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Lexicon for Just Transitions

tschuetz

"Throughout the volume, we introduce several novel concepts to the EJ debate, and engage with rich debates within the field. Consequently, in this volume, an emerging lexicon provides a rich arena to further understand and address the complexity and holistic basis of environmental justice. Valle uses the term convivial labor in juxtaposition to capitalism, where labor is not a tool of capital- ism but a form of celebration and cultural connectivity. Vasconcellos Oliveira suggests that conditional freedom includes the precautionary principle in decisions to limit effects upon others where working towards a stable climate has obliga- tions and responsibilities that cascade across actions. Further, she postulates the need for sustainable consumption – seemingly an oxymoron – but situated within the context of limiting future injustices through accentuating intergenerational capabilities. Pandit and Purakayastha employ Shiva’s earth democracy to illuminate the contributions of indigenous Indian cultures to furthering vegetal living of con- nectivity and conviviality." (325)

Facebook Oversight Board

lucypei

An oversight board of 20 well-known, reputable individuals has been (publically) convened to make final decisions about contested content removal from the platform. 

Critics note that content removal is not the only ethical issue Facebook has, and Siva Vaidhyanathan notes that the proprietary algorithm that shows people content is a serious issue over which this board has no authority. 

Joan Donovan notes that the slow legalistic pace will not keep up even when damaging content is a serious ethical issue, as even only a few hours is sufficient for viral digital content to reach huge audiences: 

Joan Donovan, the research director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center and an expert on media manipulation, raised concerns that the board would become “weaponized” by bad actors, who will use it as another opportunity to get their issues into the press.

“This theory of oversight is heavily informed by legal scholarship, which is slow and administrative and technical in nature, when we need something much more suited to the speed of the technology itself,” she said. “They’re going forward with this really long drawn out procedural mechanism that doesn’t address what the problem is – which is that viral content only needs to be on the internet for 4-8 hours for it to do its damage.”

Looking at the scale of the “infodemic” facing Facebook amid the coronavirus pandemic, Donovan said that the much more pressing concern is to solve the problem of “information curation, especially in a place like Facebook, that helps guide the user toward correct content and information rather than putting them in the middle a landfill and saying, ‘You sort it out’.” The oversight board is ultimately a distraction from “what really needs to happen”, she said, “which is to design technology that doesn’t allow for the expansive amplification of disinformation and health misinformation”.