Impossible Tradeoffs with Katie Harbath

This week on the podcast, I chatted with Rebekah Park, Vishnupriya Das, Devika Kumar, and Laura Murray, researchers at Gemic, a global growth strategy firm. They worked with Nhu Le, Rachel Xu, and Beth Goldberg from Google’s Jigsaw on a study looking at how young people in India and the US trust online content in the age of generative AI.

I wrote about this study back in October and have been quoting it nonstop to people exploring how the information environment has changed, especially in the context of the election.

The team comprised anthropologists and strategists and the conversation delves into the origins of their research, the importance of understanding the social dynamics of information, and the unique approach they took in studying Gen Z's interaction with technology, particularly in the context of a two-country study involving the US and India.

The team emphasizes the significance of qualitative research and the intimate understanding it provides in exploring how individuals navigate the digital landscape. The conversation delves into the research methodology and findings of a study on online behavior, focusing on the qualitative aspects of user engagement and the emotional dynamics that influence trust in information. The participants' experiences reveal a complex interplay between light and heavy content consumption, highlighting the importance of feelings in shaping online interactions. The discussion emphasizes the need for a nuanced understanding of how people navigate information in a digital landscape, particularly in the context of misinformation and trust.

I highly recommend you look at the seven information modes that emerged from their work and consider how people want to get heavy information, such as politics and news, versus more lighthearted stuff. I think this research is essential for professionals looking to get information out into the world and those who are trying to shape the online information environment.

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Image created by ChatGPT

If I’m honest, I’m still processing everything. I’m giving myself and others the space to process everything.

But, I still wanted to do a podcast. I have this deep fear that if I don’t stick to a schedule, I’ll fall off the wagon of creating content. It's probably not true, but I like to keep doing things to move forward. Since I had no idea where we would be as a country today, I decided to conduct an experiment I’ve wanted to do for a while for this week’s podcast.

Back in October, Google’s Notebook LLM tool, which uses AI to generate podcasts, went viral because of its quality. I decided to upload my six most popular Anchor Change posts from the last two years and ask it to create a podcast acknowledging that we were two days after Election Day and to look at how technology had impacted our information environment.

Here are the top posts:

* Platforms run away from politics and news / July 9, 2023

* The Future of our Information Environment / Oct 9, 2024

* Zuck’s Letter to Jordan and the Telegram CEO Arrest / Aug 28, 2024

* Digging Into Ten Overused Tech Tropes / Apr 3, 2024

* Our World in 2025 / Jan 3, 2024

* Cambridge Analytica Five Years Later / March 16, 2023

It’s a pretty interesting conversation between the two AI hosts and not too bad. I wish I could have given a longer prompt about what I wanted them to focus on and in what order, but for a first go I’m excited at this possibility to repurpose content in other formats.

Enjoy!

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In this episode, I welcome Maria Giannopoulos who shares her unique journey at the intersection of politics and technology, particularly her role in the 2024 Republican National Convention. She discusses the extensive planning involved in organizing such a large-scale event, developing a digital strategy to engage both on-site attendees and online audiences, and the increasing importance of influencers in political campaigns. Maria also reflects on her experience at Google, the cautious approach tech companies take towards elections, and her insights on future trends in digital politics, including the potential impact of AI and AR/VR technologies.

Maria is known as @greekmaria on various social media platforms and you can also find her at Greekmaria.com.

Please support the curation and analysis I’m doing with this newsletter. As a paid subscriber, you make it possible for me to bring you in-depth analyses of the most pressing issues in tech and politics.

In this episode, Nicole Schneidman discusses the critical processes involved in the electoral system, emphasizing the importance of understanding what happens after voting. She outlines key dates in the election cycle, changes in election laws since 2020, and the journey of a ballot from submission to certification. The discussion also highlights the increased scrutiny and risks faced by election officials, as well as the role of courts in ensuring fair election practices. Nicole discusses the critical aspects of ensuring voter access and election integrity, the role of courts in addressing misinformation and legal challenges, and the importance of monitoring threats and harassment during elections. She explains the distinctions between election officials, poll workers, and poll watchers, and emphasizes the need for tech companies to prepare for the election process. The conversation also delves into the challenges of content moderation in the context of election-related information and concludes with a call for calm and trust in the electoral process.

You can learn more about this period in this post Nicole and I wrote.

Anchor Change with Katie Harbath is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Twenty years ago, Wired editor Chris Anderson wrote “The Long Tail” - a story about how “the future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream.” Also, twenty years ago, the term “podcasting” was coined thanks to the introduction of the iPod and RSS feeds that could carry audio files.

Today, in these final days before the election, we can confidently say that this prediction has become a reality—not just for entertainment but also for news and politics.

I’ve been pondering this newsletter for a while, and Chris’s piece popped into my mind as I was thinking about how 2024 is being called the TikTok/Influencer/Podcast/Clipping/Shards of Glass election. What these all have in common is the theme that our information environment is more fractured than ever before, and influencers/creators across numerous platforms have proven their power to reach voters. I won’t be shocked if, for the 2028 cycle, we have a candidate announce for president on a podcast (DeSantis did technically announce on Twitter spaces, but that’s different.)

Ben Thompson makes this point in his excellent column from Monday, “I think, though, that the ability to hold one’s own on a podcast is, in the long run, going to be a greater selection effect for President than people might expect.”

The ground is shifting beneath our feet and will continue to do so as we increasingly use artificial intelligence to help us create and curate the information we consume.

I will have much more to say on this as I try to figure out how to recap these last two years. Since January 2020, I’ve been talking about this historic year of elections around the globe, and it is almost over. The amount we’ve all gone through during this time is massive—and it’s only accelerating.

Anchor Change with Katie Harbath is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

With only a week left until Election Day, I wanted to share five things to remember as we enter this new phase.

* The information environment is shifting, which presents an excellent opportunity to shape this new reality. I’ve talked to a few folks wondering if their work since 2016 has been for naught because of the amount of disinformation online. It most certainly has not, but this work will need to change. I’m excited about digging into this new ecosystem and how we can mold how it evolves. What strikes me in re-reading Chris’ article 20 years later is that we can predict where things will go; it just takes us a long time for the technology and people to adapt, to accept the new reality, and to grieve the loss of the old one. Where we are today will not be where we will be in four years, as AI will do much more to curate the information we consume. We know this will happen, just not exactly how. That presents a lot of opportunity to start helping shape the future we want. Just look at this paper about how AI is helping to prebunk election misinformation.

* A side thing to watch here is where people go to follow along as results start to come in. Cable channels usually shine here, but Amazon is doing its own Election Night special, as are TikTok users like V Spehar from Under the Desk News. Will people go there instead?

* The tech CEO election. A side story of this election will inevitably be the role of the tech CEO. From Zuckerberg trying to pull back on politics and news to Elon leaning in and Bezos killing the Washington Post editorial, these CEOs are now political players whether they want it or not. Podcasting and newsletter platforms - and thus their CEOs - will become more critical. These CEOs are not the enemy, nor will they save us, but we must work with them - and hold them accountable. We can lament that they operate first and foremost as a business, or we can accept that and figure out how to impact them through those incentives.

* AI isn’t as bad as feared, but this is just the start. I’m very nervous that people are going to take away from this election that AI isn’t as bad as we thought and then drop the ball going into 2026 and 2028. We need to have less fear around AI overall, but this is only the beginning of its entry into our political sphere. Over the next four years, this is another area of great opportunity to shape what these guardrails should be for how campaigns use these tools to communicate with voters.

* Panic responsibly. This is the time I created this phrase for. Anxiety, nerves, and tension are getting very high. It doesn’t help when you feel like all you can do is sit and wait. Take care of yourself. Touch grass. Drink water. Just keep in mind that now is a nerve-wracking time, and that might impact how you are reacting to things. It will be okay. We will get through this. The merch store is here if you need a t-shirt, sticker, or wine glass to remind you of this.

* Vote. The number one thing you need to do is vote. I don’t care if it is absentee, early, or in-person. Visit turbovote.org for all the information you need on how to do this. I got my vote in via absentee. Ensure you are also up to speed on how votes are counted and certified, as there will likely be a lot of chaos and confusion around that. You can also watch this webinar I did this week with the Aspen Institute and other experts discussing the post-election time frame.

I’m going into this final week nervous but excited. I’m anxious about what a tight election will do to us as a collective. I’m excited because I can already think of many projects I want to work on to shape this new information environment. There’s a lot of opportunity in chaos if you know how to harness it. 

But we’ll have time for that later. For now, vote, tell your friends and family to vote, and take care of yourselves. And for those working on elections, whether as an official, poll worker, tech employee, journalist, researcher, campaigner, or volunteer - don’t forget, you got this.

Side note: It’s not good I’m making this a side note, but one of the things I feared would happen with the U.S. election is that it would suck all of the attention away from other global elections happening at the same time. Admittedly, I’ve fallen into that trap, but keep an eye on what is happening in Japan and the country of Georgia after their elections this past weekend. Both are seeing unrest and shock by results. There were also elections in Kiribati (an island in the South Pacific), Bulgaria and Uruguay (which is headed to a second round). Moldova’s recent election on a referendum to join the EU was also a nail-biter. All of this is to say, while there’s a lot happening here we also need to keep an eye on the globe as a whole.

Please support the curation and analysis I’m doing with this newsletter. As a paid subscriber, you make it possible for me to bring you in-depth analyses of the most pressing issues in tech and politics. 

We have another bonus podcast episode for you. One perspective I wanted to get for this season of the podcast is what people outside of the United States think about the election and this country’s overall approach to tech.

There’s no one better to ask that question of than Mark Scott. Mark has covered tech as a journalist and now works at the Atlantic Council studying tech’s impact on our information ecosystem. He also writes a weekly newsletter called Digital Politics that is one of my must-reads.

In this conversation, Mark discusses his transition from journalism to a policy role at the Atlantic Council, focusing on digital policy and regulation in the EU and US. He reflects on the regulatory landscape, the challenges tech companies face, and the importance of effective enforcement. He also shares insights on the role of technology in elections, the impact of AI, and the need for cooperation between the US and Europe in addressing digital challenges.

Please support the curation and analysis I’m doing with this newsletter. As a paid subscriber, you make it possible for me to bring you in-depth analyses of the most pressing issues in tech and politics.

In this episode, Tim Harper discusses his extensive background in election administration and technology, focusing on the intersection of democracy and technology. He elaborates on his work with the Bipartisan Policy Center's task force aimed at improving election processes, as well as his current role at the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), where he addresses the challenges posed by generative AI in elections. (You can find all of CDT’s reports on elections here.) Tim shares insights from a recent report on AI chatbots and their impact on voting accessibility, highlighting the risks of misinformation and the need for better policies from tech companies. He also reflects on his experience at Facebook, where he managed political advertising policy during a tumultuous election period. In this conversation, Tim Harper discusses the complexities of managing online platforms during elections, focusing on policy development, crisis response, and the impact of generative AI. He highlights the challenges faced by tech companies in combating misinformation and ensuring election integrity, while also addressing the need for better communication and coordination among stakeholders. The discussion emphasizes the importance of preparation for both election day and the critical period following it, where misinformation and potential political violence could arise.

Anchor Change with Katie Harbath is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I’ve been so lucky to have some great conversations for the podcast this Fall, but with Election Day rapidly approaching in the United States, I will do two bonus Monday episodes on top of the usual ones on Thursdays to get all of this content out.

First, we have Betsy Hoover and Eric Wilson discuss with me the evolving landscape of campaign technology, highlighting the importance of tailored solutions for political campaigns. They share their journeys into the field, the diverse range of companies they support, and the trends shaping the future of political tech, including the integration of AI. Both emphasize the need for aspiring tech founders to understand the unique challenges of the political landscape and offer insights into the future of campaign technology.

Links

* Eric Wilson’s Campaign Trend newsletter

* Higher Ground Labs

Anchor Change with Katie Harbath is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I’m excited to welcome Allie Funk, Grant Baker, and Kian Vesteinsson of Freedom House’s technology and democracy team to the podcast, who released their 2024 Freedom on the Net report this week. Our conversation revolves around the latest Freedom on the Net report, highlighting the ongoing decline of global internet freedom for the 14th consecutive year. We cover various factors contributing to this decline, including censorship, violence against online activists, and the impact of AI on elections. The speakers also provide insights into specific countries like Kyrgyzstan and Myanmar and share positive examples from South Africa, Taiwan, and the EU. The conversation concludes with policy recommendations to improve the information environment and protect online freedoms.

Freedom House’s reports are ones I look for every year to get a sense of how the internet and technology are impacting democracy. They’re a must-read, and our conversation will help give you more context into what is happening and how we might improve things.

Please support the curation and analysis I’m doing with this newsletter. As a paid subscriber, you make it possible for me to bring you in-depth analyses of the most pressing issues in tech and politics.

Welcome to fellow newsletter writer, Bruce Mehlman who has long been a fixture in DC for his smart graphs and quarterly reports on where the trends are going, not just in politics but also in the economy, tech, national security, and more. I highly recommend you sign up for his newsletter, Bruce Mehlman's Age of Disruption.

In our conversation, Bruce discusses his journey from a political lawyer to a prominent figure in tech policy, sharing insights on the evolution of technology and its intersection with politics. He reflects on the early 2000s tech issues, the lessons learned from the rise of social media, and the current political landscape. Mehlman emphasizes the importance of trust in information, the future of media consumption, and the need for long-term thinking in politics and technology. He also highlights the significant advancements in health innovations and their potential impact on society.

Some of the readings he recommends include:

* The Storm Before the Calm: America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond by George Friedman

* Stratechery by Ben Thompson

* Noahpinion

* Slow Boring by Matthew Yglesias

Please support the curation and analysis I’m doing with this newsletter. As a paid subscriber, you make it possible for me to bring you in-depth analyses of the most pressing issues in tech and politics.