buy

and logging out. And I think that you know, we've been contacted by people say, hey, I run a small business. We're organized on Facebook, and that's why our logout is temporary, and that's why it's on an individual basis, and it we really are going with the frame of like we make or break Facebook, And so I think it's this kind of this this balance of or maybe balance a combination of trying to get people to start thinking differently

about Facebook and also follow through with an action. And we hope to have an impact that is both both the bottom line impact and both a change in mind impact, so that you know, we're starting with this pledge now, we're starting with this logout period now and going forward and you know, two, three, four years then we are you know, doing more things, and we are Mark Zuckerberg is listening to us, or even better, Mark Zuckerberg's not CEO of Facebook, because we, as users have in life,

we need better leadership. You know, I find Mark Zuckerberg to be nauseating on so many different levels, just because I think that he's emblematic of you know, white male privilege and wealth and power personified to a degree that you know, Mark Zuckerberg in many ways to be able to put out the lights accidentally, as they said on three and a half billion people, has more power than

the president of the United States. And that's something that I just don't think again, people get right, they don't they I don't think that they fully understand, you know, the way in which this one person who is beholden to no one but his shareholders and his own wallet,

is in charge of their life. You know. Part of the work that you all do is to empower people to have these campaigns that show people that you know, as was said after the whistleblower came out, that when you have a free platform, you have to recognize that you're the product. If you're not paying for a subscription, if you're not paying for the product, then you are

the product. So how do we continue to empower people to recognize and fully understand in this very mindless facial recognition you know space that we're in, let me log into everything with Google and Facebook, you know, so that they have all of my passwords and have everything just how I guess just how vulnerable they really are, because I think that that's what we were shown with the five hour blackout, is that Wow, we're really vulnerable to

like somebody literally just pulling the plug. Yeah, it's super important to know that we don't have to actually be complacent with the terms that Facebook or any other social media platform sets. We don't have to be just grateful for the tool, because when the tool goles down, then

that's what we experienced on Monday. I think the couple of thirds of what you were saying, like one is definitely about data privacy is definitely about you know, the convenience that is single click sign ons giving my information over to this platform so it can work easier, better or whatever for me I think that's kind of a false a false choice, and that's something the whistle bloord was saying to like, Facebook has presented us with this

false choice, like we don't actually we do have choices here. We do have the choice to give information or not. And I think just even being armed with that knowledge of I don't have to just give Facebook all of my information, that is a game changer in and of itself. And so I think it's this continuous beating of the drum of like, you don't have to just be grateful for the tool, you don't have to just give all your information, you don't have to just etc. With these platforms.

You know, I read a very terrifying article with how and watch a terrifying documentary Coded Bias on how essentially you know code is going to exacerbate our racism problem in this country and around the world. But the terrifying article that I read was about Venice in Italy and how they are deciding to deploy a facial recognition right within the city walls to be able to track tourists

so that they can deal with overcrowding. And I use that in air quotes because essentially they are testing out a mechanism to create an even longer digital leash where by every CCTV, everything that you pass will be able to have a snapshot. They have tools that are able to pull data from your phone just by you by

virtue of passing. Of passing by. You know, we see these little articles pop up every once and again, and because it's in Venice, nobody is really paying attention to the fact that I believe that they are using it as a testing ground to see how well it works in this city of fifty thousand people before it is used everywhere, right before they decide to adopt it all

over Italy. In the form of safety, how do you think that we maintain right our safety but at the same time keep pace with the innovation that is happening, keep pace with technology that is going to be used to have us in these digital cages of essentially our own making, because we've provided them with the information. I think that's another thing around around those two things. There's one thing around, like knowledge of what's even happening in

the first place. Sometimes that is really hard because you know, these little articles pop up every now and again, or it's secret. And I think in the case of many states in the United States, like there's been the secrecy around you know, biometric surveillance, which is what you're talking about, facial recognition, and other other ways. There's been this secrecy and people have found out about it, and organizers have actually organized who change the laws that make those things possible.

And so there's been there's states in the United States. I think it's Massachusetts is one of them, and there's I believe, if not California as a whole, but like cities in California who have banned biometric surveillance or banded facial recognition use by police by cities, it varies, but I think that is one way that will be really

tackle this. We get people who are in leadership, We get organizers focused on this tech issue as it relates with things like racism, with things like holophobia, transphobia, all of the things that we're trying to fight. Tech is like intersection with those and so even getting people to think about how do we look at pace of recognition is not just a lonky nere thing that's happening, but actually I think that's happening right now and that goes

for all tech issues as well. So I think it's I think it's being aware of it ourselves and doing the work to connect the dots for people, and then doing the work to then ban those things as far as laws go. I mean, I just even think, yeah, I think that it's it has to be a massive information campaign because I don't even think that people recognize what is happening. You know, we, you know, pay attention and are reading the news and are following these stories,

but the average person is not. And you know, and day by day we are giving away more and more of our civil liberties and we're going to wake up one day and they're just going to be gone, and we'll be inside, locked inside of these digital cages. Please tell folks on willkaf how they can participate in the Facebook logout and when it's happening. Yeah, absolutely, so the Facebook logout. You can participate by going to the Facebook logout dot com and on there you can sign up

to take the pledge to logout on Facebook. So let's just start with the pledge. We're not asking you to do anything right now, but in November we will take log off days. So from now into November, bring your friends, bring your family, bring it aunties to the Facebook logout dot com. Sign up you will get regular communications from us and then join us in a couple of days in November to really just take days off of Facebook and show Facebook you know we have power and we

know how to use it. Jolenny also tell people who are interested in learning more about Cairos are becoming trained in the many programs and campaigns that you all put together, how would they get that information as well? Yeah, so you can go to Kiros Fellows dot org to learn more about us. We also have Compirisaction dot org to learn more about our more legislatives CE four activities. And I think I would say two the two things that Kiros does well is build leaders and strategies for you know,

contending for power. This like digital realm, internet centric world we live in. And we run campaigns like tech usant Mutual and the Facebook Blogout. So if those things are interest of view, definitely go to Cairos Fellows dot org and then the Facebook Logout dot com. Fantastic, Gilani Drew Davies, thank you so much for making the time to join woke. F Thank you for the work that you are doing that you continue to bring awareness to these issues that

I think more people need to be paying attention to. Absolutely, thank you so much for having us. It's great, appreciate you. That is it for me today on Woke af as always, Power to the people and to all the people power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.