(March 2026 Issue)

The DTBC newsletter exists to keep our community informed of our work and about data and technology news that’s especially relevant to Black & Back Heritage communities. You can find out more about who we are and what we do here.

What have we been up to?

We’ve set our direction for 2026

Back in January we had two meetups to set our priorities for the year. Participants included DTBC members and people who have worked with us in some capacity.  There was agreement about the need to continue our work of highlighting technology uses that are particularly harmful to Black people and other marginalised communities. By the same token, we will celebrate good use cases too! This core activity will inform our efforts to embed and deepen community organising practices within Black communities as an effective way of responding to attempts to impose disadvantageous uses of data-centric technologies on us. 

Beyond this ongoing commitment, we decided to seek funding to progress our work of examining the use of EdTech applications in schools by tracing where data from these tools actually go. We’ll also be running roundtables to learn and explore the ways in which Generative AI is impacting Black communities.

In both of these areas, we will need your brilliant minds to help shape the work, and to share your thoughts on what should happen next. Please join in! You can read more about our strategy for 2026 in this blog post: Setting the Course for 2026 & beyond 

Setting aside space for a chat: attend our monthly meetups

Do you find the expansion of facial recognition technology concerning? Are you wondering about what guardrails you should put in place for kids using Chat GPT to do their homework? Are you unsure about how much learning is happening when it is Gen AI-assisted (research says it's a mixed bag for kids). If issues like this are already playing on your mind and you’d like to discuss how AI and data centric-technologies are being used, in a safe space, please consider joining us every second Sunday of the month. Our next couple of sessions are going to be on:  

• Sunday 12th of April 2026 at 2-4pm 

• Sunday, 10th of May 2026 at 3-4pm

Invites for these sessions will be sent directly to members, so if you want to become a member, check out how to do it, below👇🏿. We’d love to have you!

Growing our membership

We often joke that DTBC is run by some very tired Black women that squeeze the work in around busy lives and full-time jobs. This was never the plan!

DTBC was always envisioned as a Black/Black heritage member-run organisation. We think that’s the best way to sustain a community-led approach to scrutinising the uses of data and tech in society, and to advocate for change where needed. Learn about and apply for DTBC membership here- It’s FREE and you hear all the latest news and opportunities first!! Please consider joining us!! 

Working with others to push for the protection of our data rights

What should be considered when monitoring the use of generative AI in schools? This was the question posed by the Department of Education (DfE) in a workshop facilitated by Connected By Data. A DTBC steward and member attended alongside a range of civil society organisations covering education, ethics, trade unions. We highlighted the importance of not adding in more surveillance on children who are already oversurveilled; the importance of learning from other cases of surveillance- such as the Prevent (anti-terrorism) programme in schools and highlighted the need for DfE to continue consultations, starting with a bottom up (what are the challenges from children, parents/carers & school staff) and seek out other communities that were not in the room with us. The DfE are looking to set out guidance for schools later this year. We will keep you updated.

Event: DTBC steward Tracey will join DTBC member Aké who is a co-leader of the organisation Black Europeans in “Social Diplomacy Summit: Shared Responsibility - Collective Response to protect racialised European Post-Brexit”. It’s in Bristol on 7 May 2026. Sign up for a ticket. We’ll be there discussing how data-centric technologies & AI impacts on Black/Black heritage communities & sharing the findings of our EdTech community research. 

How data and data-centric technologies are showing up in our world 

Below are some stories and calls to action which have made us stop and think. These and other news and research articles and blog posts can all be found on our curated Raindrop page. Please tell us about stories that you’ve found interesting! 

🧑🏿‍🎓Education 

• What do US Black teens think about AI powered technologies in education? A journal article based on 46 Black high school students in Southern California found students felt these tools 1) restricted access to learning 2) restricted access to racial/cultural affirming learning materials 3) exacerbated racial harms e.g AI detection software flagging their work as AI when not; and 4) increased surveillance likely to increase ‘scope and scale of school-prison apparatus’. Read more in this article by Dr Tiera Tanksley & Dr Brian Cabal.

• Questions about EdTech to ask schools. After the Los Angeles school district paid $3m to a failed EdTech company, the need for better scrutiny of EdTech is back in focus. This blog post written for US-based parents/ carers provides Ten Questions to Ask Your School Leaders About EdTech Products. Should we adapt this for a UK audience? Let us know if this is something you would be interested to use/ could help to write. We have developed resources to help UK-based parents/carers understand and utilise their rights around EdTech

• Is AI making it harder for lecturers to help students develop critical thinking skills? According to a recent Guardian article  this is a growing area of concern for humanities professors. 

👨🏿‍💻Employment & Enterprise

• Is use of AI increasing your workload? What’s your organisation’s policy on the use of AI? Better yet, what does your union have to say? Recently released research suggests that rather than alleviating workers’ workloads, AI use is intensifying them. This is especially concerning since more workers are using it to cope with growing demands from their bosses and fewer resources. 

• Amazon’s race to roll out AI increases surveillance and workload. According to this article from the Guardian’s Reworked series, an Amazon technical worker, Dina, felt that:

“trying to AI my way out of a problem that AI caused”. “I and many of my colleagues don’t feel that it actually makes us that much faster,” Dina said. “But from management, we are certainly getting messaging that we have to go faster, this will make us go faster, and that speed is the number one priority.” Just days after speaking to the Guardian, Dina was laid off.”

• Short comic explains harms to data workers powering chatbots. AI technologies often rely on human content moderators to review outputs, but some AI rely on humans to pretend to be AI to give the false impression that AI magic is at work. Data Workers Inquiry have created a comic which illustrates the harrowing conditions these workers (many based in Africa) face. Read the backstory, view the comic and follow organisations such as Data Workers Inquiry, or Foxglove to learn more.

🦸🏿‍♀️Crime & justice

• What a surprise (not!): Essex police paused their use of facial recognition cameras after the tool identified more Black people than any other ethnicity (SkyNews). We’ve known for a long while about the racial bias encoded in facial recognition technologies (thank you Joy Buolamwini, Timnit Gebru and others). Despite this, police across England with the support of our government have continued to push for the use of this invasive and flawed tool. Organisations such as Big Brother Watch, Amnesty consistently campaign on this issue- but can/should we do more? And if so, what? Let us know! 

• It’s not all bad news though! A New Mexico jury found against Meta in the first of three child safety trials it’s facing this year. The jury found that Meta’s platforms do not effectively protect kids from child exploitation. How did we get here? Well, back in 2023, The Guardian newspaper published the result of its two-year investigation into child sex trafficking, its conclusion was that Facebook was failing to address it. According to an Arstechnica article, on the back of the Guardian’s reporting the Attorney General of New Mexico’s office launched its investigation (Operation Metaphile) and then filed a lawsuit. During the court case, Zuckerberg and Instagram boss, Adam Mosseri claimed that:

“harms to children, such as sexual exploitation and detriments to mental health, were inevitable on the company’s platforms due to their vast user bases”

          Just wow! But it wasn’t just statements like these that convinced the jury that $375 million in civil damages was a reasonable penalty for Meta’s consumer protections violations and for misleading parents about the safety of its apps. They probably also took into account the fact that Meta’s decision to increasingly use AI for moderation of its platforms “generated high volumes of ‘junk’ reports ” which overwhelmed law enforcement and made it harder to investigate crimes. For context, Meta’s net income was $60.46 billion in 2025 and as of April 2025 Zuckerberg’s net worth was $173.8 billion. 

🧘🏿‍♂️Health 

• Concerns that GenAI will replace access to doctors for low income households (Black households are over-represented in this category in the US and here in the UK too) are growing in the US. And with successive governments’ love of austerity, it’s worth asking will the UK follow suit? A  Guardian article on US healthcare highlights a private company using AI for diagnosis and treatment for low income households with the explicit aim of removing doctors from the medical support pathway. The argument that some medical care is better than none is rejected in the article which cites research studies of Gen AI providing biased outcomes for Black people (what a surprise!) for chest X-rays and breast cancer screening.

👨🏿‍🌾Environment  

• A UK government report has highlighted concerns that data centres may impact under-resourced communities. Government Digital Sustainability Alliance (GDSA)) report raises: “The siting of water-intensive infrastructure in already water-stressed areas, particularly those with existing socio-economic vulnerabilities, raises significant environmental justice concerns. This practice could disproportionately impact local communities, potentially leading to increased water bills, rationing, or reduced environmental flows, thereby transforming a technical water management issue into a matter of social equity.” Are data centres coming to or already in your area? Keep watch and join/ create campaigns to organise with others to ensure these do not negatively impact your community. We are not powerless! Foxglove Legal won its case against the UK government over a decision to build a data centre in Buckinghamshire. Action is being taken to prevent a data centre being built in the heart of a current and historical migrant area– Brick Lane. Why not join them in solidarity and to learn how to fight if your community is next?

• Want to see if there’s a data centre being planned for a location near you? Have a look at the Global Action Plan Data Centre map. It’s not an exhaustive list but it’s a good starting place. 

🤳🏿What are we reading/watching/listening to?

• Funny (but informative) video. This (4min) video from the Norwegian Consumer Council provides a fun (but disturbing take) on how tech companies turn great products into, erm do-do for want of a better word. The term enshittification was coined by Cory Doctorow to describe how tech companies develop products that start off good, capture lots of people but then becomes awful once they are the dominant player in the market and have limited competition. The video is being used to draw attention to the council’s report of why and how we should fight back.

• Lecture series. Tracey has been listening to this lecture series from Dr Jessica Morley which aims to develop critical understanding of how AI works in healthcare. It comprises of six one hour videos Lecture 1 is here 

• Movie & Q&A.- Ghost in the Machine a new documentary shedding light on GenAI. Amnesty International have a cast Q&A on Sunday 29th. Register here

🙌🏿 What’s bringing us joy this month?

• DTBC members have been sharing stories and thoughts on our Signal chat. Become a member and join us! 

• Getting started on our community meetups. To get a link to our online meeting, sign up for membership, or drop us a message 👇🏿

Get in touch!

We hope you enjoyed our newsletter. If you have thoughts, news to share with us, or want to get involved in any way, do get in touch: admin@dtbc.org.uk

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