Last week, the Chinese government under President Xi Jinping took steps to finally move away from its zero-COVID policy, following two weeks of protests in multiple cities. The unrest and anti-government sentiment was perhaps the most pronounced since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. And while these events gave Western observers an opportunity to grapple with the complexity of Chinese politics, generational and regional differences in the views of the population, and ultimately how the autho...
Dec 11, 2022•28 min
Last week, the Chinese government under President Xi Jinping took steps to finally move away from its zero-COVID policy, following two weeks of protests in multiple cities. The unrest and anti-government sentiment was perhaps the most pronounced since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. And while these events gave Western observers an opportunity to grapple with the complexity of Chinese politics, generational and regional differences in the views of the population, and ultimately how the autho...
Dec 10, 2022•31 min
On Friday, Elon Musk announced via tweet that documents related to Twitter’s decision to intervene in the propagation of an October 2020 story in the New York Post about then candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, would be made public. The incident caused a furor at the time, with some Republicans and supporters of former President Donald Trump insinuating that it was proof that social media firms are biased against conservative interests. Some even maintain that the actions of Twitter and Fac...
Dec 04, 2022•52 min
For this episode of the Tech Policy Press podcast, I had the chance to speak to Chris Anderson , Ph.D., a professor of sociology at the University of Milan who is leading a course on tech manifestos and their evolution, inviting his students to dissect the language for what it can tell us about politics and power. Documents such as A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace and A Manifesto for Cyborgs have given way to more vacuous statements from billionaires, such as Mark Zuckerberg's Fac...
Nov 27, 2022•34 min
By all accounts, Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter is not going well. And yet many have the real sense that something important may be lost if the platform collapses, or if there is a substantial migration away from it to alternatives like Mastodon, the open source, decentralized platform that has grown from three hundred thousand monthly active users to nearly two million since Musk bought Twitter. In this episode, Tech Policy Press editor Justin Hendrix had the chance to discuss Musk’s takeov...
Nov 23, 2022•56 min
Today we’re going to hear from the editor of-- and two authors included in-- a book of essays about how particular bits of software have changed the world in different ways, the just-published "You Are Not Expected to Understand This": How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World from Princeton University Press. The book is at once delightful and enlightening, revealing how technology interacts with people and society in both good and bad ways, and how important and long lasting the decisions we take ...
Nov 20, 2022•32 min
Media reports suggest that large swathes of employees at Twitter have resigned after the platform’s new owner, Elon Musk, issued a kind of ultimatum asking them to commit to "long hours at high intensity" to build “Twitter 2.0.” Last night, according to an internal Twitter email shared with CNN, employees who decided to stay at the company received an email that said the company's offices will be temporarily closed and badge access will be restricted through Monday. Whether the platform will rem...
Nov 18, 2022•26 min
According to the BBC , to date at least 348 Iranian protesters have been killed and nearly 16,000 arrested in women-led protests that erupted three months ago after the death Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died in custody after being detained by morality police for allegedly breaking the strict rules on the wearing of hijabs. One way the regime has responded to these antigovernment protests is to block access to the internet, independent news sites and social media and communication platfo...
Nov 16, 2022•30 min
Voting in the U.S. midterm elections closed on Tuesday, and as of Sunday morning, November 13, Democrats secured another majority in the Senate. But ballots are still being counted in key races that will determine which party controls the House. It is clear, however, that the margins determining leadership in both chambers will be extremely small. In order to explore how the elections may impact the legislative debate over tech policy issues, Tech Policy Press editor Justin Hendrix spoke with th...
Nov 13, 2022•43 min
This episode features a discussion with Brandi Collins-Dexter, the author of the new book BLACK SKINHEAD: Reflections on Blackness and Our Political Future . Brandi is both an academic and a civil rights activist in the fight for media and tech justice, and her book is a rollercoaster ride through those issues through culture and music and politics. Part media and cultural criticism, part memoir, and part warning, the book takes us to the fringes of Black communities and tries to make sense of o...
Nov 06, 2022•51 min
As the U.S. midterm elections approach next week, there is a renewed focus on understanding the spending on and claims made in political advertising in digital channels, particularly on social media. But what is going on across the web, beyond the social media platforms? A recent report from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Center on Technology Policy found that as a result of restrictions on political ads instituted by major platforms ahead of the 2020 elections, political advert...
Nov 01, 2022•37 min
Danielle Citron is the inaugural Jefferson Scholars Foundation Schenck Distinguished Professor in Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, where she teaches and writes about information privacy, free expression and civil rights. She is the vice president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a nonprofit devoted to fighting for civil rights and liberties in the digital age, and in 2019 she was named a MacArthur Fellow for her work on cyberstalking and intimate privacy. Her latest book, Th...
Oct 30, 2022•54 min
In this episode of the podcast, we present two segments that explore how the combination of media, platforms, politics and people play out in Latino communities in the U.S., particularly at crucial moments for democracy, such as at election time. The first segment is with individuals who are leading efforts to understand and confront mis- and disinformation targeting Latino communities: Roberta Braga , Director of Counter-Disinformation Strategies at Equis Jaime Longoria , Manager of Research an...
Oct 25, 2022•1 hr 4 min
In recent episodes of this podcast we’ve explored the policies and practices of the social media platforms with regard to elections. In this week’s episode, we’ll hear two segments on this theme. First, an interview with Daniel Kriess , an Associate Professor in the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a principal researcher at the UNC Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life. With Ph.D candidate Erik Brooks, Daniel is the autho...
Oct 23, 2022•57 min
Earlier this year, an investigation published in the New Yorker by Ronan Farrow suggested that commercial spyware called Pegasus, developed by the Israeli firm NSO Group, is being used by governments in at least 45 countries around the world, including by U.S. and European intelligence and law enforcement services. The technology permits government agents to gain access to the contents of cell phones by exploiting flaws in device operating systems and software. In this episode, we hear from thre...
Oct 16, 2022•39 min
Regular users of social media platforms are well aware that they often produce toxic discourse. Scholars continue to produce results that bring clarity to the mechanisms by which digital and social media exacerbate partisan and identity-based conflict. A better understanding is crucial for keying in on what platforms should be held responsible for, devising better policy, and potentially designing solutions. A new peer-reviewed paper from Petter Törnberg, a researcher at the University of Amster...
Oct 13, 2022•32 min
Last week, President Joe Biden ’s White House published a 73-page document produced by the Office of Science and Technology Policy titled Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights: Making Automated Systems Work for the American People . The White House says that “among the great challenges posed to democracy today is the use of technology, data, and automated systems in ways that threaten the rights of the American public.“ The Blueprint, then, is “a guide for a society that protects all people from th...
Oct 11, 2022•49 min
Some of the most controversial debates over speech and content moderation on social media platforms are now due for consideration in the Supreme Court. Last month, Florida’s attorney general asked the Court to decide whether states have the right to regulate how social media companies moderate content on their services, after Florida and Texas passed laws that challenge practices of tech firms that lawmakers there regard as anti-democratic. And this month, the Supreme Court decided to hear two c...
Oct 09, 2022•46 min
On September 21, Justin Hendrix moderated a panel discussion for the McCourt Institute at a pre-conference spotlight session on digital governance ahead of Unfinished Live , a conference on tech and society issues hosted at The Shed in New York City. The topic given by the organizers was Digital Governance and the State of Democracy: Why Does it Matter? Panelist included: Erik Brynjolfsson , the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Professor and Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (...
Oct 08, 2022•47 min
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear two cases that concern whether tech platforms can be held liable for user generated content, as well as for content that users see because of a platform’s algorithmic systems. In deciding to hear Gonzalez et al vs. Google and Taamneh, Mehier et al vs Twitter et al , the Court will broach the question of whether Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act should be narrowed, and whether it still immunizes the owners of websites when that algorith...
Oct 04, 2022•28 min
The former President and his supporters continue to sow doubt in the outcome of the 2020 election, and in the election system more generally. Now, with the the 2022 midterm elections just a month away, a number of observers are perplexed at the posture of large social media platforms, where false claims continue to fester and efforts to mitigate misinformation always seem puny compared to the scale of the problem. This week we hear from three experts who are following these issues closely: Nora ...
Oct 02, 2022•50 min
In a new paper-- " The uselessness of AI Ethics ," published in the online edition of the journal AI and Ethics , Luke Munn , points to over 80 lists of AI ethical principles produced by governments, corporations, research groups and professional societies. In is paper, he expresses concern that most of these ethics statements deal in vague terms and lack any kind of actual enforcement. But in critiquing attempts at defining an ethical code for AI, he is not suggesting we let the technology deve...
Sep 27, 2022•47 min
As content moderation and other trust and safety issues have been, to put it mildly, at the fore of tech concerns over the last few years, it’s interesting to take a step back and look at the various conferences, professional organizations and research communities that have emerged to address this broad and challenging set of subjects. To get a sense of where trust and safety is as a field at this moment in time, Tech Policy Press spoke to three individuals involved in it, each coming from diffe...
Sep 25, 2022•50 min
A series of reports published this summer by Article 19- working with UNESCO and with funding from the European Union- take an in-depth look at how social media platforms operate in a global context, documenting a lack of understanding of cultural nuances and local languages, insufficient mechanisms for users and civil society groups to engage on moderation, a lack of transparency, and a power asymmetry that leaves local actors feeling powerless. To learn more about the project and its recommend...
Sep 18, 2022•45 min
In this episode of the Tech Policy Press podcast, we’re going to explore how law enforcement and other government agencies in the United States acquire data drawn from commercial data brokers for investigative purposes, and the questions raised by these practices. This is an issue that is still at question in the nation’s courts and is under active discussion on Capitol Hill. For instance, this summer the House Judiciary Committee hosted a hearing it titled Digital Dragnets: Examining the Govern...
Sep 14, 2022•34 min
it is well understood that for all the shortcomings of the tech platforms’ approach to elections in this country, it’s much worse abroad, where often language and cultural barriers combine with fewer political and business incentives for firms such as Meta, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok to properly resource elections. Now, just weeks before a general election in Brazil that will decide that country’s next President, there are signs that disinformation is rife on the platforms, with many observers ...
Sep 11, 2022•39 min
A common theme on this podcast is the future, and the visions of the future that a certain set of Silicon Valley tech and venture accelerationists are working hard to advance. Today we’re going to hear from author and scholar Douglas Rushkoff about his latest book- Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires - which lampoons and deflates these characters, offering instead a humanist approach to defining the future by how we comport ourselves in the present....
Sep 06, 2022•44 min
This episode features a conversation with Bloomberg journalist Mark Bergen. He’s the author of Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube’s Chaotic Rise to World Domination , from Viking. This is a business book, a history, and a contemplation of YouTube’s role in society all in one. Bergen explores how the company evolved into the massive juggernaut it is today, and along the way gives insight into concerning phenomena that we’ve discussed on this podcast in the past, such as the relationship bet...
Sep 04, 2022•49 min
The Tech Transparency Project (TTP), a research initiative of the nonprofit Campaign for Accountability, is focused on holding major tech companies to account– including Meta, the company that operates Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. For instance, TTP collected what it calls Facebook’s ‘ broken promises ’ on issues ranging from bullying and harassment to fraud and deception to violence and incitement. A new report released this month, Facebook Profits from White Supremacist Groups , says the ...
Aug 30, 2022•24 min
In last Sunday’s podcast, I promised an occasional series of discussions on the relationship between social media, message apps and election mis- and disinformation. In today’s show, I’m joined by two guests who just did a deep dive into the issue, producing a 'score card' that compares the policies and performance of the tech companies on multiple dimensions for New America’s Open Technology Institute: Spandana (Spandi) Singh , a policy analyst at New America's Open Technology Institute, and Qu...
Aug 28, 2022•26 min
