The call for game developers to unionize is now coming from a voice close to the top. On Friday, former Blizzard senior programmer and three-time studio founder Jeff Strain released a letter encouraging his own developers to unionize.
Why it matters: Unionization is often mentioned by industry pundits and workers themselves as a crucial maneuver to empower the people who make games, but it’s been a non-starter at most studios.
Anitab.org, the group behind the annual Grace Hopper conference, is announcing Monday that among its keynote speakers will be Layshia Clarendon, an out transgender and nonbinary basketball player for the WNBA's Minnesota Lynx.
Why it matters: Organizers say it's part of a broader effort by the conference to be both inclusive and intersectional, recognizing that the challenges faced by women in tech are tied to those that other underrepresented groups encounter.
The concept of a new media ecosystem that's non-profit, publicly funded and tech-infused is drawing interest in policy circles as a way to shift the power dynamics in today's information wars.
Why it matters: Revamping the structure and role of public media could be part of the solution to shoring up local media, decentralizing the distribution of quality news, and constraining Big Tech platforms' amplification of harmful or false information.
Zoom agreed to pay $85 million and fortify its privacy features to settle a lawsuit claiming the company violated users' privacy rights by sharing data with tech companies and allowing hackers to jump into zoom calls, Reuters reports.
Why it matters: Zoom became many people's go-to platform for both work and social interaction during the pandemic, but this isn't the first time the platform has been asked to step up its privacy measures.
