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
- 2024 / 10 / 13From King James to Google: Barry Lynn on the Antitrust RevolutionBarry 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...
- 2024 / 10 / 11The Evolution of Online Political Advertising: A Conversation with Who Targets Me's Sam JeffersToday’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...
- 2024 / 10 / 6Unpacking 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...
- 2024 / 10 / 6Assessing Systemic Risk Under the Digital Services ActOne 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...
- 2024 / 9 / 29AI Snake Oil: Separating Hype from RealityArvind 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...
- 2024 / 9 / 25Assessing Platform Preparedness for the 2024 US ElectionThe 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:...
- 2024 / 9 / 22Gary Marcus Wants to Tame Silicon ValleyGary 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...
- 2024 / 9 / 22Resisting the Tech Coup: A Conversation with Marietje SchaakeMarietje 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...
- 2024 / 9 / 21Thierry 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...
- 2024 / 9 / 15Understanding Systemic Risks under the Digital Services ActAt 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...
- 2024 / 9 / 15Free 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...
- 2024 / 9 / 9Google Online Advertising Antitrust Trial Kicks Off In a DC CourtToday 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...
- 2024 / 9 / 8Platforms and Elections: the Global State of PlayOn 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,...
- 2024 / 9 / 8What'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...
- 2024 / 9 / 1Understanding the People Who Turn Lies Into RealityRenée 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...
- 2024 / 8 / 30Brazilian Judge Orders the Suspension of Elon Musk's XThe 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...
- 2024 / 8 / 25A Conversation with Mark Surman, President of MozillaJustin 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...
- 2024 / 8 / 18Design Codes and the CourtsOn 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...
- 2024 / 8 / 11New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez on His Lawsuit Against MetaRaúl 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,...
- 2024 / 8 / 4Using AI to Engage People about Conspiracy BeliefsIn 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...
- 2024 / 7 / 28Data Workers, In Their Own WordsThe 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...
- 2024 / 7 / 21Silicon Valley Leaders Cast Their Lot with Donald TrumpIn 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...
- 2024 / 7 / 21The Future of Privacy in the Age of AIIt 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...
- 2024 / 7 / 14What Comes After Murthy v MissouriOn 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...
- 2024 / 7 / 14Data Rights in the Age of AIIn 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...
- 2024 / 7 / 7Considering the Ethics of AI AssistantsIn 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...
- 2024 / 6 / 30Big Tech and the NewsNews 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...
- 2024 / 6 / 23How China Regulates TechAngela 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...
- 2024 / 6 / 23Understanding the Digital Silk RoadIn 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....
- 2024 / 6 / 23Internet Governance Is At A CrossroadsIn 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...
- 2024 / 6 / 21The Demise of CrowdTangle and What It Means for Independent Technology ResearchA 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...
- 2024 / 6 / 18Finding the Humanity in an Automated WorldMadhumita 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...
- 2024 / 6 / 16A Conversation with White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Arati PrabhakarDr. 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...
- 2024 / 6 / 10AI 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...
- 2024 / 6 / 9What's Next for Tech Policy in India After the ElectionsWhat 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...
- 2024 / 6 / 6How 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...
- 2024 / 6 / 2The Role of Shareholder Activism in Tech AccountabilityThis 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...
- 2024 / 5 / 26Shadow Report on AI Addresses What the US Senate MissedAs 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...
- 2024 / 5 / 26A Perspective on Meta's Moderation of Palestinian VoicesA 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....
- 2024 / 5 / 19AI: Past, Present, and Future with Chris Stokel-WalkerOne 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,...
- 2024 / 5 / 19Prioritizing Civil Rights in US AI Policy: Claudia Ruiz and Alejandra Montoya-BoyerOn 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...
- 2024 / 5 / 12What We're Talking About When We Talk About Rural AILast 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...
- 2024 / 5 / 11A Hippocratic Oath for AI? A Conversation with Chinmayi SharmaThe 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...
- 2024 / 5 / 5Don't Hype Disinfo, Say Disinfo ExpertsOne 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...
- 2024 / 5 / 4Resisting AI and the Consolidation of PowerIn 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...
- 2024 / 4 / 28What's Next for TikTok, and US Tech PolicyLast 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...
- 2024 / 4 / 21Securing Privacy Rights to Advance Civil RightsSubcommittee 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...
- 2024 / 4 / 14The Societal Impacts of Foundation Models, and Access to Data for ResearchersThis 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...
- 2024 / 4 / 7Elon Musk's X Loses in Court: Why It Matters for Independent Technology ResearchLast 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...
- 2024 / 4 / 6Nathan Schneider on Democratic Design for Online LifeOn 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...