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Tech Policy Press
Description

Tech Policy Press is a nonprofit media and community venture intended to provoke new ideas, debate and discussion at the intersection of technology and democracy. The Sunday Show is its podcast. You can find us at https://techpolicy.press/, where you can join the newsletter.

Episodes
  • 2025 / 7 / 6
    Protecting Privacy and Dissent in an Age of Authoritarianism and AI

    Helen Nissenbaum, a philosopher, is a professor at Cornell Tech and in the Information Science Department at Cornell University. She is director of the Digital Life Initiative at Cornell Tech, which was...

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  • 2025 / 7 / 6
    Considering the Human Rights Impacts of LLM Content Moderation

    At Tech Policy Press we’ve been tracking the emerging application of generative AI systems in content moderation. Recently, the European Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ECNL) released a comprehensive report...

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  • 2025 / 6 / 29
    Interrogating Tech Power and Democratic Crisis

    If you’ve been reading Tech Policy Press closely over the last three weeks, you may have come across one or more posts from collaboration with Data & Society called “Ideologies of Control: A Series...

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  • 2025 / 6 / 22
    Through to Thriving: Honoring Our Elders with Dr. Timnit Gebru

    For a special series of episodes dubbed Through to Thriving that will air throughout the year, Tech Policy Press fellow Anika Collier Navaroli is hosting discussions intended to help us imagine possible...

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  • 2025 / 6 / 15
    AI Companions and the Law

    Concerns about AI chatbots delivering harmful, even profoundly dangerous advice or instructions to users is growing. There is deep concern over the effects of these interactions on children, and a growing...

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  • 2025 / 6 / 15
    Addressing Questions Over Europe's AI Act, Digital Sovereignty, and More

    In Europe, the digital regulatory landscape is in flux. Over the past few years, the EU has positioned itself as a global leader in tech regulation, rolling out landmark laws like the AI Act. But now, as the...

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  • 2025 / 6 / 8
    Through to Thriving: Journeying to Joy with Dr. Desmond Upton Patton

    For a special series of episodes dubbed Through to Thriving that will air throughout the year, Tech Policy Press fellow Anika Collier Navaroli is hosting discussions intended to help us imagine possible...

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  • 2025 / 6 / 8
    Technology, Labor Rights, and Political Power in Kenya and Across Africa

    In this episode, Justin Hendrix speaks with Nerima Wako-Ojiwa, director of Siasa Place, and Odanga Madung, a tech and society researcher and journalist, about the intersection of technology, labor rights, and...

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  • 2025 / 6 / 6
    Canada's Post-Election Outlook on Tech Policy

    Canadian political leaders are in a precarious moment. Fresh off the resignation of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and ascendancy of his successor, new Prime Minister and Liberal Party leader Mark...

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  • 2025 / 6 / 1
    Taking on the AI Con

    Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna are the authors of a new book that The Guardian calls “refreshingly sarcastic” and Business Insider calls a “funny and irreverent deconstruction of AI.” They are also occasional...

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  • 2025 / 6 / 1
    Assessing the Relationship Between Information Ecosystems and Democracy's Woes

    Earlier this year, an entity called the Observatory on Information and Democracy released a major report called INFORMATION ECOSYSTEMS AND TROUBLED DEMOCRACY: A Global Synthesis of the State of Knowledge on...

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  • 2025 / 5 / 29
    An Interview with California's New State Chief Technology Innovation Officer

    In February, California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Vera Zakem as California’s State Chief Technology Innovation Officer at the California Department of Technology. Zakem brings deep experience...

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  • 2025 / 5 / 29
    Considering a New 'Civil Rights Approach to AI'

    On May 29, the Center for Civil Rights and Technology at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights released its Innovation Framework, which it calls a “new guiding document for companies...

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  • 2025 / 5 / 25
    A 10-Year Moratorium on Enforcing State AI Laws?

    On Thursday, May 22, the United States House of Representatives narrowly advanced a budget bill that included the "Artificial Intelligence and Information Technology Modernization Initiative," which includes...

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  • 2025 / 5 / 23
    Decolonizing the Future: Karen Hao on Resisting the Empire of AI

    In his New York Times review of the book, Columbia Law School professor and former White House official Tim Wu calls journalist Karen Hao’s new book, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s...

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  • 2025 / 5 / 18
    What the History of Internet Governance Tells Us About the Future of Tech Policy

    Today’s guest is Milton L. Mueller, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the School of Public Policy and the head of an advocacy policy analysis group called the Internet Governance Project....

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  • 2025 / 5 / 13
    Between Borders and Lies: Fact-Checkers on Navigating the India-Pakistan Conflict

    In the wake of the most intense India-Pakistan escalation in two decades, experts are still trying to make sense of the role that the information war played in the physical one. In this episode, Tech Policy...

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  • 2025 / 5 / 11
    Taking Stock of the Google Search Remedies Trial

    Last year, a United States federal judge ruled that Google is a monopolist in the market for online search. For the past three weeks, the company and the Justice Department have been in court to hash out what...

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  • 2025 / 5 / 6
    xAI's Memphis Neighbors Push for Facts and Fairness

    Last year, Elon Musk's xAI set up its "Colossus" supercomputer in an old Electrolux manufacturing facility in Memphis, Tennessee. Now, the residents of nearby neighborhoods are pushing for facts and fair...

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  • 2025 / 5 / 4
    How Venture Capital Warps the World

    Catherine Bracy is a civic technologist and community organizer whose work focuses on the intersection of technology and political and economic inequality. Justin Hendrix spoke with her about her new...

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  • 2025 / 4 / 27
    Adam Becker Takes Aim at Silicon Valley Nonsense

    From visions of AI paradise to the project to defeat death, many dangerous and unscientific ideas are driving Silicon Valley leaders. Justin Hendrix spoke to Adam Becker, a science journalist and author of...

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  • 2025 / 4 / 20
    Through to Thriving: Building Community with Ellen Pao

    For a special series of episodes that will air throughout the year, Tech Policy Press fellow Anika Collier Navaroli is hosting a series of discussions intended to help us imagine possible futures—for tech and...

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  • 2025 / 4 / 16
    Researchers Defend the Scientific Consensus on Bias and Discrimination in AI

    Last month, a group of researchers published a letter “Affirming the Scientific Consensus on Bias and Discrimination in AI.” The letter, published at a time when the Trump administration is rolling back...

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  • 2025 / 4 / 13
    A Guide to the FTC's Case Against Meta

    On Monday, April 14, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will kick off its trial against Meta. In process for years, the case is over whether Mark Zuckerberg’s company has an illegal monopoly over social...

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  • 2025 / 4 / 8
    What We Don't Know About DSA Enforcement

    On April 4, The New York Times reported that the European Commission is considering finding X, formerly Twitter, as part of its ongoing DSA investigation, which began in 2023. Tech Policy Press has discussed...

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  • 2025 / 4 / 6
    DOGE and the United States of AI

    Across the United States and in some cities abroad yesterday, protestors took to the streets to resist the policies of US President Donald Trump. Dubbed the "Hands Off" protests, over 1,400 events took place,...

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  • 2025 / 3 / 30
    Part 2: Technology, Democracy, and Power—Journalism’s Role in a Time of Crisis

    On Tuesday, March 25th, Tech Policy Press hosted a webinar discussion to talk shop with others on the tech and democracy beat. We gathered seven colleagues from around the world to explore how tech...

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  • 2025 / 3 / 30
    Part 1: Technology, Democracy, and Power—Journalism’s Role in a Time of Crisis

    On Tuesday, March 25th, Tech Policy Press hosted a webinar discussion to talk shop with others on the tech and democracy beat. We gathered seven colleagues from around the world to explore how tech...

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  • 2025 / 3 / 27
    About that Signal Chat

    Every now and again, a story that has a significant technology element really breaks through and drives the news cycle. This week, the Trump administration is reeling after The Atlantic magazine's Jeffrey...

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  • 2025 / 3 / 25
    A Conversation with Alvaro Bedoya on Trump's FTC Firings

    Last week, President Donald Trump ordered the firing of two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission, an independent agency that enforces federal consumer protection and competition laws and that,...

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  • 2025 / 3 / 23
    Is an Anti-Fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence Possible?

    What is necessary to develop a future that is less hospitable to authoritarianism and, indeed, to fascism? How do we build collective power against authoritarian forms of corporate and state power? Is an...

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  • 2025 / 3 / 16
    A Conversation with Dr. Alondra Nelson on AI and Democracy

    Dr. Alondra Nelson holds the Harold F. Linder Chair and leads the Science, Technology, and Social Values Lab at the Institute for Advanced Study, where she has served on the faculty since 2019. From...

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  • 2025 / 3 / 9
    Should AGI Really Be the Goal of Artificial Intelligence Research?

    The goal of achieving "artificial general intelligence," or AGI, is shared by many in the AI field. OpenAI’s charter defines AGI as "highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically...

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  • 2025 / 3 / 9
    Assessing Europe's Digital Markets Act One Year In

    A year ago, Europe’s Digital Markets Act—the DMA—went into effect. The European Commission says the purpose of the regulation is to make “digital markets in the EU more contestable and fairer.” In...

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  • 2025 / 3 / 6
    Promising Opportunities, Distinct Risks: AI and Digital Public Squares

    Could AI help design better, more democratic platforms and online environments for public discourse? What are the opportunities, challenges, and risks of deploying AI in contexts where people are engaged in...

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  • 2025 / 3 / 3
    Building Middleware for Bluesky: A Conversation with Blacksky Founder Rudy Fraser

    On this podcast, we regularly engage with questions about redesigning social media networks to make them more democratic, pluralist, and prosocial. One hypothesis people have about how to do that is through...

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  • 2025 / 3 / 2
    Inocencia en Juego: An Investigation into Groups Targeting Children on Facebook

    Last week, Tech Policy Press joined the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (EL CLIP) in publishing a report and series of articles documenting how adult users use public Facebook...

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  • 2025 / 2 / 28
    Watching the Watchers: The Future of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board

    On January 22, President Donald Trump terminated all three Democratic members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), an intelligence watchdog charged with monitoring the United States...

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  • 2025 / 2 / 23
    Evaluating the First Systemic Risk and Audit Reports Under the Digital Services Act

    Tech Policy Press Associate Editor Ramsha Jahangir hosts a roundtable discussion on the first systemic risk assessments and independent audit reports from Very Large Online Platforms and Search Engines...

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  • 2025 / 2 / 23
    Digital Rights Activists in Taiwan Driven by Memory and Threat of Authoritarianism

    This week, RightsCon, which bills itself as "the world’s leading summit on human rights in the digital age," descends on Taipei. To better understand the dynamics in the civil society community working...

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  • 2025 / 2 / 16
    Paths Diverge at the Paris AI Summit

    At the Paris AI Action Summit on February 10-11, remarks by EU and US leaders indicated significant divergence on how to think about AI. But on balance, nations are moving decisively toward innovation and...

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  • 2025 / 2 / 9
    A National Heist? Evaluating Elon Musk’s March Through Washington

    As Donald Trump’s second presidency enters its third week, Elon Musk is center stage as the Department of Government Efficiency moves to gut federal agencies. In this episode, Justin Hendrix speaks...

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  • 2025 / 2 / 9
    Online Lives, Space and Place: Exploring the Mobile City

    Over the last two decades, as Berlin reinvented itself as a "creative city," social media both mirrored and shaped shifting social landscapes—offering new possibilities while also reinforcing inequalities....

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  • 2025 / 2 / 2
    The Dangerous Combination of Technology and Capitalism

    Justin Hendrix speaks with Jathan Sadowski, a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia; co-host of This Machine Kills, a weekly podcast on...

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  • 2025 / 1 / 28
    DeepSeek Prompts a Rethink

    If Chinese AI startup DeepSeek’s efficiency and performance achievements stand up to scrutiny, it could have big implications for the AI race. It could call into question the strategic approach that the...

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  • 2025 / 1 / 26
    Evaluating Trump's First Moves on Tech

    From Executive Orders on AI and cryptocurrency to "ending federal censorship," President Donald Trump had a busy first week in the White House. Justin Hendrix discussed the news with Damon Beres, a senior...

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  • 2025 / 1 / 19
    What's New at RightsCon? And How to Free Our Feeds

    This episode features two segments. First, we hear from Nikki Gladstone, director of Rightscon, the annual conference organized by Access Now on issues at the intersection of human rights and...

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  • 2025 / 1 / 18
    The Dumbest Timeline: The Supreme Court Rules on TikTok

    Today- Friday, January 17, 2025 - the US Supreme Court delivered its order upholding the constitutionality of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, a law...

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  • 2025 / 1 / 12
    Addressing the "Cursed Equilibrium" of Social Media Algorithms

    Last fall, Cornell University PhD candidate Cristiana Firullo gave a presentation at the Trust and Safety Research Conference at Stanford University during a session on understanding algorithms and online...

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  • 2025 / 1 / 5
    What to Watch on US State Tech Policy in 2025

    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 sessions and are expected to pursue various tech policy goals....

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  • 2024 / 12 / 22
    Imagining 2025 and Beyond with Dr. Ruha Benjamin

    This week’s guest is Dr. Ruha Benjamin, Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and Founding Director of the IDA B. WELLS Just Data Lab. Benjamin was recently...

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  • 2024 / 12 / 15
    How to Remedy Google's Search Monopoly

    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 case. It will also make headlines next year and beyond as the...

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  • 2024 / 12 / 8
    Towards Resilience: A Conversation with Kate Starbird About the Future of Online Elections Discourse

    Kate Starbird is a professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering and director of the Emerging Capacities of Mass Participation Laboratory at the University of Washington, and co-founder...

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  • 2024 / 12 / 8
    Petra Molnar on Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

    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 advance of illiberal and anti-democratic politics. We've...

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  • 2024 / 12 / 1
    Evan Greer Asks the Tech Accountability Movement to Draw a Line

    At its November 21st "Summit of the Future of the Internet," billionaire Frank McCourt's Project Liberty hosted a panel discussion featuring Congresswoman Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, on a...

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  • 2024 / 12 / 1
    Robert Gorwa Tackles the Politics of Platform Regulation

    Robert Gorwa is the author of a new book titled The Politics of Platform Regulation: How Governments Shape Online Content Moderation, published by Oxford University Press. (The book is available open access-...

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  • 2024 / 11 / 24
    Documenting the Assault on Disinformation and Hate Speech Research

    During his recent campaign, President-elect Donald Trump made various promises consistent with the ongoing effort by Elon Musk and MAGA Republicans to target researchers and civil society groups that study...

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  • 2024 / 11 / 17
    The Race for AI Supremacy

    Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology regulation, artificial intelligence, and social media. Her new book, Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Will Change the World tells a...

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  • 2024 / 11 / 10
    Salvation, Abundance, Apocalypse: Is Technology the World's Most Powerful Religion?

    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 digital rituals to the promises of abundance from Silicon Valley...

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  • 2024 / 11 / 3
    What Kafka Can Teach Us About Privacy in the Age of AI

    Today’s guest is Boston University School of Law professor Woodrow Hartzog, who, with the George Washington University Law School's Daniel Solove, is one of the authors of a recent paper that...

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  • 2024 / 11 / 2
    Are Platforms Prepared for the Post-Election Period?

    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 social media platforms for the post-election period? What...

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  • 2024 / 11 / 2
    What Role Might Elon Musk Play in the Post-Election Period?

    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 purchased the social media platform formerly known as Twitter,...

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  • 2024 / 10 / 27
    Unpacking the Principles of the Digital Services Act with Martin Husovec

    Martin Husovec is an associate law professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He works on questions at the intersection of technology and digital liberties,...

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  • 2024 / 10 / 27
    Three Perspectives on Generative AI and Elections

    In this episode, Justin Hendrix speaks with three researchers who recently published projects looking at the intersection of generative AI with elections around the world, including:Samuel Woolley, Dietrich...

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  • 2024 / 10 / 20
    Mary Anne Franks Challenges First Amendment Orthodoxy

    In her new book, Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment, Dr. Mary Anne Franks challenges First Amendment orthodoxy and critiques “reckless speech,” which endangers vulnerable groups and...

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  • 2024 / 10 / 20
    Governing the Fediverse: A Field Study

    A lot of folks frustrated with major social media platforms are migrating to alternatives like Mastodon and Bluesky, which operate on decentralized protocols. This summer, Erin Kissane and Darius...

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  • 2024 / 10 / 20
    Secure Messaging Apps and Election Integrity

    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 and the Propaganda Research Lab at the Center for Media...

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  • 2024 / 10 / 19
    Election Meddling, Censorship, and More Bad News in 2024 Freedom on the Net Report

    The results in this year’s installment of the Freedom House Freedom on the Net report generally follow the same distressing trajectory as prior reports, marking a 14th consecutive year in declines in internet...

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  • 2024 / 10 / 18
    Independent Researchers and Journalists Mourn the Loss of CrowdTangle

    In this episode, we're crashing a funeral... for CrowdTangle, a piece of software that allowed journalists and independent researchers to get insights into social media. Not our usual material, but this...

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  • 2024 / 10 / 13
    From King James to Google: Barry Lynn on the Antitrust Revolution

    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 Antitrust Revolution: Liberal democracy’s last stand...

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  • 2024 / 10 / 11
    The Evolution of Online Political Advertising: A Conversation with Who Targets Me's Sam Jeffers

    Today’s guest is Sam Jeffers, cofounder and executive director of Who Targets Me. Jeffers has spent several yearshas spent several years building a suite of capabilities to make political advertising more...

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  • 2024 / 10 / 6
    Assessing Systemic Risk Under the Digital Services Act

    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, or content that might have foreseeable negative effects on the...

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  • 2024 / 10 / 6
    Unpacking New Mexico's Complaint Against Snap Inc.

    Last week, Wall Street Journal technology reporter Jeff Horwitz first reported on details of an unredacted version of a complaint against Snap brought by New Mexico Attorney General RaĂşl Torrez. Tech Policy...

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  • 2024 / 9 / 29
    AI Snake Oil: Separating Hype from Reality

    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 Difference, published September 24 by Princeton University Press. In...

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  • 2024 / 9 / 25
    Assessing Platform Preparedness for the 2024 US Election

    The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) recently assessed social media platforms’ policies, public commitments, and product interventions related to election integrity across six major issue areas:...

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  • 2024 / 9 / 22
    Gary Marcus Wants to Tame Silicon Valley

    Gary Marcus writes that the companies developing artificial intelligence systems want the citizens of democracies “to absorb all the negative externalities” that might arise from their products, “such as...

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  • 2024 / 9 / 22
    Resisting the Tech Coup: A Conversation with Marietje Schaake

    Marietje Schaake is the author of The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley. Dr. Alondra Nelson, a Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, who served as deputy assistant to...

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  • 2024 / 9 / 21
    Thierry Breton Resigns- What Does it Mean for European Tech Regulation?

    In 2019, Thierry Breton, a French business executive who became the France’s Minister of Finance from 2005 to 2007, was nominated by President Emmanuel Macron to become a member of the European...

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  • 2024 / 9 / 15
    Free Speech vs. Sovereignty?

    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 against Telegram and Twitter/X are about sovereignty, not...

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  • 2024 / 9 / 15
    Understanding Systemic Risks under the Digital Services Act

    At Tech Policy Press, we’re closely following the implementation of the Digital Services Act, the European Union law designed to regulate online platforms and services. One of the DSA’s key objectives is to...

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  • 2024 / 9 / 9
    Google Online Advertising Antitrust Trial Kicks Off In a DC Court

    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 of a trial in which the United States Department of...

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  • 2024 / 9 / 8
    What's Going On In California?

    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 fate of 19 that passed the state legislature. The Governor...

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  • 2024 / 9 / 8
    Platforms and Elections: the Global State of Play

    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 titled “Platforms and Elections: the Global State of Play,...

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  • 2024 / 9 / 1
    Understanding the People Who Turn Lies Into Reality

    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 Turn Lies Into Reality, published by Hachette Book Group...

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  • 2024 / 8 / 30
    Brazilian Judge Orders the Suspension of Elon Musk's X

    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 content moderation practices. Earlier this year, Judge...

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  • 2024 / 8 / 25
    A Conversation with Mark Surman, President of Mozilla

    Justin Hendrix speaks with Mark Surman, President of Mozilla, about Mozilla’s work promoting open source AI, the importance of competition in the tech sector, and the regulatory challenges facing the...

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  • 2024 / 8 / 18
    Design Codes and the Courts

    On Friday, August 16, the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling in NetChoice v. Bonta, partially upholding and partially vacating a preliminary injunction against...

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  • 2024 / 8 / 11
    New Mexico Attorney General RaĂşl Torrez on His Lawsuit Against Meta

    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 for allegedly failing to protect children from sexual abuse,...

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  • 2024 / 8 / 4
    Using AI to Engage People about Conspiracy Beliefs

    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 director of the Applied Cooperation Initiative, and an...

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  • 2024 / 7 / 28
    Data Workers, In Their Own Words

    The Distributed AI Research Institute, or DAIR—which seeks to conduct community-rooted AI research that is independent from the technology industry—has launched a new project called the Data Workers' Inquiry...

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  • 2024 / 7 / 21
    The Future of Privacy in the Age of AI

    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 technology, and whether technology operates in service of...

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  • 2024 / 7 / 21
    Silicon Valley Leaders Cast Their Lot with Donald Trump

    In the past week, multiple Silicon Valley billionaires announced endorsements of former President and 2024 Republican nominee Donald Trump. To dig a bit deeper into their motivations to support Trump and his...

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  • 2024 / 7 / 14
    Data Rights in the Age of AI

    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 and Technology at Parsons School of Design at The New...

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  • 2024 / 7 / 14
    What Comes After Murthy v Missouri

    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 Amendment in its efforts to address COVID-19 mis- and...

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  • 2024 / 7 / 7
    Considering the Ethics of AI Assistants

    In April, Google DeepMind published a paper that boasts 57 authors, including experts from a range of disciplines in different parts of Google, including DeepMind, Jigsaw, and Google Research, as well as...

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  • 2024 / 6 / 30
    Big Tech and the News

    News and journalism organizations and dominant tech companies are in a years-long battle over content, clicks and revenue, and the tech companies are winning. What are policy options that encourage both the...

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  • 2024 / 6 / 23
    Understanding the Digital Silk Road

    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 infrastructure projects to 'small yet smart' initiatives....

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  • 2024 / 6 / 23
    How China Regulates Tech

    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 career in the practice of law and in teaching it, Zhang...

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  • 2024 / 6 / 23
    Internet Governance Is At A Crossroads

    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 United States and its Western allies versus those promoted...

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  • 2024 / 6 / 21
    The Demise of CrowdTangle and What It Means for Independent Technology Research

    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 cannot understand the extent of the harms and effects of...

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  • 2024 / 6 / 18
    Finding the Humanity in an Automated World

    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 reporting and research to provide a look at the role that...

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  • 2024 / 6 / 16
    A Conversation with White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Arati Prabhakar

    Dr. Arati Prabhakar the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and Technology Policy and Science Advisor to President Joe Biden. This week, she hosted an event in Washington DC...

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  • 2024 / 6 / 10
    AI and Epistemic Risk: A Coming Crisis?

    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 communication? In this episode, Justin Hendrix speaks with...

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  • 2024 / 6 / 9
    What's Next for Tech Policy in India After the Elections

    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 three experts: Amber Sinha and Vandinika Shukla, both...

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  • 2024 / 6 / 6
    How Are Political Campaigners in the US Using Generative AI?

    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 study is based on interviews with a variety of...

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  • 2024 / 6 / 2
    The Role of Shareholder Activism in Tech Accountability

    This episode focuses on the role of shareholder activism in pursuing transparency and accountability from tech firms. In a week where board resolutions are up for a vote at Meta and Alphabet related to each...

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  • 2024 / 5 / 26
    Shadow Report on AI Addresses What the US Senate Missed

    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 underwhelmed at best, and some were fiercely critical of...

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  • 2024 / 5 / 26
    A Perspective on Meta's Moderation of Palestinian Voices

    A conversation with Marwa Fatafta, who serves as policy and advocacy director for the nonprofit Access now, which has worked on digital civil rights, connectivity and censorship issues for the past 15 years....

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  • 2024 / 5 / 19
    AI: Past, Present, and Future with Chris Stokel-Walker

    One tech journalist whose byline always draws me in is Chris Stokel-Walker. He writes for multiple publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Wired, Fast Company,...

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  • 2024 / 5 / 19
    Prioritizing Civil Rights in US AI Policy: Claudia Ruiz and Alejandra Montoya-Boyer

    On Wednesday, May 15, 2024, a bipartisan US Senate working group led by Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) released a report titled "Driving U.S. Innovation in Artificial Intelligence: A...

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  • 2024 / 5 / 12
    What We're Talking About When We Talk About Rural AI

    Last October, Dr. Jasmine McNealy, as an associate professor at the University of Florida, a Senior Fellow in Tech Policy with the Mozilla Foundation, and a Faculty Associate at the Berkman...

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  • 2024 / 5 / 11
    A Hippocratic Oath for AI? A Conversation with Chinmayi Sharma

    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 examples of an expression of professional ethics. It is a...

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  • 2024 / 5 / 5
    Don't Hype Disinfo, Say Disinfo Experts

    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 ambiguous term, and we’ve tried to use science to guide the...

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  • 2024 / 5 / 4
    Resisting AI and the Consolidation of Power

    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 can and cannot be said inside of mainstream computer...

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  • 2024 / 4 / 28
    What's Next for TikTok, and US Tech Policy

    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 being banned in the US. The measure also included...

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  • 2024 / 4 / 21
    Securing Privacy Rights to Advance Civil Rights

    Subcommittee on Innovation, Data, and Commerce held a hearing: “Legislative Solutions to Protect Kids Online and Ensure Americans’ Data Privacy Rights.” Between the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the...

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  • 2024 / 4 / 14
    The Societal Impacts of Foundation Models, and Access to Data for Researchers

    This episode features two conversations. Both relate to efforts to better understand the impact of technology on society. In the first, we’ll hear from Sayash Kapoor, a PhD candidate at the Department of...

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  • 2024 / 4 / 7
    Elon Musk's X Loses in Court: Why It Matters for Independent Technology Research

    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 outfit called The Center for Countering Digital Hate...

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  • 2024 / 4 / 6
    Nathan Schneider on Democratic Design for Online Life

    On this show, when we talk about technology and democracy, guests are often talking about the relationship between technology and existing democratic systems. Today's guest wants us to think more expansively...

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  • 2024 / 3 / 31
    Reforming Tech Amidst a Global Backlash Against Women's Rights

    Last year, researchers at Human Rights Watch wrote about the global backlash against women’s rights. In multiple countries, they say, hard-won progress has been reversed amidst a wave of anti-feminist...

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  • 2024 / 3 / 24
    Unpacking the Oral Argument in Murthy v Missouri

    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 is joined by two experts- St. John's University School of...

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  • 2024 / 3 / 17
    What's at Stake in Murthy v Missouri?

    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 coerced or “significantly encouraged” social media executives...

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  • 2024 / 3 / 10
    Exploring the Intersection of Information Integrity, Race, and US Elections

    At INFORMED 2024, a conference hosted by the Knight Foundation in January, one panel focused on the subject of information integrity, race, and US elections. The conversation was compelling, and the panelists...

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  • 2024 / 3 / 3
    US Supreme Court Considers Florida and Texas Social Media Laws

    On Monday, Feb. 26, 2024, the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Moody v. NetChoice, LLC and NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton. The cases are on similar but distinct state laws in Florida and...

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  • 2024 / 2 / 29
    What Leverage Remains to Preserve Free Expression in Hong Kong?

    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 array of crimes, including treason, theft of state secrets,...

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  • 2024 / 2 / 25
    How to Counter Disinformation Based on Science

    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 disinformation, and what to do about them. And, we’ve tried to focus...

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  • 2024 / 2 / 25
    Evaluating the Role of Media in the January 6 Attack on the US Capitol

    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 shed light on the interplay between the media and the...

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  • 2024 / 2 / 24
    Pakistan and the Intersection of Tech & Elections

    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 Press, we're lucky to have a group of seven fellows this...

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  • 2024 / 2 / 18
    Ranking Content On Signals Other Than User Engagement

    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, managing director of the Neely Center at the University of...

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  • 2024 / 2 / 18
    FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya on Algorithmic Fairness, Voice Cloning, and the Future

    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 confirmation in the Senate. In this conversation, Commissioner...

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  • 2024 / 2 / 11
    Imagining AI Countergovernance

    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 ideas they term "AI countergovernance." These are alternative...

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  • 2024 / 2 / 4
    Tech CEOs Face the US Senate on Child Safety

    On Wednesday, January 31st, the US Senate Judiciary Committee hosted a hearing titled "Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis." The CEOs of Meta, TikTok, X, Discord and Snap were called to...

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  • 2024 / 1 / 28
    How to Assess AI Governance Tools

    Last year, the World Privacy Forum, a nonprofit research organization, conducted an international review of AI governance tools. The organization analyzed various documents, frameworks, and technical material...

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  • 2024 / 1 / 21
    How to Defend Independent Technology Research from Corporate and Political Opposition

    In October 2022, a group of researchers published a manifesto establishing a Coalition for Independent Technology Research. “Society needs trustworthy, independent research to relieve the harms of digital...

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  • 2024 / 1 / 14
    Questioning OpenAI's Nonprofit Status

    Today’s guest is Robert Weissman, president of the nonprofit consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen. He is the author of a letter addressed to the California Attorney General that raises significant...

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  • 2024 / 1 / 7
    Evaluating Social Media's Role in the Israel-Hamas War

    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 Year, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab...

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  • 2023 / 12 / 31
    Exposing the Rotten Reality of AI Training Data

    In a report released December 20, 2023, the Stanford Internet Observatory said it had detected more than 1,000 instances of verified child sexual abuse imagery in a significant dataset utilized for training...

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  • 2023 / 12 / 24
    An FDA for AI?

    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 regulatory agency to govern, in particular, general purpose...

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  • 2023 / 12 / 17
    What Are We Building, and Why?

    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 back and asking whether we need to slow down and put just as...

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  • 2023 / 12 / 10
    Tracking Oversight of Surveillance in the US and EU

    In both the US and Europe, policymakers are making important decisions about the governance of the bulk collection of communications and data for intelligence purposes. In the US, some of these questions are...

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  • 2023 / 12 / 10
    Europe Advances Its AI Act

    In April 2021, the European Commission introduced the first regulatory framework for AI within the EU. This Friday, after a marathon set of negotiations, EU policymakers reached a political consensus on the...

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  • 2023 / 12 / 3
    Checking on the Progress of Content Moderators in Africa

    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, TikTok and OpenAI – and outsourcing firms like Sama and Majorel...

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  • 2023 / 11 / 26
    The Saga at OpenAI: Lessons for Policymakers

    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 contributing writer at The Atlantic who is currently working...

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  • 2023 / 11 / 19
    AI and Harms to Artists and Creators

    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 promise, threats, and practical regulatory challenges...

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  • 2023 / 11 / 14
    Broken Code: A Conversation with Jeff Horwitz

    This episode explores Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose its Harmful Secrets, a new book by Wall Street Journal technology reporter Jeff Horwitz. His relentless coverage of Meta, including...

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  • 2023 / 11 / 12
    Policing the City: A Conversation with Matthew Guariglia

    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 Empire City: Race and the Origins of Modern Policing in New...

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  • 2023 / 11 / 5
    Artificial Intelligence and Your Voice

    Today’s guest is Wiebke Hutiri, a researcher with a particular expertise in design patterns for detecting and mitigating bias in AI systems. Her recent work has focused on voice biometrics,...

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  • 2023 / 10 / 29
    A Design Code for Big Tech

    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 of Southern California Marshall School’s Neely Center for...

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  • 2023 / 10 / 22
    Unpacking the Bangalore Ideology

    At the September G20 summit in Delhi, the government of prime minister Narendra Modi promoted the country’s digital public infrastructure (DPI) as a model for the world for how to develop digital systems that...

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  • 2023 / 10 / 15
    How to Control Our Appetite for Misinformation

    A lot is written about the supply side of mis- and disinformation, including how propagandists and political leaders are using messages and platforms to impact public opinion. But less is written about the...

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  • 2023 / 10 / 8
    Digital Empires: A Conversation with Anu Bradford

    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 the European Union’s outsized...

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  • 2023 / 10 / 4
    Artificial Intelligence as a Tool of Repression

    The 13th installment of the Freedom on the Net report from Freedom House finds that "while advances in artificial intelligence offer benefits for society, they have also been used to increase the scale and...

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  • 2023 / 10 / 1
    The EU AI Act Enters Final Negotiations

    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 from passing sweeping regulation of artificial...

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  • 2023 / 9 / 27
    The Luddites and Lessons for the Next Rebellion

    In Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech, Los Angeles Times technology columnist Brian Merchant has written a new history of perhaps one of the most famous movements for worker...

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  • 2023 / 9 / 24
    Graphic Content, Trauma and Meaning: A Conversation with Alexa Koenig and Andrea Lampros

    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, means we see often graphic and disturbing images with great...

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  • 2023 / 9 / 24
    Your Face Belongs to Us: A Conversation with Kashmir Hill

    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 claimed it could identify almost anyone with a photo. But the...

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  • 2023 / 9 / 17
    The Problem with the "Big" in Big Tech

    Today’s episode features two segments, both of which consider the scale of technology platforms and their power over markets and people. In the first, Rebecca Rand delivers a conversation with University of...

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  • 2023 / 9 / 10
    Assessing the Problem of Disinformation

    This episode features two segments on the subject of disinformation. In the first, Rebecca Rand speaks with Dr. Shelby Grossman, a research scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory, on recent...

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  • 2023 / 9 / 3
    Paul Gowder on The Networked Leviathan

    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. Today’s guest is Paul Gowder, Professor of Law and Associate...

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  • 2023 / 8 / 27
    Choosing Our Words Carefully

    This episode features two segments. In the first, Rebecca Rand speaks with Alina Leidinger, a researcher at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation at the University of Amsterdam about her research-...

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  • 2023 / 8 / 20
    Containing Big Tech

    This episode features two segments. In the first, Rebecca Rand considers the social consequences of "machine allocation behavior" with Cornell researchers Houston Claure and Malte Jung, authors of a recent...

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  • 2023 / 8 / 13
    Assessing India's Digital Personal Data Protection Bill

    This week, Indian legislators approved a data protection law that will govern the processing of data in the country. The bill creates a data protection board and gives the government new powers, including to...

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  • 2023 / 8 / 6
    The State of State AI Laws

    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 becoming law. But in 2023 legislative sessions in states...

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  • 2023 / 8 / 2
    Examining the Meta 2020 US Election Research Partnership

    A unique collaboration between social scientists and Meta to conduct research on Facebook and Instagram during the height of the 2020 US election has at long last produced its first work products. The release...

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  • 2023 / 7 / 30
    Alex Winter on The YouTube Effect

    In today’s podcast, Justin Hendrix talks with director, writer and actor Alex Winter, whose new documentary, The YouTube Effect, is in select theaters now and will be available on streaming platforms on...

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  • 2023 / 7 / 23
    Ifeoma Ajunwa on The Quantifed Worker

    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 School, and author of the Quantified Worker: Law and Technology...

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  • 2023 / 7 / 23
    Justine Bateman on AI, Labor, and the Future of Entertainment

    Artificial intelligence will likely impact every type of job. But this summer, Hollywood actors and writers have raised substantial concerns about the ways in which generative AI systems may be used to...

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  • 2023 / 7 / 16
    Content Moderation, Encryption, and the Law

    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 Online Safety Bill or the EARN It Act put forward in the US...

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  • 2023 / 7 / 9
    Extended Reality and the Law

    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 criminal law apply in 'extended reality' (XR)?Drawing from the...

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  • 2023 / 7 / 6
    Reading the Civic Information Handbook

    This spring, Karen Kornbluh and Adrienne Goldstein from the German Marshall Fund’s Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative published a document they call the Civic Information Handbook, which they...

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  • 2023 / 7 / 2
    Your Guides Through the Hellscape of AI Hype

    Alex Hanna, the director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute and Emily M. Bender, a professor of linguistics at the University of Washington, are the hosts of Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, a...

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  • 2023 / 6 / 30
    The Implications of Canada's Online News Act

    Last week, Canada passed the Online News Act, legislation that requires tech platforms to remunerate Canadian news outlets, and the platforms are not happy. In response, Google announced it will remove links...

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  • 2023 / 6 / 25
    Exploring Global Governance of Artificial Intelligence

    Over the past few months, there have been a range of voices calling for the urgent regulation of artificial intelligence. Comparisons to the problems of nuclear proliferation abound, so perhaps it’s no...

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  • 2023 / 6 / 18
    A Conversation with Meredith Whittaker, President of Signal

    Earlier this month, Justin Hendrix traveled to RightsCon, the big gathering of individuals and organizations concerned with human rights and technology organized by Access Now. The sprawling event had...

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  • 2023 / 6 / 11
    Recoding America: A Conversation with Jennifer Pahlka

    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, there is still a gap between the policy outcomes we seek...

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  • 2023 / 6 / 4
    A Recap of the US-EU Trade and Technology Council Meeting with Mark Scott

    Last week, a group of very important people, including the U.S Secretaries of State and Commerce and trade representatives from President Joe Biden’s administration, met with top European Union officials in...

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  • 2023 / 5 / 28
    Responsible Release and Accountability for Generative AI Systems

    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 put a lot of thought into evaluating the release strategies...

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  • 2023 / 5 / 21
    The Supreme Court Decides: A Final Word on Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh with Anupam Chander

    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 tells us about how the Court is thinking about social media and...

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  • 2023 / 5 / 14
    Nick Seaver on Computing Taste: Algorithms and the Makers of Music Recommendation

    Today’s episode features a discussion with Nick Seaver, a professor at Tufts University and the author of Computing Taste: Algorithms and the Makers of Music Recommendation from the University of Chicago...

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  • 2023 / 5 / 7
    Malcolm Harris on Palo Alto and the Project of Silicon Valley

    Justin Hendrix speaks to writer Malcolm Harris about his book, PALO ALTO: A HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA, CAPITALISM, AND THE WORLD, which considers the historical antecedents for the project of Silicon Valley.

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  • 2023 / 5 / 3
    Gus Hurwitz on Technology and the Law

    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 Center. He’s also the Director of Law and Economics...

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  • 2023 / 4 / 30
    Twitter Whistleblower Anika Collier Navaroli Looks Forward

    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, including social media executives with insight into the...

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