The Tech Policy Press Podcast
Episodes
Artificial Intelligence and Your Voice
05 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest is Wiebke Hutiri, a researcher with a particular expertise in design patterns for detecting and mitigating bias in AI system...
A Design Code for Big Tech
29 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest is Ravi Iyer, a data scientist and moral psychologist at the Psychology of Technology Institute, which is a project of the University ...
Unpacking the Bangalore Ideology
22 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
At the September G20 summit in Delhi, the government of prime minister Narendra Modi promoted the country’s digital public infrastructure (DPI) as a...
How to Control Our Appetite for Misinformation
15 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A lot is written about the supply side of mis- and disinformation, including how propagandists and political leaders are using messages and platforms ...
Digital Empires: A Conversation with Anu Bradford
08 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
There is a term you've likely heard on the Tech Policy Press podcast in the past: the Brussels Effect. The term is meant to describe th...
Artificial Intelligence as a Tool of Repression
04 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The 13th installment of the Freedom on the Net report from Freedom House finds that "while advances in artificial intelligence offer benefits for soci...
The EU AI Act Enters Final Negotiations
01 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
While US Senators are busy holding hearings and forums and posing for pictures with the CEOs of AI companies, the European Union is just months away f...
The Luddites and Lessons for the Next Rebellion
27 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech, Los Angeles Times technology columnist Brian Merchant has written a new histor...
Graphic Content, Trauma and Meaning: A Conversation with Alexa Koenig and Andrea Lampros
24 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The ubiquity of cameras in our phones and our environment, coupled with massive social media networks that can share images and video in an instant, m...
Your Face Belongs to Us: A Conversation with Kashmir Hill
24 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 2019, journalist Kashmir Hill had just joined The New York Times when she got a tip about the existence of a company called Clearview AI that claim...
The Problem with the "Big" in Big Tech
17 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode features two segments, both of which consider the scale of technology platforms and their power over markets and people. In the firs...
Assessing the Problem of Disinformation
10 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This episode features two segments on the subject of disinformation. In the first, Rebecca Rand speaks with Dr. Shelby Grossman, a research schol...
Paul Gowder on The Networked Leviathan
03 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
One of the problems we come back to again and again on the Tech Policy Press podcast is the problem of how to govern social media platforms. Toda...
Choosing Our Words Carefully
27 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This episode features two segments. In the first, Rebecca Rand speaks with Alina Leidinger, a researcher at the Institute for Logic, Language and Comp...
Containing Big Tech
20 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This episode features two segments. In the first, Rebecca Rand considers the social consequences of "machine allocation behavior" with Cornell researc...
Assessing India's Digital Personal Data Protection Bill
13 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Indian legislators approved a data protection law that will govern the processing of data in the country. The bill creates a data protectio...
The State of State AI Laws
06 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Lots of voices are calling for the regulation of artificial intelligence. In the US, at present it seems there is no federal legislation close to beco...
Examining the Meta 2020 US Election Research Partnership
02 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A unique collaboration between social scientists and Meta to conduct research on Facebook and Instagram during the height of the 2020 US election has ...
Alex Winter on The YouTube Effect
30 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In today’s podcast, Justin Hendrix talks with director, writer and actor Alex Winter, whose new documentary, The YouTube Effect, is in select t...
Ifeoma Ajunwa on The Quantifed Worker
23 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s guest on the podcast is Ifeoma Ajunwa, the AI.Humanity Professor of Law and Ethics and Director of AI and the Law Program at Emory Law Schoo...
Justine Bateman on AI, Labor, and the Future of Entertainment
23 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Artificial intelligence will likely impact every type of job. But this summer, Hollywood actors and writers have raised substantial concerns about the...
Content Moderation, Encryption, and the Law
16 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most urgent debates in tech policy at the moment concerns encrypted communications. At issue in proposed legislation, such as the UK’s On...
Extended Reality and the Law
09 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Tomorrow's virtual worlds will be governed, at least at first, by today's legal and regulatory regimes. How will privacy law, torts, IP, or even crimi...
Reading the Civic Information Handbook
06 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This spring, Karen Kornbluh and Adrienne Goldstein from the German Marshall Fund’s Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative published a document ...
Your Guides Through the Hellscape of AI Hype
02 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Alex Hanna, the director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute and Emily M. Bender, a professor of linguistics at the University of Was...
The Implications of Canada's Online News Act
30 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, Canada passed the Online News Act, legislation that requires tech platforms to remunerate Canadian news outlets, and the platforms are not ...
Exploring Global Governance of Artificial Intelligence
25 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past few months, there have been a range of voices calling for the urgent regulation of artificial intelligence. Comparisons to the problems ...
A Conversation with Meredith Whittaker, President of Signal
18 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Earlier this month, Justin Hendrix traveled to RightsCon, the big gathering of individuals and organizations concerned with human rights and technolog...
Recoding America: A Conversation with Jennifer Pahlka
11 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the United States, it’s fair to say that federal, state and local governments have struggled in the era of digitalization. Decades in to that era...
A Recap of the US-EU Trade and Technology Council Meeting with Mark Scott
04 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, a group of very important people, including the U.S Secretaries of State and Commerce and trade representatives from President Joe Biden’...
Responsible Release and Accountability for Generative AI Systems
28 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s show has two segments both focused on generative AI. In the first segment, Justin Hendrix speaks with Irene Solaiman, a researcher who has p...
The Supreme Court Decides: A Final Word on Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh with Anupam Chander
21 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, the Supreme Court released decisions in Gonzalez v. Google, LLC, and Twitter, Inc. v. Taamneh. In this episode we’ll discuss what it tell...
Nick Seaver on Computing Taste: Algorithms and the Makers of Music Recommendation
14 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode features a discussion with Nick Seaver, a professor at Tufts University and the author of Computing Taste: Algorithms and the Makers...
Malcolm Harris on Palo Alto and the Project of Silicon Valley
07 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Justin Hendrix speaks to writer Malcolm Harris about his book, PALO ALTO: A HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA, CAPITALISM, AND THE WORLD, which considers the hist...
Gus Hurwitz on Technology and the Law
03 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Recently Justin Hendrix caught up with Gus Hurwitz, a professor of law at the University of Nebraska and the director of the Governance and Technology...
Twitter Whistleblower Anika Collier Navaroli Looks Forward
30 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the course of its investigation into the insurrection at the US Capitol, the House Select Committee on January 6th spoke to hundreds of witnesses, ...
A Conversation with Baroness Beeban Kidron on Child Online Safety
27 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Tech Policy Press editor Justin Hendrix is joined by a UK lawmaker and advocate who has been influential in the global push for more protections for c...
A Conversation with Denmark's Tech Ambassador, Anne Marie Engtoft Larsen
23 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Tech Policy Press board member and UCLA School of Law postdoctoral research fellow Courtney Radsch interviews Anne Marie Engtoft Lars...
AI Accountability and the Risks of Social Interfaces
21 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This episode features two segments. We’ll hear from Ellen P. Goodman, Senior Advisor for Algorithmic Justice at the U.S. National Telecommunications...
Is OpenAI Cultivating Fear to Sell AI?
18 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Justin Hendrix is joined by a columnist and author who’s spent the last few years thinking about a past era of automation, a proces...
The Cambridge Analytica Scandal, Five Years Later: Part 2
16 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This is Part 2 of two episodes looking back on the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which arguably kicked off five years ago when the New York Times and t...
The Cambridge Analytica Scandal, Five Years Later: Part 1
16 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This is Part 1 of two episodes looking back on the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which arguably kicked off five years ago when the New York Times and t...
Behind the Mic with Quinta Jurecic, Bridget Todd & Justin Hendrix
09 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Two weeks ago, Tech Policy Press editor Justin Hendrix participated in Tech and Society week, a series of events across Georgetown’s campus hosted b...
Gaia Bernstein on Gaining Control over Addictive Technologies
02 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Across the United States, there is a growing number of lawsuits that seek to hold tech firms accountable for various alleged harms. My guest today is ...
More Than a Glitch: A Conversation with Meredith Broussard
26 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Is technology ultimately neutral? Are the biases we discover in the systems we interact with today just bugs or defects that we can trust will be addr...
Generative AI, Section 230 and Liability: Assessing the Questions
23 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of the podcast, we hear three perspectives on generative AI systems and the extent to which their makers may be exposed to potential l...
A History of Data from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms
19 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
At Columbia University, data scientist Chris Wiggins and historian Matthew Jones teach a course called Data: Past, Present and Future. Out of this col...
A Conversation with Tobias Bacherle
17 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Answers on how best to regulate technology differ depending on the values and politics of any particular jurisdiction. Yet it’s worth looking for po...
Peter Pomerantzev on Tech, Media and Democracy
12 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the spring, Tech Policy Press editor Justin Hendrix teaches a course called Tech, Media and Democracy that is a partnership of faculty at NYU, Corn...
Mitigating the Ethical and Legal Risks of Synthetic Media and Generative AI
05 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode we look at questions around ethical, legal and business risks surrounding so-called generative AI and synthetic media, and the opportu...
Of Legislators and Large Language Models
04 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
How will so-called "generative AI" tools such as OpenAI's ChatGPT change our politics, and change the way we interact with our representatives in demo...
An Exit Interview with a Hill Staffer
26 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The past few years have seen a number of high profile hearings on Capitol Hill, with lawmakers expressing concern and even outrage at tech C...
The People Powering Amazon's Trickle-Down Monopoly
26 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Amazon is one of the world’s largest and most powerful companies. Yet one of the engines of its might is largely invisible to customers- its vast ne...
A Deep Dive Into Gonzalez v. Google
19 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This episode features four segments that dive into Gonzalez v. Google, a case before the Supreme Court that could have major implications on platform ...
Evaluating Cries of Censorship on Capitol Hill
12 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Elon Musk, the platform’s new owner, says that Twitter is both a social media company and a "crime scene." The crime he appears most concerned about...
Voices in the Code: Algorithms, People, and Values
05 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Today, we’re going to listen in on a panel discussion that took place at the end of last year, hosted by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Col...
Samuel Woolley on Manufacturing Consensus: Understanding Propaganda in the Age of Automation and Anonymity
31 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Frequently on this podcast we come back to questions around information, misinformation, and disinformation. In this age of digital communications, th...
An Indigenous Perspective on Generative AI
29 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Earlier this month, Getty Images, one of the world’s most prominent suppliers of editorial photography, stock images, and other forms of media,...
A Causal Link Between Facebook and Mental Health
22 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg launched “TheFacebook” at Harvard University before rolling the social networking site out to other students at Dartmouth...
Examining the Impact of Internet Research Agency Tweets in the 2016 U.S. Election
15 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the years following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, much effort has been put into understanding foreign influence campaigns, and into disrupti...
Election Disinformation and the Violence in Brazil
14 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
To learn more about the events on January 8th, 2023, when supporters of former far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the country's capi...
Shedding Light on Google's Dark Side
08 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine a company that hides who it works with and where billions of dollars flow around the world. That earns its profits financing a global network ...
Results of the January 6th Committee's Social Media Investigation
06 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
According to the legislation that established the January 6th Committee, the members were mandated to examine “how technology, including o...
A Conversation with Avi Asher-Schapiro
28 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Avi Asher-Schapiro is a journalist covering digital rights and technology for the Thomson Reuters Foundation. For the final Tech Policy Press podcast ...
Confronting Hate and Extremism in Online Games
18 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On Friday, Congresswoman Lori Trahan, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, led a group of Democrats including Senator Ron Wyden a...
Examining Meta’s Cross-Check Program
14 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A little more than a year ago, in the first article announcing the release of the Facebook Files, the documents brought out of the company by whistleb...
Chinese Censorship and Surveillance in a Moment of Unrest: Part 2
11 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, the Chinese government under President Xi Jinping took steps to finally move away from its zero-COVID policy, following two weeks of protes...
Chinese Censorship and Surveillance in a Moment of Unrest: Part 1
10 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, the Chinese government under President Xi Jinping took steps to finally move away from its zero-COVID policy, following two weeks of protes...
Scrutinizing "The Twitter Files"
04 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 th...
Dissecting Tech Manifestos
27 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 M...
The Whiteness of Mastodon
23 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
You Are Not Expected to Understand This
20 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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...
What is Lost if Twitter Fails?
18 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Internet Shutdowns and Censorship, in Iran and Beyond
16 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 mon...
The Impact of the U.S. Midterm Elections on Tech Policy
13 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 b...
Black Skinhead: A Conversation with Brandi Collins-Dexter
06 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This episode features a discussion with Brandi Collins-Dexter, the author of the new book BLACK SKINHEAD: Reflections on Blackness and Our Political F...
Examining Programmatic Political Advertising in the United States
01 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 i...
Danielle Citron on The Fight for Privacy
30 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Danielle Citron is the inaugural Jefferson Scholars Foundation Schenck Distinguished Professor in Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, whe...
Elections, Misinformation, and Political Discourse in U.S. Latino Communities
25 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 c...
Platform Election Policies, Now and Then
23 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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’...
Contending with Spyware and Oppression in Thailand
16 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Earlier this year, an investigation published in the New Yorker by Ronan Farrow suggested that commercial spyware called Pegasus, developed by the Isr...
Model Suggests Digital Media Contributing to “Maelstrom” of Societal Division
13 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Regular users of social media platforms are well aware that they often produce toxic discourse. Scholars continue to produce results that bring clarit...
Unpacking the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights
11 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, President Joe Biden’s White House published a 73-page document produced by the Office of Science and Technology Policy titled Blueprint f...
Debate Over Content Moderation Heads to the Supreme Court
09 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Some of the most controversial debates over speech and content moderation on social media platforms are now due for consideration in the Supreme Court...
Digital Governance and the State of Democracy: Why Does it Matter?
08 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On September 21, Justin Hendrix moderated a panel discussion for the McCourt Institute at a pre-conference spotlight session on digital governance ahe...
The Supreme Court Takes Up Two Cases That Could Transform the Internet
04 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Election Misinformation Thrives on Major Social Media Platforms
02 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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, wit...
Contemplating the "Uselessness" of AI Ethics
27 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 A...
Trust and Safety Comes of Age?
25 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 inte...
Can Big Tech Platforms Operate Responsibly on a Global Scale?
18 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 so...
Understanding Digital Dragnets: Surveillance in the Age of Smartphones
14 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 acqu...
Mitigating Election Disinformation in Brazil
11 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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 of...
Douglas Ruskhkoff, the Survival of the Richest and... the Battle of Endor?
06 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Contemplating YouTube's Rise: A Conversation with Author Mark Bergen
04 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This episode features a conversation with Bloomberg journalist Mark Bergen. He’s the author of Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube’s Chaotic ...
Facebook's White Supremacist Problem
30 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Tech Transparency Project (TTP), a research initiative of the nonprofit Campaign for Accountability, is focused on holding major tech companies to...
Judging Platform Responses to Election Mis- and Disinformation
28 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In last Sunday’s podcast, I promised an occasional series of discussions on the relationship between social media, message apps and election mis- an...
Challenge Yields Experimental Interventions to Strengthen U.S. Democracy
24 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A little more than a year ago, a coalition of multidisciplinary researchers at Stanford, MIT, Northwestern, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbi...
The True Costs of Election Mis- and Disinformation
21 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
With the U.S. midterm election cycle about to kick into high gear, social media platforms are announcing updates to their civic integrity policies and...
Reading the Propagandists' Playbook: A Conversation with Francesca Tripodi
17 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When most people think about the problem of mis- and disinformation, they think first of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. But how mig...
Mexican Loan Apps, Extortion, and the Google Play Store
14 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In recent months, press reports have emerged about individuals in multiple countries falling victim to extortion and fraud schemes enabled by often hi...