Everyone in the World Wants to Fix Facebook. Here’s Why No One Can.
Abaca Press / AP While the US holds congressional hearings to listen to tech giants explain they want to do better, other countries are passing and promising new laws that aim to take action against the virulent spread of disinformation, violence, and hate speech. Last week, British Prime Minister Theresa May unrolled a proposal that outlines…
Activists Couldn’t Get Facebook to Tackle Its Discrimination Problem—Until the Russia Scandal Hit
Mother Jones illustration On April 10, 2018, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg did something he had managed to avoid in his 14 years at the helm of the tech giant he had built: He testified before Congress. His company had been battered in the preceding months, first by revelations that Russia had used the…
Texas Asked Judges to Stop Throwing People in Jail for Unpaid Parking Tickets. They Didn’t Listen.
Hiob/Getty After Emily Gerrick became a lawyer in 2014 in Austin, Texas, one of her first clients was a mother who was jailed for 21 days because she couldn’t afford to pay her traffic tickets. “She was just beside herself because she didn’t know where her kids were,” she recalled. Gerrick, now a senior attorney…
The Supreme Court Says Stopping Executions at the Last Minute Should Be an “Extreme Exception”
Jabin Botsford/AP Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. On Monday, the US Supreme Court ruled against delaying the execution of Missouri death row inmate Russell Bucklew, who argued that his rare medical condition could make the process excruciatingly painful. In the 5-4 decision, the majority ruled that Bucklew’s constitutional rights wouldn’t…
Harris County’s New Progressive Judges Are Upending the Bail System
tzahiv/Getty Images Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. In November, Democrats swept Harris County, Texas, courtrooms, replacing every Republican judge to occupy each of the 59 seats on the ballot. Many of those candidates, including the 19 black women who campaigned together, ran on reform-minded platforms focused on upending the county’s bail system.…
Police Are Increasingly Taking Advantage of Home DNA Tests. There Aren’t Any Regulations to Stop It.
A criminalist prepares DNA samples for analysis in a crime lab.Matt York/AP Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. CeCe Moore knew that she could find serial killers. But she wasn’t sure that she should. By the time authorities in Sacramento, California, announced an arrest in the Golden State Killer case in…