The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel

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Battling The Internet Daemons in the Algorithm’s Underworld

Given how we are enmeshed in the all-pervasive wild-web of big tech - and how the algorithms privilege certain speech over films like ours, we are arguably in the most colonial, capitalist, corporate governance experiment of all time.

January 27, 2022

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News, Twitter Lawsuit

Twitter Gone Rogue

By Kat Dodds

Join us Thursday January 27th 5pm ET for an essential conversation about progressive speech, platform governance and the dark underbelly of Twitter ad policy! Get your ticket now(includes a virtual screening of The New Corporation which can be viewed any time after a ticket is purchased until Jan 31st).

Our vision at Cool.World is to do big good with big data –  we only take on social cause projects and we were delighted to be hired to promote The New Corporation, a project we have a long history with. While our films are highly critical of capitalist “big tech,” we cannot actually afford to be separatists. We also have a vested interest in keeping the progressive possibilities of the internet protected. We should have the right to access ads if we can pay for them!

As a progressive marketing collaborative, we are all also in need of the social media platforms to spread our own messages. Platforms, especially Twitter, have become the de-facto new public square.  So imagine our disbelief when Twitter refused to let us advertise our Trailer. Refused to take our money! And gave us a lot of silly and infuriating excuses. 

When the film team discovered Twitter was censoring our trailer, yet letting Exxon Mobil off the hook – we had to fight back. 

Our legal research has uncovered the arbitrary nature of Twitter’s ad policies. Our ad was censored while Exxon Mobil gets to virtue-signal their support of the Paris Agreement, Coca Cola can support Black Lives Matter, and British Petroleum can tell us how hydrogen can be used on the path to net zero – all through paid ads on Twitter, which begs the question I have been asking since my Adbusters days: Why is product advertising, particularly by the extraction industries, not considered “advocacy” or “political” speech, when all advertising so clearly is?   

So we are suing both Twitter and the Canadian government for their failure to protect progressive speech.

Thursday Jan 27th, 5pm ET – Live Panel Fundraiser for the “Unfortunately Necessary Podcast”  Filmmaker/author, lawyer & plaintiff host Joel Bakan, our counsel and podcast regular Sujit Choudhry, and myself, Kat Dodds, Cool.World CEO, impact producer, and co-plaintiff will be joined by special guests Fenwick McKelvey and Taylor Owen, both expert witnesses in the upcoming court case against Twitter. Read about it on our blog.  Please support us and get your ticket now!

The New Corporation film connects the dots between the biggest issues of our time: Climate emergency; inequality and injustice; the state of democracy. These threats were bad enough in 2003 when the original film The Corporation first introduced us to the psychopathic corporate person, but now, everything has gotten worse.

Given how we are enmeshed in the all-pervasive wild-web of big tech – and how the algorithms privilege certain speech over films like ours, we are arguably  in the most colonial, capitalist, corporate governance experiment of all time. 

We believe the importance of this case is beyond our own personal outrage. This could be the legal case to break open platform governance, free progressive speech on the internet, and to expose the detailed inner workings of Twitter – the ‘underworld’ of the algorithms, and how it is completely unregulated — and arbitrary in who, and how it censors speech. 

We began this lawsuit in July, but today we just posted amendments — the full filings on our website with new and juicy evidence. Please support us and get your ticket nowThis promises to be a very lively and important conversation.

Love and Solidarity,
Kat Dodds
CEO of Cool.World, Impact Producer for The New Corporation

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