The Tech Policy Press Podcast
Episodes
What's New at RightsCon? And How to Free Our Feeds
19 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode features two segments. First, we hear from Nikki Gladstone, director of Rightscon, the annual conference organized by Access No...
The Dumbest Timeline: The Supreme Court Rules on TikTok
18 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today- Friday, January 17, 2025 - the US Supreme Court delivered its order upholding the constitutionality of the Protecting Americans from ...
Addressing the "Cursed Equilibrium" of Social Media Algorithms
12 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Last fall, Cornell University PhD candidate Cristiana Firullo gave a presentation at the Trust and Safety Research Conference at Stanford University d...
What to Watch on US State Tech Policy in 2025
05 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Even as the new year ushers in a new administration and Congress in the US at the federal level, dozens of states are kicking off new legislative sess...
Imagining 2025 and Beyond with Dr. Ruha Benjamin
22 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week’s guest is Dr. Ruha Benjamin, Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and Founding Director o...
How to Remedy Google's Search Monopoly
15 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This close to the end of 2024, it’s clear that one of the most significant tech stories of the year was the outcome of the Google search antitrust c...
Towards Resilience: A Conversation with Kate Starbird About the Future of Online Elections Discourse
08 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kate Starbird is a professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering and director of the Emerging Capacities of Mass Participatio...
Petra Molnar on Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
08 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Mass migration presents a challenge to democracy in multiple ways. Chief among them is that anti-immigrant sentiment often plays a major role in the a...
Robert Gorwa Tackles the Politics of Platform Regulation
01 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Gorwa is the author of a new book titled The Politics of Platform Regulation: How Governments Shape Online Content Moderation, published by Oxf...
Evan Greer Asks the Tech Accountability Movement to Draw a Line
01 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
At its November 21st "Summit of the Future of the Internet," billionaire Frank McCourt's Project Liberty hosted a panel discussion featuring Congressw...
Documenting the Assault on Disinformation and Hate Speech Research
24 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
During his recent campaign, President-elect Donald Trump made various promises consistent with the ongoing effort by Elon Musk and MAGA Republicans to...
The Race for AI Supremacy
17 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology regulation, artificial intelligence, and social media. Her new book, Supremacy: AI, C...
Salvation, Abundance, Apocalypse: Is Technology the World's Most Powerful Religion?
10 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
These days, if you see someone with their head bowed, you’re much more likely observing them staring into their phone than in prayer. But from digit...
What Kafka Can Teach Us About Privacy in the Age of AI
03 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest is Boston University School of Law professor Woodrow Hartzog, who, with the George Washington University Law School's Daniel...
Are Platforms Prepared for the Post-Election Period?
02 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On Tuesday, November 5th, the final ballots will be cast in the 2024 US presidential election. But the process is far from over. How prepared are soci...
What Role Might Elon Musk Play in the Post-Election Period?
02 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If you’re trying to game out the potential role of technology in the post-election period in the US, there is a significant "X" factor. When he purc...
Three Perspectives on Generative AI and Elections
27 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Justin Hendrix speaks with three researchers who recently published projects looking at the intersection of generative AI with electi...
Unpacking the Principles of the Digital Services Act with Martin Husovec
27 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Martin Husovec is an associate law professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He works on questions at the int...
Mary Anne Franks Challenges First Amendment Orthodoxy
20 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment, Dr. Mary Anne Franks challenges First Amendment orthodoxy and critiques “r...
Secure Messaging Apps and Election Integrity
20 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
With Sam Woolley, Mariana Olaizola Rosenblat and Inga K. Trauthig are authors of a new report from the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights ...
Governing the Fediverse: A Field Study
20 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A lot of folks frustrated with major social media platforms are migrating to alternatives like Mastodon and Bluesky, which operate on decentralized pr...
Election Meddling, Censorship, and More Bad News in 2024 Freedom on the Net Report
19 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The results in this year’s installment of the Freedom House Freedom on the Net report generally follow the same distressing trajectory as prior repo...
Independent Researchers and Journalists Mourn the Loss of CrowdTangle
18 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we're crashing a funeral... for CrowdTangle, a piece of software that allowed journalists and independent researchers to get insights...
From King James to Google: Barry Lynn on the Antitrust Revolution
13 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Barry Lynn is the executive director of the Open Markets Institute in Washington DC and the author of this month's cover essay in Harper's titled "The...
The Evolution of Online Political Advertising: A Conversation with Who Targets Me's Sam Jeffers
11 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest is Sam Jeffers, cofounder and executive director of Who Targets Me. Jeffers has spent several yearshas spent several years building a ...
Assessing Systemic Risk Under the Digital Services Act
06 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most significant concepts in Europe’s Digital Services Act is that of “systemic risk,” which relates to the spread of illegal content...
Unpacking New Mexico's Complaint Against Snap Inc.
06 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, Wall Street Journal technology reporter Jeff Horwitz first reported on details of an unredacted version of a complaint against Snap brought...
AI Snake Oil: Separating Hype from Reality
29 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor are the authors of AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Differen...
Assessing Platform Preparedness for the 2024 US Election
25 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) recently assessed social media platforms’ policies, public commitments, and product interventions related...
Gary Marcus Wants to Tame Silicon Valley
22 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Gary Marcus writes that the companies developing artificial intelligence systems want the citizens of democracies “to absorb all the negative e...
Resisting the Tech Coup: A Conversation with Marietje Schaake
22 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Marietje Schaake is the author of The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley. Dr. Alondra Nelson, a Professor at the Institute...
Thierry Breton Resigns- What Does it Mean for European Tech Regulation?
21 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 2019, Thierry Breton, a French business executive who became the France’s Minister of Finance from 2005 to 2007, was nominated by President ...
Free Speech vs. Sovereignty?
15 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Paris Marx, a Canadian tech critic, recently authored a post under the headline "Pavel Durov and Elon Musk are not free speech champions: The actions ...
Understanding Systemic Risks under the Digital Services Act
15 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
At Tech Policy Press, we’re closely following the implementation of the Digital Services Act, the European Union law designed to regulate online pla...
Google Online Advertising Antitrust Trial Kicks Off In a DC Court
09 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today is Monday, September 9th. Today Judge Leonie Brinkema of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia is presiding over the start ...
What's Going On In California?
08 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Thirty tech bills went through the law making sausage grinder in California this past session, and now Governor Gavin Newsom is about to decide the fa...
Platforms and Elections: the Global State of Play
08 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On August 26th, Justin Hendrix moderated a panel convened by the Social Science Research Council at its offices in Brooklyn, New York. The panel was t...
Understanding the People Who Turn Lies Into Reality
01 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Renée DiResta, who serves on the board of Tech Policy Press and has been an occasional contributor, is the author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who...
Brazilian Judge Orders the Suspension of Elon Musk's X
30 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The billionaire owner of the social media platform X, Elon Musk, has been in a prolonged dispute with a Supreme Court Judge in Brazil regarding X’s ...
A Conversation with Mark Surman, President of Mozilla
25 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Justin Hendrix speaks with Mark Surman, President of Mozilla, about Mozilla’s work promoting open source AI, the importance of competition in the te...
Design Codes and the Courts
18 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On Friday, August 16, the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling in NetChoice v. Bonta, partially upholding and p...
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez on His Lawsuit Against Meta
11 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Raúl Torrez was sworn in as New Mexico’s 32nd Attorney General in January 2023. Last December, Attorney General Torrez filed a lawsuit against Meta...
Using AI to Engage People about Conspiracy Beliefs
04 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In May, Justin Hendrix moderated a discussion with David Rand, who is a professor of Management Science and Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, the d...
Data Workers, In Their Own Words
28 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Distributed AI Research Institute, or DAIR—which seeks to conduct community-rooted AI research that is independent from the technology industry—...
Silicon Valley Leaders Cast Their Lot with Donald Trump
21 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the past week, multiple Silicon Valley billionaires announced endorsements of former President and 2024 Republican nominee Donald Trump. To dig a b...
The Future of Privacy in the Age of AI
21 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It goes without saying that privacy and the creation of laws and regulations around it are fundamental to determining how we will live and work with t...
What Comes After Murthy v Missouri
14 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On June 26, the US Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling in Murthy v Missouri, a cased that considered whether the Biden administration violated the First...
Data Rights in the Age of AI
14 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, David Carroll, an associate professor of media design in the MFA Design and Technology graduate program at the School of Art, Media a...
Considering the Ethics of AI Assistants
07 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In April, Google DeepMind published a paper that boasts 57 authors, including experts from a range of disciplines in different parts of Google, includ...
Big Tech and the News
30 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
News and journalism organizations and dominant tech companies are in a years-long battle over content, clicks and revenue, and the tech companies are ...
Understanding the Digital Silk Road
23 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In October 2023, during the third Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, China's leader Xi Jinping signaled a shift in focus from more grandiose physical inf...
Internet Governance Is At A Crossroads
23 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we explore a topic that sits at the heart of global digital policy: the contrasting visions of internet governance championed by the ...
How China Regulates Tech
23 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Angela Zhang is the author of High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy, published this year by Oxford University Press. With a ...
The Demise of CrowdTangle and What It Means for Independent Technology Research
21 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A topic we returned to often in this podcast is the dire need for independent technology researchers to have access to platform data. Without it, we c...
Finding the Humanity in an Automated World
18 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Madhumita Murgia, AI editor at the Financial Times, is the author of a new book called Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI. The book combines r...
A Conversation with White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Arati Prabhakar
16 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Arati Prabhakar the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Technology Policy and Science Advisor to President Joe...
AI and Epistemic Risk: A Coming Crisis?
10 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What are the risks to democracy as AI is incorporated more and more into the systems and platforms we use to find and share information and engage in ...
What's Next for Tech Policy in India After the Elections
09 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What role did technology play in India's elections, and what impact will the outcome have on tech policy in the country? Joining Justin Hendrix are th...
How Are Political Campaigners in the US Using Generative AI?
06 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The guests in this episode are authors of a new study titled Political Machines: Understanding the Role of AI in the US 2024 Elections and Beyond. The...
The Role of Shareholder Activism in Tech Accountability
02 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This episode focuses on the role of shareholder activism in pursuing transparency and accountability from tech firms. In a week where board resolution...
Shadow Report on AI Addresses What the US Senate Missed
26 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As we documented in Tech Policy Press, when the US Senate AI working group released its roadmap on policy on May 17th, many outside organizations were...
A Perspective on Meta's Moderation of Palestinian Voices
26 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A conversation with Marwa Fatafta, who serves as policy and advocacy director for the nonprofit Access now, which has worked on digital civil rights, ...
AI: Past, Present, and Future with Chris Stokel-Walker
19 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
One tech journalist whose byline always draws me in is Chris Stokel-Walker. He writes for multiple publications including The New York Times...
Prioritizing Civil Rights in US AI Policy: Claudia Ruiz and Alejandra Montoya-Boyer
19 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On Wednesday, May 15, 2024, a bipartisan US Senate working group led by Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) released a report titled "...
What We're Talking About When We Talk About Rural AI
12 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Last October, Dr. Jasmine McNealy, as an associate professor at the University of Florida, a Senior Fellow in Tech Policy with the Mozilla F...
A Hippocratic Oath for AI? A Conversation with Chinmayi Sharma
11 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Hippocratic oath, named for a Greek physician who lived ~2,500 years ago that some call the father of modern medicine, is one of the earliest exam...
Don't Hype Disinfo, Say Disinfo Experts
05 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
One topic we come back to again and again on this podcast is disinformation. In many episodes, we’ve discussed various phenomena related to this amb...
Resisting AI and the Consolidation of Power
04 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In an introduction to a special issue of the journal First Monday on topics related to AI and power, Jenna Burrell and Jacob Metcalf argue that "...
What's Next for TikTok, and US Tech Policy
28 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Last week President Joe Biden signed into law a measure that would force the Chinese firm ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok, or risk the app...
Securing Privacy Rights to Advance Civil Rights
21 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Subcommittee on Innovation, Data, and Commerce held a hearing: “Legislative Solutions to Protect Kids Online and Ensure Americans’ Data Privacy Ri...
The Societal Impacts of Foundation Models, and Access to Data for Researchers
14 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This episode features two conversations. Both relate to efforts to better understand the impact of technology on society. In the first, we’ll hear f...
Elon Musk's X Loses in Court: Why It Matters for Independent Technology Research
07 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, a federal judge granted a motion to dismiss and strike a lawsuit brought by X Corp, formerly known as Twitter, against a nonprofit research...
Nathan Schneider on Democratic Design for Online Life
06 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On this show, when we talk about technology and democracy, guests are often talking about the relationship between technology and existing democratic...
Reforming Tech Amidst a Global Backlash Against Women's Rights
31 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Last year, researchers at Human Rights Watch wrote about the global backlash against women’s rights. In multiple countries, they say, hard-won progr...
Unpacking the Oral Argument in Murthy v Missouri
24 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On Monday, March 18, the US Supreme Court heard oral argument in Murthy v Missouri. In this episode, Tech Policy Press reporting fellow Dean Jackson i...
What's at Stake in Murthy v Missouri?
17 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On March 18, the US Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Murthy v Missouri, a case that asks the justices to consider whether the government coerc...
Exploring the Intersection of Information Integrity, Race, and US Elections
10 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
At INFORMED 2024, a conference hosted by the Knight Foundation in January, one panel focused on the subject of information integrity, race, and US ele...
US Supreme Court Considers Florida and Texas Social Media Laws
03 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On Monday, Feb. 26, 2024, the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Moody v. NetChoice, LLC and NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton. The cases...
What Leverage Remains to Preserve Free Expression in Hong Kong?
29 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This week, a public consultation period ended for a new Hong Kong national security law, known as Article 23. Article 23 ostensibly targets a wide arr...
How to Counter Disinformation Based on Science
25 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you know we’ve spent countless hours together talking about the problems of mis- and disinfo...
Evaluating the Role of Media in the January 6 Attack on the US Capitol
25 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A new book that ships this week from Oxford University Press titled simply Media and January 6th assembles a varied collection of experts that aim to ...
Pakistan and the Intersection of Tech & Elections
24 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It's become trite to say there are a lot of elections taking place this year. But of course, technology is playing a role in them all. At Tech Policy ...
Ranking Content On Signals Other Than User Engagement
18 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today's guests are Jonathan Stray, a senior scientist at the Center for Human Compatible AI at the University of California Berkeley, and Ravi Iyer, m...
FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya on Algorithmic Fairness, Voice Cloning, and the Future
18 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In May 2022, Alvaro Bedoya was sworn in as a Commissioner of the US Federal Trade Commission following his nomination by President Joe Biden and confi...
Imagining AI Countergovernance
11 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Multiple past episodes of this podcast have focused on the topic of AI governance. But today’s guest, Blair Attard-Frost, has put forward a set of i...
Tech CEOs Face the US Senate on Child Safety
04 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On Wednesday, January 31st, the US Senate Judiciary Committee hosted a hearing titled "Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis." The ...
How to Assess AI Governance Tools
28 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Last year, the World Privacy Forum, a nonprofit research organization, conducted an international review of AI governance tools. The organization anal...
How to Defend Independent Technology Research from Corporate and Political Opposition
21 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In October 2022, a group of researchers published a manifesto establishing a Coalition for Independent Technology Research. “Society needs trustwort...
Questioning OpenAI's Nonprofit Status
14 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest is Robert Weissman, president of the nonprofit consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen. He is the author of a letter addressed t...
Evaluating Social Media's Role in the Israel-Hamas War
07 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today is the three month anniversary of the vicious Hamas attack and abduction of hostages that ignited the current war in Gaza. Just before the New Y...
Exposing the Rotten Reality of AI Training Data
31 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In a report released December 20, 2023, the Stanford Internet Observatory said it had detected more than 1,000 instances of verified child sexual abus...
An FDA for AI?
24 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If you’ve listened to some of the dialogue in hearings on Capitol Hill about how to regulate AI, you’ve heard various folks suggest the need for a...
What Are We Building, and Why?
17 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
At the end of this year in which the hype around artificial intelligence seemed to increase in volume with each passing week, it’s worth stepping ba...
Europe Advances Its AI Act
10 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In April 2021, the European Commission introduced the first regulatory framework for AI within the EU. This Friday, after a marathon set of negotiatio...
Tracking Oversight of Surveillance in the US and EU
10 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In both the US and Europe, policymakers are making important decisions about the governance of the bulk collection of communications and data for inte...
Checking on the Progress of Content Moderators in Africa
03 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For the past two years, there has been a steady stream of news out of Kenya about the relationships between major tech firms – including Meta, TikTo...
The Saga at OpenAI: Lessons for Policymakers
26 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
To learn more about the recent leadership crisis at OpenAI and what lessons policymakers should take from it, Justin Hendrix spoke to Karen Hao, a con...
AI and Harms to Artists and Creators
19 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On November 15, the Open Markets Institute and the AI Now Institute hosted an event in Washington D.C. featuring discussion on how to understand the p...
Broken Code: A Conversation with Jeff Horwitz
14 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This episode explores Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose its Harmful Secrets, a new book by Wall Street Journal technology reporter ...
Policing the City: A Conversation with Matthew Guariglia
12 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today's guest is Dr. Matthew Guariglia, a senior policy analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and author of the new book, Police and the Empi...