The Tech Policy Press Podcast

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 recommendations, in this episode we hear from four individuals involved in the drafting of the reports:Pierre François Docquir, Head of Media Freedom, ARTICLE 19, who led the project globally;Roberta Taveri, an ARTICLE 19 program officer who played a role in delivering the research on Bosnia and Herzegovina;Catherine Muya from ARTICLE 19 East Africa, who focused on Kenya, andSherly Haristya, PhD, an independent researcher who conducted the research on Indonesia.

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 Government's Access to Your Personal Data. At the hearing, experts witnesses testified that government agencies at all levels, including federal agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Department of Defense (DOD), as well as state and local law enforcement are collecting a massive amount of personal data on American citizens, sidestepping constitutional protections against unwarranted search and seizure provided in the Fourth Amendment. The hearing included discussion of the proposed Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale Act, which would restrict government entities from engaging in such practices.But while the courts and Congress deliberate, government agencies are acquiring this information from software providers, including one such firm that was the subject of a recent investigative report from the Associated Press titled Tech tool offers police ‘mass surveillance on a budget. Today, I’m joined by the two reporters who spent months trying to understand how a little known company in Virginia goes about acquiring commercially available data and selling it to police in departments across the country- global investigative journalist Garance Burke and national investigative reporter Jason Dearen.

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 concerned about the potential for violence. To learn more, Justin Hendrix spoke to two experts involved in efforts to identify and mitigate disinformation in Brazil: João Brant, coordinator of desinformante, an initiative of the nonprofit Ponteio Comunicação, Information and Culture and the Instituto Cultura e Democracia in Brazil, and Flora Rebello Arduini, Campaigns Director at SumOfUs, a global activist community that seeks to curb the growing power of corporations.

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.

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 between YouTube and violent extremism, misogyny, racism, white nationalism and a variety of other ills. The book pulls the curtain back on the internal dynamics and decisions that bring us to today. And it asks us to contemplate whether anyone- from Google’s leadership to regulators in any of the world’s governments- can truly get their heads or hands around YouTube. 

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 company is “failing to remove white supremacist groups and is often profiting from searches for them on its platform,” exposing how it “fosters and benefits from domestic extremism.” To hear more about the findings in the report, Tech Policy Press spoke to Katie Paul, TTP’s Director.

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, andQuinn Anex-Ries, a PhD candidate in American Studies at USC and an intern with the Open Technology Institute this summer.Their findings are summarized in a report, Misleading Information and the Midterms: How Platforms are Addressing Misinformation and Disinformation Ahead of the 2022 U.S. Elections. 

A little more than a year ago, a coalition of multidisciplinary researchers at Stanford, MIT, Northwestern, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia set out to crowd source ideas to address the political divide in what was dubbed the Strengthening Democracy Challenge. “Anti-democratic attitudes and support for political violence are at alarming levels in the US," said Robb Willer, Director of the Polarization and Social Change Lab and Professor of Sociology at Stanford, at the time of the announcement. "We view this project as a chance to identify efficacious interventions, and also to deepen our understanding of the forces shaping these political sentiments.”After reviewing more than 250 submissions from researchers, activists and others, the research coalition selected 25 interventions it deemed most promising to test against one another in an "experimental tournament" utilizing a sample of 31,000 U.S. adults. To learn more about the challenge, some of the promising projects that emerged from it, and whether tech platforms may play a role in efforts to address polarization, I spoke to Willer and his colleague, Jan Gerrit Voelkel, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at Stanford University and also a member of the Polarization and Social Change Lab.

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 approaches to countering election mis- and disinformation.In this week's podcast, we hear from election administrators themselves about the impact of election misinformation. This is the first in an occasional series Tech Policy Press will publish this fall on social media and election integrity. This episode draws audio from a panel discussion hosted by the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform on August 11, 2022, that took place on the occasion of the publication of a majority staff report on the problem of election disinformation.