Marketplace Tech

The past few days have seen a few commitments from established venture funds to support founders of color. SoftBank launched a $100 million fund; Andreessen Horowitz launched a $2.2 million fund to support founders from “underserved” communities, with a plan to expand it to $15 million over time. But honestly, that’s not that much. Host Molly Wood speaks with Sarah Kunst, the managing director of Cleo Capital.

As people all over the country protest the police killing of George Floyd, social media has become the medium for amplifying marginalized voices, organizing and reporting events. It’s also where President Trump and other politicians are responding. Bots and bad actors are swarming social media with misinformation, yet these platforms often spark awareness of injustice in the first place. Host Molly Wood speaks with Nicol Turner Lee, a fellow at the Brookings Institution.

The protests happening around the country over the police killing of George Floyd are emblematic of longstanding racial divisions. That certainly includes the tech industry, which is notorious for its lack of diversity in hiring and investing. Host Molly Wood speaks with tech startup CEO Jim Gibbs about one suggested solution: Hire people of color or wire them investments.

Police departments have a lot of surveillance tools to identify protesters and looters, from camera technology to drones, license plate readers to the facial recognition tool known as Clearview AI. In some cases, these technologies can help keep the peace, but they can also be used to find organizers and even arrest protesters after the fact. There aren’t a lot of rules. Host Molly Wood speaks with Saira Hussain, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Protesters demonstrated in dozens of cities across the country over the weekend, sparked by the alleged murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer last week. But depending on what people saw on social media about the protests, they may have completely different ideas about what happened. Host Molly Wood speaks with Zeynep Tufekci, author of “Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest.”

The debate over how social media platforms deal with content hit a new peak this week after Twitter fact-checked several of President Donald Trump’s tweets. That prompted Trump to sign an executive order trying to limit platforms’ legal protections. Currently, under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, internet platforms aren’t legally responsible for most content posted by users. Host Molly Wood speaks with Jeff Kosseff, author of “The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet,” a book on Section 230.

COVID-19 has opened up a conversation about remote therapy, but online mental health care goes way beyond talking to a therapist over video chat. App analytics companies say downloads of mental health and wellness apps are up almost 30% since the pandemic began. These include therapy services, but also meditation apps like Calm and Headspace. Do they work, and how is your data handled? American Public Media’s mental health reporter, Alisa Roth, takes a look. 

Tech has helped in the fight against the coronavirus, but there’s a bottleneck when it comes to contact tracing: public health departments. These government agencies are chronically underfunded, and some don’t have the right tech to get medical data quickly. Host Molly Wood speaks with Dan Gorenstein, co-host of the health-care podcast “Tradeoffs,” about trying to track the spread of the virus  with fax machines. 

This week marks two years since Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation went into effect. Companies spent millions of dollars on GDPR compliance, and people expected fines so big they’d put Big Tech out of business. That didn’t exactly happen, but what has the GDPR meant for consumer privacy? Host Molly Wood speaks with Jessica Lee, a partner with the law firm Loeb & Loeb who specializes in privacy.

TikTok has been in the news for its new CEO, who was poached from Disney, and for the record labels who think the service should pay more to publishers and artists for song rights. And there have been calls to ban it in the U.S. over its Chinese ownership and security fears. But its popularity keeps growing.