Hillicon Valley — Dangers facing gig workers detailed
Gig workers protested across the country Wednesday over unsafe working conditions while a new report found at least 50 app-based drivers and delivery workers have been killed in the U.S. over the past five years.
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50 ride-hailing, delivery drivers killed since 2017
At least 50 people working for gig companies including Uber, Lyft and DoorDash have been killed on the job in the last five years, according to a new report.
Their families have received little to no help from gig companies following their deaths, according to the driver-led campaign Gig Workers Rising, which put together the report.
“Workers are taking extreme risks putting their lives on the line on a daily basis, and receiving inadequate protections and benefits in return,” it reads. “This is unacceptable.”
The authors set 2017 as the start date for their analysis of publicly available data because of a spike in violence against Uber drivers in Brazil the year before that, which left 16 dead and brought new attention to worker safety.
In the five years since, Gig Workers Rising found, at least 50 gig workers have been killed in the U.S. while working, as well as several more abroad.
The group highlights that of the 50 killed, more than 60 percent were people of color.
Read the companies’ responses here.
Companies call for more cyber intel
Private sector companies are increasingly asking the federal government for cyber threat intelligence as they seek to shore up their defenses against growing online threats, a White House cyber official told lawmakers on Wednesday.
Robert Knake, a U.S. official in charge of budget and policy at the White House’s Office of the National Cyber Director, told a House Homeland Security subcommittee that companies are increasingly pushing for more data from government agencies.
“What we’ve heard from every private sector company we talked to is to make sure that we can provide the one thing that private companies can’t do on their own, which is intelligence,” Knake said.
“Only the U.S. government can collect intelligence and only the U.S. government can provide it back. So, that’s a major focus of our efforts,” he added.
REPORT FAULTS INSTAGRAM
Instagram failed to act on the vast majority of abusive messages sent to three women in public-facing positions, according to a report released Wednesday.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) report analyzed 8,717 direct messages, or DMs, sent to a total of five participants who have a combined following of 4.8 million on the platform to look at the rate at which Instagram responded to the abusive messages or the accounts behind them.
Researchers were given access to the direct messages sent to Amber Heard, an actress and a United Nations human rights champion; Rachel Riley, a British daytime television presenter; Jamie Klingler, a co-founder of the activist group Reclaim These Streets; Bryony Gordon, a journalist and mental health campaigner; and Sharan Dhaliwal, the founder of South Asian culture magazine Burnt Roti.
BIDEN EYES UP AMAZON
President Biden on Wednesday issued a warning to Amazon days after workers at one of its New York City sites voted to be represented by a union, a first in the nation for one of the tech giant’s facilities.
“And by the way, Amazon, here we come,” Biden said at the North America’s Building Trades Unions legislative conference in Washington following remarks about giving workers the choice to join a union.
“Watch! Watch!” he added to applause erupting in the room. Biden highlighted the creation of a White House task force on worker organization and empowerment “to make sure the choice to join a union belongs to workers alone.”
After calling out Amazon, Biden said: “Well, it’s why I called on Congress to finally pass the PRO Act and send it to my desk.”
🎧 TUNE-IN TO RISING, now available as a podcast. It’s politics — without the screaming.
BIDEN ADMIN TO BRIEF ON SEMICONDUCTOR SUPPLY
Biden administration officials will brief lawmakers Wednesday on the “profound” potential economic consequences from vulnerabilities in domestic semiconductor production and urge Congress to pass a sweeping competition bill to bolster the supply chain.
The classified briefing will be led by White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was supposed to attend, but she tested positive for COVID-19 earlier Wednesday morning.
“This is, we’ve determined, important to provide greater visibility into what we are seeing from intelligence channels, as well as from economic moves by key competitors, most notably China, around the escalating vulnerabilities we have from the semiconductors issue,” Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor event.
BITS & PIECES
An op-ed to chew on: Russia’s war in Ukraine means the end of counterterrorism consensus
Lighter click: Market efficiency
Notable links from around the web:
Welcome to the girlbossification of crypto (The Washington Post / Nitasha Tiku)
Did You Receive a Text Message From Yourself? You’re Not Alone. (The New York Times / Brian X. Chen)
Twitter change leaves huge gaps in websites (The Verge / Jon Porter)
One more thing: Scooter injuries
The injury rate for electric scooter riders in Los Angeles exceeded the national injury rates for motorcyclists, bicyclists and car passengers, a new study has found.
About 115 injuries per million e-scooter riders occurred in one section of L.A. over the course of six years, in contrast to the national injury rate for motorcyclists of 104 injuries per million trips, according to the study, published in PLOS One.
“There are millions of riders now using these scooters, so it’s more important than ever to understand their impact on public health,” Joann Elmore, senior author and a professor at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, said in a statement.
“The finding that rates of injuries from e-scooters are similar to rates for motorcycle injuries is startling,” she added.
Elmore and her colleagues found the data particularly alarming because the rising popularity of e-scooters means that the associated risk is only likely to grow.
Shareable e-scooters — rented on-demand via smartphone — could soon account for 1 in 10 trips shorter than 5 miles, the authors explained, citing a 2019 McKinsey report.
That’s it for today, thanks for reading. Check out The Hill’s Technology and Cybersecurity pages for the latest news and coverage. We’ll see you tomorrow.
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