👉 Last Week - Tech's response to George Floyd's murder, Twitter censors Trump

What happened on Tech Twitter the week of May 24th

Jun 01, 2020

It goes without saying that this past week was very different from any other due to the senseless murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

hedonometer @hedonometer

Yesterday was the saddest day in the history of @Twitter

I wanted to take this moment to express my gratitude and support for the African American community. America would be nothing without you and nor would this newsletter. In fact, Tech Twitter TLDR was initially inspired by a popular African American comedy and culture subreddit called Black People Twitter.

As this newsletter grows, I pledge to use it to elevate black and other underrepresented voices in the tech industry as much as possible. Black lives matter.

- Brett

✊🏾 Tech responds to George Floyd’s murder

By Sunday night protests had erupted in 140 cities with National Guard deployed in 21 states.

Paul Katsen @pavtalk

Take a look at Snap Map #protests2020 map.snapchat.com/@39.850499,-98…

One by one, major tech companies, VCs and individuals announced their solidarity with the movement and Facebook was peculiarly nowhere to be found.

Arlan 👊🏾 @ArlanWasHere

This. We see you.

Sarah Tavel @sarahtavel

1/ I write here in solidarity with our Black community. Join me and @cklemke in donating to the NAACP Legal Fund (@NAACP_LDF). We’ll match up to $15,000 if you @ or DM me receipt. The NAACP is particularly close to my heart:

Most importantly, black members of the tech industry spoke up:

Web Smith @web

Each of us has a locus of control. It can be a social group, investment circle, team, office, mentorship, or even a neighborhood. Each of those are "systems" as well. And they can be addressed much faster. The needle can move today.

Terri Burns @tcburning

went to @deray's account in search of this tweet. found it, felt it.

deray @deray

I love my blackness. And yours.

Brandon R. Hill @IamBrandonHill

If you can’t see the difference you’re a part of the problem.

Chris Lyons @ChrisLyons

Protect our black owned businesses by any means. Black entrepreneurs work day in and out to pull us out of past conditions, and embody what Black excellence looks like in America. If you destroy their vision for making a better Black America, you destroy our hope for a future 🙏🏾

Click into these threads:

Kanyi Maqubela @km

Time for a mini-thread on police unions, because it is both tricky and very high stakes.

Nait Jones ⚡️⚡️⚡️ @NaithanJones

No one is saying we don’t want police. We need police, but the balance of power has gotten so ridiculously out of wack it needs to be reigned in. Police budgets are going up, they act with impunity and their use of power unquestioned with no checks. Poor people stand no chance

🤬 Twitter censors Trump

In a first ever move, Twitter labeled one of Trump’s tweets as misinformation and hid another one because it glorified violence.

Twitter Comms @TwitterComms

We have placed a public interest notice on this Tweet from @realDonaldTrump.

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

....These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!

Twitter Comms @TwitterComms

We have placed a public interest notice on this Tweet from @realDonaldTrump.

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

Trump retaliated by threatening regulation

The White House @WhiteHouse

"Today, I am signing an Executive Order to protect and uphold the free speech and rights of the American people."

Facebook came out against Twitter’s move and employees were not happy. But the point that large tech platforms shouldn’t fact check content wasn’t far from what others in the industry were saying.

CNBC @CNBC

“Political speech is one of the most sensitive parts in a democracy, and people should be able to see what politicians say,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says. cnb.cx/3c5imsl

Balaji S. Srinivasan @balajis

It shouldn’t be tech companies per se getting into fact checking. It should be open source technology. Free, universally available code and data for epistemology. Take a piece of text, parse it, extract assertions, compare to explicitly specified knowledge graphs and oracles.

Richard 🐎 STAY ALERT 🔎🦠 @Richx183

The problems with tech getting into the fact checking business: Who are the arbiters of what’s true? Who appointed them to that position? Who fact checks the fact checkers? https://t.co/GkJy92P9DB

There’s much more to this story that I’ll be sharing in a deep dive later.

👌 Pre-protest tweets

The tech news and discussions I typically cover here is pretty insignificant in the context of this important, historic moment. That said, I still wanted to share a few tweets from before the George Floyd video was widely circulated when people were still happily tweeting about tech.