Tech money in civil society: whose interests do digital rights organisations represent?

ABSTRACT

This article explores philanthropic interactions between ‘Big Tech’ and digital rights civil society organizations (DRCSOs) to enhance understanding of the alignment and misalignment of interests between these groups. ‘Big Tech’ wields political influence by distributing cash to research and policy organizations. Academic research supporting ‘Big Tech’ business practices is marshalled to support their political lobbying efforts, while civil society policy work shapes the narrative what dimensions of these businesses should be regulated (or not). While academic work is typically presented as a cool analysis of the relevant issues, DRCSOs purport to represent the interests of individuals and groups negatively affected by those business practices. Through empirical tracking of direct financial flows, as well as an analysis of cash distributions via class action litigation settlements, we show that certain DRCSOs have long-term financial relationships with ‘Big Tech’ that trouble our understanding of the alignments or misalignments of their interests. Through that analysis, we question where and how civil society fits into automated and algorithmic cultural production and perpetuation, and the way that Big Tech uses and guards the economic capital generated through its dominance over ‘automated culture’.

KEYWORDS:

• Philanthropy
• civil society
• digital rights
• non-profits
• Big Tech
• philanthrocapitalism
• cy pres

Acknowledgements

We wish to acknowledge Mr. Sam Creagh and Mr. Michael Spalding for their assistance in data collection during their work on this project as part of a professional development programme. We also would like to acknowledge the superb research assistance of Daniel Bennet-Spark and Harrison Tate, as well as the helpful comments from Robbie Fordyce, Mark Andrejevic and the reviewer for this article, all of which improved the final product immensely.

Disclosure statement

Monique Mann is Vice Chair and Board Member of the Australian Privacy Foundation.

Notes on contributorss

Jake Goldenfein is a Senior Lecturer at Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, and an Associate Investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society.

Monique Mann is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology and member of the Alfred Deakin Institute (ADI) for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University.

Notes

1 The Funding Matters Open letter and signatories is here: https://fundingmatters.tech/.

2 NAACP v Alabama ex. Rel. Patterson, 357 U.S. 449 (1958).

3 Citizens United and Citizens United Foundation v Schneiderman, No 1:14-cv-3703-SHS (S.D.N.Y. May 22, 2014); Centre for Competitive Politics v Harris No14-15978 (U.S.C.A 9th Cir May 01, 2015).

4 1238 Order to Supplement. Signed by Judge Alsup on August 20, 2012., Oracle America, Inc., v Google Inc., 872, F.Supp.2d 974 (2012) (No. C 10-03561 WHA). p.1 at 24; 1240 Response to re#1238 Order to Supplement by Google Inc. Oracle America, Inc., v Google Inc., 872, F.Supp.2d 974 (2012) (No. C 10-03561 WHA). p.7 at 11.

5 Cy pres settlements from large tech companies include: Lane v Facebook (settled in 2013, concerning Facebook’s ‘beacon’ programme which disclosed information about user activities not on Facebook); Fraley v Facebook (settled in 2012, concerning the non-consensual use of user information in advertisements called ‘sponsored stories’); In re Google Referrer Header Privacy Litigation (originally settled in 2013, however presently being relitigated, concerning Google’s disclosure of search terms through referral headers); In re Google Cookie Placement Settlement (initially settled in 2017, presently being relitigated, concerning Google’s using DoubleClick cookies that bypassed user cookie controls on Safari and Internet Explorer); In re Google LLC Street View (settled in 2020, concerning Google’s collection of open wifi information by ‘Street View’ vehicles); In Re Google Buzz User Privacy Litigation (settled in 2010, concerning Google’s disclosure of followed and following lists and frequent email contacts); as well as the Google+ Class Action Settlement (ongoing concerning knowingly leaking personal information from 500,000 user accounts via the Google Plus API).

6 Lane v Facebook, Inc., 696 F.3d 811 (9th Cir. 2012) p. 834.

7 The Digital Trust Foundation made payments to ACLU ($100,000), CDT ($200,000), CDD ($50,000), EFF ($100,000), EPIC ($100,000), among others. There were also payments to Fordham University CLIP ($120,000), California State University Northridge ($193,491,000), and the UC Berkeley Institute of Human Development ($50,000). This is in addition to the nearly $840,000 granted to the initially Microsoft Funded non-profit Data & Society (who itself did not disclose the donors of its $6,620,646 in donations in 2019), and $188,362 to the non-profit public policy organization, the Brookings Institution.

8 PRIVACY.ORG, The Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), Consumer Action (CA), Patient Privacy Rights Foundation (PPR), Privacy Activism (PA), Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC), U.S PIRG and The World Privacy Forum (WPF).

9 Brief for EPIC as Amicus Curiae, p. 9. In re Google Buzz User Privacy Litigation Case No. 5:10-CV-00672-JW (2011).

10 Brief of Amicus Curiae for David Lowery, Raymond J. Pepperell, Blake Morgan, and Guy Forsyth in Support of Petitioners in Frank v Goas no. 17-961 586 U.S. (2019).

11 In Re: Google Inc. Cookie Placement Privacy Litigation, No. 17-1480 (3rd Cir. 2019).

12 Google Plus Profile Litigation no. 5:18-cv-06164-EJD (VKD) (N.D. Cal) settlement terms and instructions available https://www.googleplusdatalitigation.com/.

13 See e.g. FTC v Google LLC. complaint no. 1:20-cv-03010 (filed Oct, 20. 2020).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society [grant number CE200100005].