SMS Radio

Michelle Arrow is a Professor of Modern History at Macquarie University. She explains why the National Archive is heading towards a “digital cliff” if we can’t properly fund and support the digitisation of the literal trove of treasures inside the building. You can read more of Michelle’s work here or follow her on Twitter.

Also we chat about media vs social media coverage of Palestine and the links between journalism, colonialism and the cult of objectivity.

In this ep we mentioned this Conversation article by Macquarie Uni researcher Annabelle Lukin and various reporting on the statistics of who is being killed.

For more actual Palestinian voices in the Australian media this week, check out:

Jennine Khalik for Pedestrian on why “it’s complicated” is a cop-out

Amal Naser for Junkee about watching Sheikh Jarrah unfold as a Palestinian refugee in Australia

Samiha Olwan in the Guardian on leaving family behind in Gaza

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Ben Lyall is Sociology Research Fellow at Monash University. He joins us to chat about the rise of self-tracking apps for kids, and how one corporation in particular are using branded self-surveillance to sell everyone’s favourite crunchy malted chocolate powder.

Also this week, social media has been busted restricting and censoring eyewitness accounts from Sheikh Jarrah. We reflect on how far social media has come since the optimism of the Arab Spring.

For more info on the Datafied Child, check out Ben’s research into the Milo Champ Squad. We also talked about parenting.digital and Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included.

Stuff we dig:

Listen to what’s happening in Palestine through this Twitter thread of podcasts covering the situation

Our own Josh Nicholas is working on a Twitter account where people can share how long they’ve been separated from their loved ones

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Benedetta Crisafulli is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Birkbeck University in London. Rafqa Touma chats to her about the growing and largely unregulated market power of influencers.

Also writer Hannah Copestake on adopting a Cottagecore aesthetic to deal with the pandemic.

Stuff we dig:

This interview with Evelyn Douek about the crumbling idea of Free Speech on platforms

This feature by Josh Taylor from The Guardian on how Cellebrite’s hack-ability will impact how much Australian police love using it to help prosecute criminal cases

The news that Uganda is splashing on facial recognition CCTV joining the list of countries using crime as an excuse to expand mass surveillance

Also, check out this award-winning AI which promises to end gender inequality in the workplace by generating CV brags. Does it work? Well…

No.

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Dr Monish Bhatia is a Lecturer in Criminology at the Birkbeck University of London where he researches the use of electronic monitoring on refugees in the UK. Since a similar scheme has been proposed in Australia in lieu of indefinite detention, Miles chats to Monish about what happens when you turn society into a prison.

Read more of Monish’s work here. And more on how Australia uses electronic monitoring here.

Stuff we dig:

This Conversation piece we referenced in the show about why NSW Police and Tinder teaming up is a bad idea

Also more detail on India’s speech crackdown over their COVID crisis

Meanwhile Joe Rogan is telling people not to get vaccinated so it’s really cool he still has a platform

We happen to totally agree that Substack is a pyramid scheme (ours is/will always be free and accessible to non-subscribers!!)

This Rest of World story about Mexico City’s incredible grid of video surveillance and how it does f**k all to actually help people

Some cool archaeology news about using modelling tech to map prehistoric human movement

The latest Flash Forward pod take down of the Smart City

And finally, speaking of the situation in India:

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In the wake of the Capitol Hill insurrection, Cam Wilson joined us to chat about the Australian media’s relationship to the far right ecosystem, and how to cover hate without giving a platform.

Cam Wilson is an internet and tech reporter for Crikey News and previously Gizmodo. Among many other things, Cam has reported on Sky News’ digital reach; Australia’s role in Capitol Hill; and neo-Nazis.

**Re-broadcast from January 2021**

Stuff we dig:

This WIRED long read about the hackers who tried to fix McDonald’s soft-serve

More hacking news, this time from Signal’s founder doing internet security a solid

MIT Technology Review on growing regulation against algorithmic bias which really just shows how long it takes to get the most basic guidelines up and running

And, finally, remember NFT’s? That thing you can use to buy minted Armie Hammer DMs?

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Senel Wanniarachchi is a Sri Lankan based human rights activist and co-founder of Hashtag Generation. He chats to Josh about the growing politicisation of “fake news” in Sri Lanka following the government’s proposed criminalisation of false news to deal with their disinformation crisis.

Also Miles, Josh & Rafqa unpack the story of right-wing Honduran President Hernandez…his unusual network of support on Facebook…and the Facebook whistleblower who was fired for calling it out.

Stuff we dig:

Whistleblower Sophie Zhang’s story

Staff at Better Read than Dead in Newtown are organising and the book nerds of Sydney should unite

The NYT report of how a former alt-right Youtuber games the algorithm

This incredible essay by Katie J. M Baker on how Mumsnet became a TERFdom

Pranav Dixit’s essay for Buzzfeed on how being a tech reporter gives him a front row seat to India’s slide into authoritarianism

This tweet direct from the Venn diagram of aspirational posters and shitty Netflix reality viewing:

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Less than one third of the STEMM workforce in Australia are women. Meredith Nash researches why our institutions are so bad at fixing this, and how we ended up both unfortunate bind of “male allies” - both part of the problem and the solution.

We also give a eulogy as the world mourns the loss of one of its most important figureheads: Yahoo Answers.

Stuff we dig:

This scathing essay on NFT’s by Vicky Osterwell for RealLife

Researchers speaking out against censorship in academic journals

What exactly is Trump doing at Mar-a-Lago all day? from Trashberg

We’re pretty worried about Russia's devastatingly simple method of blocking Twitter

Plus this solid post (we really don’t like novelty DNA testing and did an ep last year about why)

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Rafqa Touma chats to artist Hipworth about the sudden popularity of cryptoart and what it’s like to be creating in digital spaces; and whether art on the blockchain can emancipate digital artists from the demands of Facebook and Instagram algorithms. Also Josh & Cheyne are not Amazon bots.

Stuff we dig:

The Intercept’s Ken Klippenstein and his reporting on the Amazon Ambassadors

(also check out Bellingcat’s original investigation back in 2019)

The news that Canada might also go for approx. one week without news on Facebook

This story about FBI’s Twitter and the world’s fastest FOI request

Why QAnon couldn’t get a foothold in Japan

And finally, THERE IS NO WAR IN BA SING SE…

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All our electronics are designed to break, and when they do, they’re designed to be impossible to fix.

Jesse Adams Stein is post-doctoral research fellow at UTS and co-leader of Repair Design. Josh chats to Stein about alternative repair movements and what the current Productivity Commission into the Right to Repair is doing to help this.

Stuff we dig:

The absolute shitshow of Trump attempting to build his own social media platform

The news that Uber/Lyft have to reclassify its drivers as employees in the UK

More amazing researchers speaking out against the Google ethics machine

And this tweet about why journalists should learn to code (so they can work at Pizza Hut)

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Listen now | Dean Lim is co-host of 3CR’s Behind Closed Doors - Australia’s only sex worker radio show. He joins us to talk through the government’s proposed Online Safety Bill and how it could push sex workers off the internet plus set some worrying precedents around who gets to decide what stays online.

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