The COVID-19 pandemic has forced both individuals and companies to adopt new practices and new technologies quickly—sometimes creating serious risks to our civil liberties. Join EFF for a livestreamed video discussion about what we've learned as online platform moderation becomes more automated, with platforms like Facebook flagging and censoring more content than ever before. Following that discussion will be a conversation about privacy, apps, and digital rights, and how to protect yourself as you adopt new technologies like Zoom, and as companies like Google and Apple create new apps and products intended to fight the pandemic.
We're excited to be joined by Jeff Deutch of Syrian Archive and Mahsa Alimardani of Article 19 for a discussion of content moderation, moderated by EFF's Director for International Freedom of Expression, Jillian C. York. EFF Legal Director, Corynne McSherry, will also join. Then, Legislative Activist Hayley Tsukayama will moderate a panel on the pandemic, apps, and privacy, with EFF Staff Technologist Bennett Cyphers, Project Manager Lindsay Oliver, and Grassroots Advocacy Organizer Rory Mir.
Have questions now? Send them to jason@eff.org.
This event will be livestreamed via Twitch, where you can chat and ask questions. It will also be streaming on Facebook Live and YouTube Live. (For Twitch's Privacy Policy, see here.)
A recording will be made available.
Event Time: Wednesday, April 22, 12:00PM Pacific / 3:00 PM Eastern (check your local time here)
Event Schedule:
12:00-12:30: What Happens When the Content Moderators Go Home?
Social media has never been more crucial than it is right now: it’s keeping us informed and connected during an unprecedented moment in time. At the same time, the content moderation challenges faced by social media platforms have not disappeared—and in some cases have been exacerbated by the pandemic. In the past weeks, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook have all made public statements about their moderation strategies at this time. While they differ in details, they all have one key element in common: the increased reliance on automated tools. Learn how this pandemic has changed our ability to share information with one another now—and possibly, forever.
EFF's Corynne McSherry and Jillian C. York will be joined by Mahsa Alimardani, a freedom of expression researcher at Article 19 who is also working on her PhD at the Oxford Internet Institute; and Jeff Deutch, the lead researcher at Syrian Archive and a PhD candidate at the Humboldt-University in Berlin.
12:30-12:45: Musical Intermission
Pianist MC Angebot will join us for a few songs during our break.
12:45-1:15: Privacy, Security, and New Technologies to Fight the Pandemic
Zoom might've received the most attention in the last few weeks, but plenty of new apps and tools that are being implemented during the pandemic—often without much oversight—are cause for concern. What could the "proximity tracing" that companies like Apple and Google have been talking about mean for our civil liberties? When it comes to working from home, what privacy should remote workers expect? And, due to many reports EFF has received about the use of privacy-invasive proctoring tools for students shifting to remote learning and testing, we'll be discussing the various ways that these sorts of apps often burrow themselves into user's machines.
EFF Legislative Activist Hayley Tsukayama will be joined by EFF Staff Technologist Bennett Cyphers, Project Manager Lindsay Oliver, and Grassroots Advocacy Organizer Rory Mir.
