Tech Giants Oppose Trump’s Withdrawal from the Paris Accord
The tech industry is by definition fixated on the future, so it’s no wonder that its leaders take the threat posed by climate change very, very seriously. What good is their world-changing technology if there’s no world left to change? So naturally the tech world was outraged by President Trump’s announcement that he would be […]
CrowdJustice Brings Crowdfunding for Legal Costs to the U.S.
Democracy genuinely seems in peril right now in the tumultuous early days of the Trump era. Fortunately, millions of Americans are banding together to reassert the power of the people. It’s likely that many members of the mobile app development community have joined in the effort by signing petitions, calling lawmakers, donating money, or protesting […]
Time to Speak Out Against the Plan to Destroy Net Neutrality
Even before John Oliver took to ranting about the necessity of net neutrality regulations, mobile app developers were passionate supporters of the open internet. We thought the fight for net neutrality was over after the unified outcry from various internet communities back in 2014, but then along came Trump and his new FCC chairman, former […]
Senate Republicans Go After Net Neutrality Regulations
Last Wednesday Dogtown Media had the exciting opportunity to meet with officials at the FCC headquarters along with other members of ACT – The App Association. During that meeting, Dogtown lobbied for issues that matter to the IoT app developer community, including opening up spectrum, paving the way for 5G, and clarifying the FCC’s privacy […]
Trump’s New Executive Order Aims to Re-examine H-1B Program
President Trump signed his “Buy American, Hire American” executive order on Tuesday, which will put the H-1B visa system under review. The order is designed to ensure that tech jobs that could be going to Americans are not being taken by cheaper foreign labor and to tighten restrictions on foreign contractors bidding on government projects, […]
It’s Twitter vs the Government in a Battle Over Free Speech
As if President Trump’s relationship to tech wasn’t already fraught enough, Twitter announced yesterday that it is filing a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security for attempting to unmask the anonymous user (or users) behind the @ALT_USCIS account. One of the several rogue government agency accounts that have popped up since the election to […]
Facebook Looks for New Approaches to the Fake News Problem
Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2016 was “surreal.” The Oxford English Dictionary went with “post-truth.” The Australian Macquarie Dictionary settled on “fake news.” No matter what term social media app developers prefer to use to define it, 2016 was the year that the conspiracies, propaganda, and outright hooey that used to be the purview […]
Tech Giants Stand Up for Clean Energy in the Trump Era
Silicon Valley’s attitude toward Donald Trump on the campaign trail was decidedly less than enthusiastic. Sure, contrarian Peter Thiel stood with the loose cannon Republican candidate, but his politics have always leaned further right than most of his colleagues. The vast majority of the tech world viewed Trump with skepticism, uncertain of what his approach […]
Senate Dismantles Obama-Era Internet Privacy Protections
For app developers concerned with privacy, yesterday was a dark day. Senate Republicans passed a bill eliminating privacy regulations imposed on broadband providers by the FCC during the final months of the Obama presidency. Those protections would have required ISPs to get consent from the consumer before selling off personal information to a third party. […]
How Peter Thiel’s Political Stance Affects Startups
Ellen Pao of Project Include took to Medium this week to explain why they were breaking off ties with prominent startup accelerator Y Combinator. The reason, in short: Peter Thiel’s increasingly unpredictable endorsements and behavior. While Thiel has drawn criticism from the tech community before thanks to his support of floating cities, morality-bending age extension […]