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Okay, now we're getting back to the plan. Two weeks ago we featured an excerpt from the audiobook of Red Team Blues, Cory Doctorow's new (and excellent) novel, and promised that we'd soon be joined by Cory himself. And now, we deliver! Listen to this week's episode for a long and far-reaching conversation between Mike and Cory about the book and it's themes and subjects, plus plenty of interesting tangents. Red Team Blues: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865847/redteamblues

Last week, we promised an upcoming episode featuring a conversation with Cory Doctorow — and that conversation has been recorded and is arriving next week! But we decided to take a brief intermission this week, since things in the social media landscape are changing so quickly. Mike recently appeared on The Neoliberal Podcast with Jeremiah Johnson to talk about the ongoing nonsense at Twitter, the dawn of Meta's Threads, the situation at Reddit, and all the other chaos engulfing the world of social media. You can listen to the entire conversation right here on this week's episode. The Neoliberal Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/social-media-in-chaos-ft-mike-masnick/id1390384827?i=1000621423264

If you're a Techdirt reader, you're surely familiar with Cory Doctorow: we've written about him often, he's appeared on the podcast several times and, of course, he's a prolific science fiction author whose books brilliantly engage with many of the subjects we cover. Next week, if all goes according to plan, Cory will be joining us on the podcast once again to talk about his latest novel, Red Team Blues — so if you haven't read it yet, now's the time! And today we've got a special podcast feature to get you started: a chapter-long excerpt from the audiobook, available to listen in full on this week's episode.

Recently, we announced our latest game project: FutureCast, created in partnership with the United Nations' Global Pulse group. It's a highly adaptable strategic forecasting tool that aims to explore "pathways of change" for different future scenarios by bringing together groups of stakeholders for a fun, insight-generating exercise. This week, we're joined by Minke Meijnders and Tiina Neuvonen from UN Global Pulse, as well as our game design partner Randy Lubin from Leveraged Play, to discuss how the game came to be and the many things you can do with it. Read about FutureCast: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/14/announcing-futurecast-a-new-game-framework-for-exploring-pathways-of-change/ Get the game materials: https://foresight.unglobalpulse.net/futurecast/

If you're a Techdirt reader, a Reddit user, or both, then you probably know all about the chaos engulfing the site as users and moderators of popular subreddits protest CEO Steve Huffman's recent changes to the site's API. This week, we're joined by Jay Peters from The Verge to talk about the situation, the protests, and Huffman's disastrous responses.

When talking about content moderation, it's easy to focus entirely on centralized platforms. But now, with the rise of more federated and decentralized systems like ActivityPub and Bluesky (and many others), it's becoming more and more important to talk about how content moderation works in a decentralized space. This week we're joined by Yoel Roth, the former head of Trust & Safety at Twitter and now a Tech Policy Fellow at UC Berkeley, to discuss the new and different content moderation challenges that decentralized platforms face.

Play Moderator Mayhem: https://moderatormayhem.engine.is/ Last month, in partnership with Engine, we launched our new browser game that puts you in the shoes of a frontline content moderation worker at a growing online platform: Moderator Mayhem. If you haven't tried it yet, you can play it in your browser on mobile or desktop. The response to the game has been great, and this week Mike is joined on the podcast by myself, our game design partner Randy Lubin of Leveraged Play, and Engine executive director Kate Tummarello who spearheaded the project, to discuss how we built Moderator Mayhem and the impact it's been having so far.

We've been swamped with some big projects lately, and that put a bit of a dent in our podcast schedule. We've got a whole bunch of fresh new episodes lined up to record, so you can expect lots of original content soon — but to tide you over until then, this week we've got a cross-post of Mike's recent segment on The New Abnormal podcast, where he and host Andy Levy discuss Pornhub cutting off Utah in response to its age verification law, and some of the other "protect the children" efforts in Congress.

We've featured lots of coverage of the frankly insane deluge of "protect the children" type social media laws popping up in several states, and recently Mike was a guest on TechFreedom's Tech Policy Podcast, hosted by Corbin K. Barthold. You can listen to the whole conversation right here on this week's episode of the Techdirt Podcast.

Data portability is an important front in the war for an open internet. A few years ago, it seemed like some major movement was coming, with the joint announcement of the Data Transfer Project from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter — but recently, news of any progress was running thin. That is, until now: the project has morphed into the nonprofit Data Transfer Initiative, with a real team led by new Executive Director (and returning podcast guest) Chris Riley, who joins us on this week's episode to discuss the push to liberate data and make it portable. The Data Transfer Initiative: https://dtinit.org/

Legacy media operations really, really want tech companies that send them traffic to pay them as well. From Rupert Murdoch's link tax in Australia to the very bad JCPA in America, these requirements are nonsensical and run directly counter to the core functioning of the internet. Currently, one of the biggest pushes for such a law is happening in Canada with the government's Bill C-18 — and it's certainly no exception. Nobody has been following C-18 closer than law professor and researcher Michael Geist, and this week he joins us on the podcast to discuss the status of the bill and why, like similar laws around the world, it's a very bad idea.

Science fiction has always served as a source of inspiration for real technological progress. Sometimes that's great, but other times it enables abuse or leads people to make terrible assumptions that result in harmful decisions. This week we're joined by the hosts of the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct, authors Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders, who recently began tackling this very subject, to discuss the relationship between Silicon Valley and science fiction. Our Opinions Are Correct - https://www.ouropinionsarecorrect.com/

Misunderstandings (honest or otherwise) about Section 230 abound — across the political spectrum and, of course, in Congress. Each side believes weakening or eliminating the law will achieve its own distinct goals, and both sides are wrong. Following the most recent (but far from the first) very frustrating congressional hearing about Section 230, this week we're joined by TechFreedom's Free Speech Counsel Ari Cohn for a discussion about why and how congress constantly gets Section 230 so wrong.

Last week, we announced the winners of the fifth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1927! We strongly encourage everyone to go check out all the submissions, but as in past years, I sat down with Mike and our game design partner Randy Lubin for an episode of the podcast all about the winning games in all six categories, as well as some of our favorite entries that didn't quite make the cut. Read about the winners: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/02/28/announcing-the-winners-of-the-5th-annual-public-domain-game-jam/ Check out all the entries: https://itch.io/jam/gaming-like-its-1927/entries

After all these years, the Supreme Court is finally weighing in on Section 230 in the Gonzalez and Taamneh cases, and the outcome could have a very significant impact. Our organization, the Copia Institute, filed an amicus brief in the case, as did many other parties. This week, we're joined by Jess Miers from the Chamber of Progress and lawyer Cathy Gellis (who wrote our amicus brief), both of whom attended the Gonzalez hearing in person, to discuss the status of both cases and what they could mean for the future of the internet.

If you've been reading Techdirt recently, you probably know all about supposed "AI Lawyer" service DoNotPay and the tireless investigation of the company undertaken by Kathryn Tewson, who has written a couple of Techdirt posts about the saga. This week, Kathryn joins us on the podcast for a long and entertaining discussion about the entire story (so far).

We've got a double-header of cross-post episodes for you this week! Recently, Mike joined two different podcasts to discuss Congress's response to the Twitter Files and the dumpster fire of a hearing held by the House Oversight Committee: The New Abnormal podcast from the Daily Beast, and The Sunday Show podcast from Tech Policy Press. You can listen to both conversations back-to-back right here in today's extra-long episode.

For a brief and interesting time, the New York Times employed a Public Editor to serve as a liaison with its readers. One of the most interesting of these was the fifth, Margaret Sullivan, who would go on to become a media columnist with the Washington Post and then, as of today, a weekly columnist for The Guardian. She also recently published a book, Newsroom Confidential, full of insight drawn from her years of journalism and media experience. This week, Margaret joins us on the podcast to talk about her many ideas and pieces of advice for the future of media. Newsroom Confidential - https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250281906/newsroomconfidential

There have long been attacks on the global, open nature of the internet. Traditionally these came from authoritarian regimes looking to wall off portions of the internet and exert greater control of them, but lately we've also been seeing growing threats from democratic countries in the form of problematic laws and regulations. Recently, we wrote about an article by Global Network Initiative executive director Jason Pielemeier and Annenberg Public Policy Center research fellow Chris Riley that made a case in defense of the global, open internet, and this week both Jason and Chris join us on the podcast to look at the past, present and future of the internet around the world. In Defense Of The Global, Open Internet (Lawfare) - https://www.lawfareblog.com/defense-global-open-internet-0 Techdirt's Coverage - https://www.techdirt.com/2022/09/07/can-we-save-a-truly-global-internet/

It seems the madness just never stops on Elon Musk's Twitter, and it's almost impossible to keep up. Recently, Mike joined the Daily Beast's podcast, The New Abnormal, for a discussion with host Andy Levy about just what exactly is going on with Twitter under Musk's erratic leadership. The conversation first appeared as part of The New Abnormal's latest episode, and now you can listen to Mike's segment here on the Techdirt Podcast. The New Abnormal episode: https://www.thedailybeast.com/watching-the-last-jan-6-hearing-was-utterly-heartbreaking

It's been a little over a year since we learned about Meta's "X-Check" program for whitelisting high-profile Facebook accounts from various content moderation efforts. Now, after a long wait, the Oversight Board has released the results of its review of the use of the tool, and there's plenty to dig in into. This week, we're joined by Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America and member of the Oversight Board, to discuss the details of the program and what the board has to say about it.

Last Friday evening, Elon Musk and Matt Taibbi dropped a non-bombshell on everyone, with the revelation of internal Twitter documents about the content moderation around Hunter Biden's laptop that showed... nothing particularly unusual or notable happened, and there's no evidence of government interference. Over the weekend, Mike was interviewed by Justin Hendrix for the Tech Policy Press podcast for a closer look at just what was contained in "the Twitter Files", and we've got the whole conversation for you here on this week's episode.

This week, we have a special joint episode with The Neoliberal Podcast, discussing the question on a lot of minds: just what the hell is going on at Twitter now that Elon Musk is in charge? He's owned the company for less than a month, and it's already in chaos. Mike sits down with Neoliberal Podcast host Jeremiah Johnson to discuss why content moderation is so difficult at scale, whether Mastodon can be a real Twitter replacement, Elon's erratic and dumb moves, and the big question: whether or not Twitter might die. The Neoliberal Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/will-elon-kill-twitter-ft-mike-masnick/id1390384827?i=1000587263520

There are big internet regulatory changes coming in the EU, with the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act. Each is a huge bundle of new rules that could drastically change the future of the entire internet, and today we're focusing on the DSA, which is set to come into force in 2024. Emma Llansó from the Center for Democracy & Technology and Daphne Keller from Stanford's Cyber Policy Center join us on this week's episode to dig into the DSA and its many, many implications.

We've often talked about the importance of distinguishing content moderation at the infrastructure layer of the internet stack from that which happens on platforms at the edge, and this issue was brought to the forefront recently when Cloudflare took down Kiwi Farms. This week, we're joined by internet policy expert Konstantinos Komaitis to discuss an interesting, if admittedly imperfect, idea for approaching these tough questions: would infrastructure providers benefit from a third-party oversight board that handles content moderation decisions?

Amidst all the conversation around regulating social media, algorithmic amplification, and disinformation, one idea that tends to get a lot of broad support is mandating editorial transparency. After all, it sounds nice, since transparency is usually a good thing. But in fact, there are huge legal and conceptual problems with mandated transparency. Santa Clara Law's Eric Goldman has written papers on the constitutionality of the idea and an important Supreme Court case related to this question, and this week he joins the podcast to discuss why mandated transparency isn't as good (or as constitutional) as many people claim. Read the papers: The Constitutionality of Mandating Editorial Transparency - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4005647 Zauderer and Compelled Editorial Transparency - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4246090

One of the oldest and most important topics on Techdirt is copyright, and the many problems with the law both here and abroad. One of the best voices on the subject, here and in many other publications, is Glyn Moody, who recently released his book Walled Culture, that goes through the history of how legacy copyright industries have tried to harm the internet and gain ever greater control over the work of artists and creators. It's available as a free e-book under a Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication, and today Glyn joins the podcast to discuss the book and the long, often-sad story of copyright law around the world. Get the book: https://walledculture.org/the-book/

As you probably already know, Techdirt recently marked its 25th anniversary and celebrated the occasion with an online party for our Insider subscribers. At the event, Mike was joined by Techdirt co-founder Dennis Yang for an interview conducted by Alex Feerst of Murmuration Labs, in which they looked back on the history of the site and took some questions from the audience. Now, you can listen to the full conversation on this week's episode of the Techdirt Podcast.

When Mike wrote a post digging into some of the complex questions surrounding Cloudflare banning Kiwi Farms, there was plenty of backlash and disagreement — much of it thoughtful and well worth engaging with. Among the strongest critics was lawyer Mike Dunford, who composed a detailed Twitter thread that lead to a lengthy back-and-forth. This week, he joins us on the podcast to continue the conversation and discuss the welcome death of Kiwi Farms as well as broader issues of content moderation at the infrastructure layer.

When the Elon Musk/Twitter drama landed in the Delaware Court Of Chancery, it thrust specialist publication The Chancery Daily into the spotlight, and they began offering up excellent explainers on this important court that most people knew very little about. The people behind the publication have decided to remain anonymous amidst the influx of attention, but today one of them joins us on the podcast to discuss just what's going on as Elon Musk takes his chances in a court that seems pretty immune to his reality distortion field.

The explosion of AI-generated art has taken the internet by storm, and is poised to continue growing for a long time. In turn, that's sparked a lot of conversation (and a lot of backlash) about the impact on artists — but much of the controversy seems misguided or overblown. This week, we're joined by Rob Sheridan, an artist and designer who has embraced the power of these tools, to discuss what AI-generated art really means for artists.

We've got one more cross-post episode this week. If you've been following Techdirt recently, you've surely heard about California's recently-passed bill, the Age Appropriate Design Code, and all its massive problems. Recently, Mike appeared on This Week In Google to discuss these problems, and you can listen to the whole conversation on this week's episode of the Techdirt Podcast.

We've got a cross-post episode for you this week! Recently, Mike appeared on the Walled Culture podcast to discuss a wide range of topics including reflections on the SOPA/PIPA fight, ways to support creators, and the world of NFTs. You can listen to the entire interview on this week's episode of the Techdirt Podcast.

Read the report: https://copia.is/library/just-a-click-away/ Yesterday, we released a new report from the Copia Institute, written by Karl Bode, about the state of broadband competition and the great potential of an open access fiber model: Just A Click Away: Broadband Competition In America. On today's episode, Karl joins the podcast to dig into the details of the report and explain how a better future of US broadband is possible and attainable.

As advocates of decentralization and a protocols-not-platforms approach to the web, there's a lot about the concept of Web3 that sounds appealing to us at Techdirt — but the details usually leave a lot to be desired. A new project called TBD from Block aims to move beyond all that, and while its invocation of "Web5" understandably invites skepticism, it's actually a lot more interesting. This week, we're joined by project lead Mike Brock to discuss how TBD and the concept of Web5 aims to grapple with the true potential of decentralization.

We've got some great new discussions for the Techdirt Podcast... coming in a few weeks. But at the moment, amidst a very busy schedule on a variety of fronts, we're taking a short break to look back on a very old conversation: our 14th episode ever, from 2015, about media companies rolling out proprietary content management systems. Since we recently completed our own migration to Wordpress (the popular platform that was also a major component of that seven-year-old discussion) we thought it might be fun to revisit the question. So on this week's episode, Mike and I open with a bit of a retrospective followed by a replay of the original conversation in full.

This week is Engine's second annual Patent Quality Week, focused on the many ways that the patent system allows low-quality patents to get through, the problems this causes, and what can be done about it. On this week's episode, we're joined by Abby Rives and Charles Duan for a discussion all about why patent quality matters.

In discussions about content moderation, it's easy to get stuck in the mindset that there are only a few simple ways it could possibly work — but in fact there is plenty of room for exploring creative alternatives. One such idea examined in a recent paper by Aviv Ovadya, Technology and Public Purpose Fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center, is called "platform democracy". It's well worth discussing, and Aviv joins us on this week's episode to do exactly that. Paper: http://platformdemocracy.com/

The problems with copyright have been a subject of coverage here at Techdirt since the beginning, and for most of that time it has been largely a non-partisan subject. At the moment, however, that isn't so much the case thanks to Josh Hawley's war with Disney, which has created a situation where some copyright reform ideas that are conceptually good are mired in culture war issues, partisan politics, and unconstitutional nonsense. This week, we're joined by the Niskanen Center's Daniel Takash to discuss the problems with Hawley's copyright bill and copyright law in general.

It's no secret that Elon Musk's statements about his plans for Twitter have been confused to say the least. It has become abundantly clear that he doesn't know much at all about how a service like Twitter operates, especially when it comes to content moderation, and doesn't seem to have much interest in learning. On this week's episode, we're joined by Renee DiResta from the Stanford Internet Observatory to discuss just how little Elon Musk understands the platform he's supposedly planning to buy.

PLAY THE GAME: https://startuptrail.engine.is/ Last week, in partnership with Engine, we launched our startup policy simulator game Startup Trail. The game puts you in the shoes of a founder trying to build a successful startup, and facing the many difficult policy decisions that entails without running out of money, losing all your users, or ending up with a company that has no innovative ability. This week on the podcast, Mike and I are joined by our game design partner Randy Lubin of Leveraged Play as well as Kate Tummarello and Abby Rives from Engine, for a discussion all about how the game came to be and what we hope people will learn from it.

So much of the debate about Section 230 is based on an incorrect understanding of its procedural benefits, and the completely false idea that it's a special gift to "big tech". A new paper (which we wrote about yesterday) by Elizabeth Banker from the Chamber of Progress dives deep into the real benefits and beneficiaries of Section 230, and this week she joins us on the podcast to discuss how the law protects small companies, individuals, and free speech. Research Paper: https://progresschamber.org/new-report-details-impact-of-section-230-litigation-onsmall-online-providers/ Our Coverage: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/04/18/new-study-shows-section-230-protects-small-companies-much-more-than-big-ones/

People often talk about some kind of "right to deletion" as an approach to fixing online privacy issues. This construct can create problems, as we've seen with Europe's version, but newer proposals don't seem to consider these lessons. A recent paper by law professor Tiffany Li looks at another angle on the issue: how data deletion impacts algorithms and AI-trained models. This week, Tiffany joins us on the podcast to discuss this concept of "algorithmic destruction", and how policy makers are ignoring it. "Algorithmic Destruction" paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4066845

Recently, Mike joined Jason Feifer on the Build for Tomorrow podcast for a discussion about predicting the future — and specifically about a prediction that Mike got very wrong. The episode includes interviews with several other guests on the subject, and we're featuring the whole thing this week on the Techdirt Podcast.

Five years ago, we were joined on the podcast by author and law professor Aaron Perzanowski to discuss his book about the impact of copyright on property in the digital age, The End of Ownership. That book touched on the issue of repairing devices and the ways companies make it difficult, but his new book, The Right To Repair, puts this topic in the spotlight. This week, Aaron joins us to discuss the history and future of the right to repair around the world.

It took a little longer than usual, but we've finally announced the winners of the fourth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1926! In this episode, Mike and I are joined by Randy Lubin (our partner in running the jam) to discuss the winners in all six categories, as well as some of our favorite entries that didn't quite make the cut. The Winners: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/03/09/announcing-the-winners-of-the-4th-annual-public-domain-game-jam/ The Entries: https://itch.io/jam/gaming-like-its-1926/entries

Nearly three years ago, we were joined by Professor Jeff Kosseff to discuss his then-new book about Section 230, The Twenty-Six Words That Created The Internet. Now, Jeff has a new book coming out, about another internet issue that is deeply misunderstood by many people: anonymity. The United States Of Anonymous releases in two weeks, and on today's episode Jeff joins us to discuss how the right to anonymity has shaped American values, politics, business, security, and discourse.

We've got another cross-post this week: Mike was recently a guest on the new Internet of Humans podcast by Jillian York and Konstantinos Komaitis, for a wide-ranging discussion about internet regulation issues today and where they might be headed. You can listen to the entire conversation on this week's episode.

More than a year and a half ago we were joined on the podcast by Riana Pfefferkorn, then the Associate Director of Surveillance and Cybersecurity at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society and now a research fellow at the Stanford Internet Observatory, to discuss the disastrous EARN IT Act. As you probably know, EARN IT is back, and this week, Riana joins us once again to discuss why it hasn't gotten any better — and might in fact have gotten worse.

We talk a lot about free speech in different countries, and about the history of free speech in the US — but what about the global history of this fundamental concept? A new book released today, Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media by Jacob Mchangama, tackles exactly this subject in great and insightful detail. This week, Jacob joins us on the podcast to discuss the sweeping story of free speech throughout the ages and around the world.