The Record: Monday, April 16, 2018
Protesters gathered today outside a Starbucks in Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square - the same store whose manager called the police on two black men who asked to use the restroom without paying. The manager has been fired, but the headache has continued for Starbucks. The company's 2015 Race Together initiative drew criticism from some corners, and the latest incident seems to highlight how hard it can be for companies to address implicit bias. Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Jenice Armstrong joined Bill Radke to talk about it.
At last week's Senate hearings, Mark Zuckerberg was coy about the people he'd messaged and the hotel he'd stayed at the night before. But he also acknowledged that his own data had been exposed to Cambridge Analytica - and, breathtakingly, that Facebook hadn't thought about whether people could use its tools maliciously. Whether or not that claim is true, it's astonishing, says University of Maryland professor Jen Golbeck. She runs their Social Intelligence Lab, and says that when we think the word "privacy," it might be helpful to replace it with the word "consent."
Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer just released an annual report - not on his newest company, but on America itself. His new project is an online database called USA Facts. With a president who's promised to run the country more like a business, Ballmer argues, we need data more than ever to see where we're succeeding and where we might be failing.
