Vacuous Wastelands artwork
Tech for Good Live

Vacuous Wastelands

  • S11E4
  • 50:18
  • April 25th 2021

Welcome back to another episode of the Tech for Good Live podcast!

We’ve a lot to talk about this week, including:

The planned “Instagram for Children” spin-off seems to have been scrapped by Facebook. That’s good, but surprising news, because Instagram has always been indifferent about the harm they cause kids, so let’s see what happens there.

Big tech and the incoming anti-trust action. That sounds incredibly boring, but we’ll try to keep it fun.

And a really concerning “innovation” in prison tech. 

Joining host Bex on the show this week we have TFGL team members Fay Schofield and Ankur Asthana.

And our special guest is Ross McCulloch, Director of Third Sector Lab who specialise in digital strategy & service design for charities.

He is the founder Digital Trustees Scotland - a movement which aims to get a tech professional on every charity board. Ross developed and facilitates the highly-successful SCVO Digital Senior Leaders Programme. He also runs the CharityComms Scotland Networking Group and Third Sector Geeks WhatsApp Group to help strengthen the charity digital community.


This week’s topics:

Stat of the week

35 children’s and consumer groups call for Instagram for children (under 13) to be scrapped - NY Times


Charity news of the week

Younger donors, increased trust in charities - Charity Digital


Tech news of the week

Is the coming antitrust wave against big tech a distraction? - Newsweek

Ambassadors to Big Tech -- good idea or giving tech too much power? - Wired



Rant of the week

Tech for Bad: This Company Monitors Prisoners In Xinjiang. It Won An “Innovation” Award At An Event Sponsored By Amazon - Buzzfeed News


And finally

Worldwide competition of petting the cat - currently Germany is in the lead.


----------------------------

Listeners, what did you think? We’d love to hear your thoughts. 

Get in touch on twitter @techforgoodlive or Email at [email protected] 

We’d love it if you gave us a nice iTunes review and told your pals about this podcast!

Thanks to podcast.co for hosting our podcast. 

If you’d like to be thanked on the podcast for giving us some cash, contact us on [email protected]. I promise we’ll spend it on transcription and not on kittens.

Tech for Good Live

From rampant AI's and gamification to social fundraising and new ways of donating. Join us on a meandering ramble through the ever changing landscape of tech that makes the world a better place.