⚡ Facebook = weapon?
It’s Monday! Hope everyone had a great weekend and Shana Tova to everyone celebrating the Jewish New Year.
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Facebook is still a weapon
You may have stopped using Facebook, but your government still does.
70 countries have experienced organized disinformation campaigns on social media, according to a new report by Oxford’s Computational Propaganda Research Project. This number, up from 48 in 2018 and 28 in 2017, underscores the alarming extent to which political parties and government agencies are using social media as a weapon.
Messing with neighbors: 7 countries are using campaigns to influence other countries. China leads the pack, with Iran, India, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela following in earnest. Who are we kidding, do any of these names surprise you?
FB is still a problem: Despite everything Zuck said that he’d do to stem this trend, 56 countries of the 70 are using Facebook to drive their disinformation campaigns. It seems like all those congressional hearings haven’t changed a thing, despite all those hard-hitting questions from Lindsey Graham and co.
Suppressing human rights: In 26 authoritarian countries, this type of propaganda is being used in three distinct ways - suppress fundamental human rights, discredit political opponents, and drown out dissenting opinions.
Looking at nation branding: Over the last decade, countries have been increasingly using nation branding and PR campaigns to market their unique identities. These efforts have been mostly focused on attracting tourists and foreign direct investment. When these campaigns capture and portray the true identity the people, it can be an incredible way to unify a diverse population. However, disinformation campaigns represent how easily such tools can be manipulated to control people.
Pricing carbon emissions
You may have noticed, but we just added another data point to our dashboard! IHS Markit, in the spirit of transparency, has created the first global benchmark for carbon emissions pricing, which is currently at $23.34. The German government released new carbon credit prices last week and they started them at around $11. IHS aspires to help governments and the public, assess what’s a fair price. As you can see from our global dashboard, the price is more than two times what the German government set their carbon credits at.
What’s included: Three liquid trading schemes - EU and two from the US. Moving forward, they plan to add other carbon credit markets once they become more liquid.
What the price captures: Full cost of the economic damage due to emissions including the impact on people’s health, damages to food supply, and effects on property. The challenge here is that these factors are rarely static or linear.
Market’s wrong: The World Bank thinks the current price is far lower than it should be. Because the market is still learning how to crawl and many parts of the world have no system for carbon credits pricing, it’s understandable that these instruments aren’t being priced properly.
FTSE backtracks
FTSE Russell reversed its decision to label oil and gas companies as “non-renewable energy” and renamed the sector “Oil, Gas, and Coal.”
Why: People think FTSE Russell was pressured by LSE, both owned by the London Stock Exchange Group. LSE is currently trying to secure the potential international listing of Saudi Aramco and found the new label to be unhelpful.
Kicking us when we’re down: Not only did they reverse the “non-renewable energy” label, they also renamed the “Renewable Energy” sector to “Alternative Energy.”
Durell Coleman, Founder of DC Design & Design the Future
“He has worked to redesign aspects of the foster care system, develop new approaches to criminal justice reform, reimagine healthcare service models, create apps that connect communities, and develop new educational models for the 21st century.”
Read an article about how to make design thinking more disability-inclusive
DC Design is a social impact design firm. Using Human-Centered Design, our cross-disciplinary team engages the key stakeholders affected by a problem, especially those who have been through that problem themselves, to develop solutions that are validated and long-lasting. We partner with social impact entrepreneurs, governments, nonprofits and companies to address complex social problems and teach them our methods.
We have extensive experience applying our methods to redesign social systems such as criminal justice, education, foster care, and healthcare.
Building Social Business, Muhammad Yunus
Muhammad Yunus, the practical visionary who pioneered microcredit and, with his Grameen Bank, won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, has developed a dimension for capitalism which he calls "social business." The social business model has been adopted by corporations, entrepreneurs, and social activists across the globe. Its goal is to create self-supporting, viable commercial enterprises that generate economic growth as they produce goods and services to fulfill human needs. In Building Social Business, Yunus shows how social business can be put into practice and explains why it holds the potential to redeem the failed promise of free-market enterprise.
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