It's great to see my writing about climate grief highlighted in this thoughtful series about housing and the climate
@kqed
.
Scroll down for my thoughts on grieving the future losses of climate change (and a nice snapshot of my bookcase)! https://www.kqed.org/science/1985440/draft-living-in-californias-sierra-foothills-residents-confront-climate-change
New: Negotiations between 180+ former Facebook content moderators in Kenya & Meta to reach a settlement in a labor lawsuit collapsed on Monday. The case now heads back to court
We feature the backstory of the lawsuit & the workers in our recent investigation: https://www.codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/kenya-content-moderators/
In July, I traveled to Nairobi to meet the young African content moderators leading an unlikely fight against big tech. They say reviewing content for the likes of Meta, ChatGPT, and TikTok through outsourcing companies left them with unspeakable trauma, including post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, insomnia, and thoughts of suicide.
They've sued Meta. And now they want to form the world's first union for content moderators.
How did content moderation grow into a multi-billion dollar industry that employs upwards of 100,000 people worldwide today, from the Philippines to Germany?
My piece is a deep dive into the labor economics of this industry, telling the story of content moderation from its humble beginnings in Silicon Valley to the massive, cross-continent enterprise it has become today. One that workers in Kenya compared to slavery and human trafficking.
Please read and share if interested: https://www.codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/kenya-content-moderators/
The Supreme Court's overturning of Roe has electrified the transnational anti-abortion movement. My 1st dispatch on the global impacts of Dobbs brings us to Ethiopia, where a landmark abortion law hangs in the balance as the opposition rides a post-Roe high.
The reporting for this piece began in Rwanda at the world's largest gender conference. Many thanks to the United Nations Foundation for supporting the project!
https://www.codastory.com/waronscience/dobbs-abortion-global-impact/
For @CodaStory I spent last month looking at how the rise of surveillance is changing the geography of America's immigration enforcement apparatus.
It's moving the border away from a physical barrier and onto the bodies of people seeking to cross it. My deep dive: https://www.codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/us-immigration-surveillance/
This week, the Missouri House voted 2 defund the state's public library system. The cuts came in response to a lawsuit challenging SB 775, a Missouri law banning sexually explicit material in school libraries & threatening librarians found in violation of the policy w jail time
I did a deep dive into the law and how it is permanently affecting the lives & work of librarians statewide. Some are considering leaving the field. Others are working in fear and isolation.
"What do you do when you think you could go to jail?" a librarian asked me. She is now leaving the profession
https://www.codastory.com/rewriting-history/missouri-libraries-book-ban/
Trying it out here again...
A new law in Missouri orders jail time for librarians who share "explicit sexual material" with minors. The statute has led to the removal of hundreds of children’s books across the state and caused librarians to aggressively self-censor under the threat of incarceration.
I spoke to a librarian visited by police in her school library over baseless accusations from a parent that she was stocking pornography on bookshelves. This happened months before the law passed. Now, she has decided to leave the profession https://www.codastory.com/rewriting-history/missouri-libraries-book-ban/
Coda's special series about the age of nostalgia is now live!
I wrote a personal essay about the grief of returning to California, ravaged by wildfires, and the parallels between mourning my home state and the death of my best friend.
The series also features stories from Hungary, Kuwait, and Cambodia. Read it here:
Infatuation with a mythologized history has overtaken communities, cultures, entire regions, sending society and identity into a fun-house mirror of nostalgic reflections. This special issue brings you stories of people finding solace in pasts imagined and grieving for futures foreclosed in a time of existential threats.
