Profile of lawyer and activist Cori Crider who is suing Facebook and outsourcing company CPL in Ireland's High Court on behalf of traumatized content moderators
innocent or guilty — could be mangled by systems beyond their control. And she learned how to beat billion$ opponents with a fraction of the financial firepower. She describes her work as “asymmetric warfare.” https://www.theguardian.com/ ... @JedrzejNiklas William Fitzgerald / @william_fitz : Crider “does not believe that entrenched power can simply be persuaded into changing course. And she has no faith in the tech founders to save us from the monsters they have birthed.” Great profile of the great work @cori_crider and @Foxglovelegal are doing https://twitter.com/... Lil'Aphasia / @lilaphasia : She watched billions of dollars in military contracts hoovered up by the likes of Google, Amazon, Palantir; the vast expansion of government surveillance of its own citizens;"It felt like something fundamentally different in the way power was operating." https://www.theguardian.com/ ... Lina Dencik / @linadencik : Really great interview with @cori_crider about the crucial work that @Foxglovelegal is doing. In the face of little hope for meaningful regulation we need political mobilisation and people power 💪: https://www.theguardian.com/ ... Stephanie Hare / @hare_brain : “What concerns @cori_crider is not any individual system, but the fact that a growing number of government bodies are relying on technology they rarely understand, and that few members of the public are even made aware such technology is in use.” https://www.theguardian.com/ ... Rowland Manthorpe / @rowlsmanthorpe : And of course do take a look at the work being done on Palantir's NHS contract by @maryftz and @cori_crider. You may know Cori from today's papers https://www.theguardian.com/ ... Joe Galvin / @joey_galvin : Lest it be forgotten - yesterday's protest was launched on Facebook, organised on Facebook, and promoted on Facebook. Without Facebook, it may not have happened at all. Lowis Charfe / @lowischarfe : My kind of lawyer! “This is not about persuading them to do the right thing: it's about increasing the cost to them of persisting in their shitty behaviour,”: the lawyer fighting the power of algorithmic systems https://www.theguardian.com/ ... Hussein Kanji / @hkanji : After a 15-year career defending detainees of Guantanamo Bay https://www.theguardian.com/ ... Thanks: @william_fitz
The GuardianEd Siddons
Context & Ripple Effects
Cori Crider's group Foxglove has already made a name challenging Facebook and Uber on worker rights and pushing the UK to reassess its use of algorithms; the Ireland High Court case extends that playbook from policy pressure to direct litigation.
The choice of venue matters: Facebook runs its European operation from Dublin, and an investigation into its moderation supply chain found Accenture alone employs over a third of its moderators on annual contracts exceeding $500M — making outsourced moderator welfare a structural cost of the platform, not an edge case.
First-order effects
Facebook and CPL now face a High Court claim naming them jointly for psychological harm to moderators, putting CPL's outsourcing contracts under legal scrutiny they were never designed for.
Second-order effects
Other moderation vendors in Facebook's supply chain — Accenture above all, given its scale — face precedent risk that trauma liability follows the work regardless of which intermediary holds the contract.
Third-order effects
If the court accepts that platforms and their outsourcers owe duty of care for moderation trauma, content moderation shifts from invisible, cheaply contracted labor to a priced-in compliance function across the industry.
The trend: Platform accountability is migrating from regulator hearings toward asymmetric litigation, with small activist groups targeting the labor conditions inside tech's outsourced supply chains.
I'm in today's Observer Magazine talking algorithms, surveillance, tech unions, Facebook, Covid contracts, racial profiling, Palantir and power with the co-founder of one of the UK's most exciting tech justice groups, @cori_crider of @Foxglovelegal. https://www.theguardian.com/ .…
Taking on the tech giants: the lawyer fighting the power of algorithmic systems Whether it's the CIA or Facebook, lawyer and activist Cori Crider is never one to shy away from a fight https://www.theguardian.com/ ...
“Our objective is never about winning the case. Our objective is to change society.” Read @guardian's profile of @cori_crider, who co-founded @Foxglovelegal and is fighting the power of algorithmic systems. https://www.theguardian.com/ ...
“an unruly interviewee,” moi? Perish the thought. V much enjoyed talking to Edward for this profile, in which I swear a lot and hold forth further still and those who know me will shrug and say: truth in advertising. 😆 https://twitter.com/...
“The machine was confirming its own biases.” from: Taking on the tech giants: the lawyer fighting the power of algorithmic systems https://www.theguardian.com/ ... https://twitter.com/...
She saw how people — innocent or guilty — could be mangled by systems beyond their control. And she learned how to beat billion$ opponents with a fraction of the financial firepower. She describes her work as “asymmetric warfare.” https://www.theguardian.com/ ... @JedrzejNiklas
My kind of lawyer! “This is not about persuading them to do the right thing: it's about increasing the cost to them of persisting in their shitty behaviour,”: the lawyer fighting the power of algorithmic systems https://www.theguardian.com/ ...
Crider “does not believe that entrenched power can simply be persuaded into changing course. And she has no faith in the tech founders to save us from the monsters they have birthed.” Great profile of the great work @cori_crider and @Foxglovelegal are doing https://twitter.com/..…
She watched billions of dollars in military contracts hoovered up by the likes of Google, Amazon, Palantir; the vast expansion of government surveillance of its own citizens;"It felt like something fundamentally different in the way power was operating." https://www.theguardian.c…
Really great interview with @cori_crider about the crucial work that @Foxglovelegal is doing. In the face of little hope for meaningful regulation we need political mobilisation and people power 💪: https://www.theguardian.com/ ...
“What concerns @cori_crider is not any individual system, but the fact that a growing number of government bodies are relying on technology they rarely understand, and that few members of the public are even made aware such technology is in use.” https://www.theguardian.com/ ...
And of course do take a look at the work being done on Palantir's NHS contract by @maryftz and @cori_crider. You may know Cori from today's papers https://www.theguardian.com/ ...
Lest it be forgotten - yesterday's protest was launched on Facebook, organised on Facebook, and promoted on Facebook. Without Facebook, it may not have happened at all.