TBD: Technology By Design

It’s been a tumultuous week, to say the least. Eight days ago, the polls closed on the 2020 election, and America watched with anticipation to see who would hold the White House for the next four years. What role did technology and tech platforms play in this election? What difference does it make having an incumbent president who tweets his thoughts on a regular basis, and who may refuse to leave his position of power? What reforms to tech policy can we expect in the next administration? These are all questions that Matt and Adam Conner discuss in today’s episode of TBD. Listen in.

What needs to happen in order to achieve a "better internet"? Chris Riley has dedicated his life and career to answering questions like this one. He delves deeply into the world of tech policy and works hard at finding solutions to some of the sector's toughest questions. In this episode, Chris and Matt reflect on Chris's time as Mozilla's public policy team lead, and also tackle such questions as to how the government should approach the tech sector. Listen in. 

Other pieces by Chris Riley:

• The Need For A Robust Critical Community In Content Policy
• It’s Time to Regulate the Internet... But Thoughtfully
• Could A Narrow Reform Of Section 230 Enable Platform Interoperability?
• Concentrated Digital Markets, Restrictive APIs, and the Fight for Internet Interoperability
• Dr. Riley refers to GoSocial as a website that leverages maximal user control over platform content viewing and distribution to improve social engagement for businesses

Last week, the House Judiciary Committee published a 400-page report on the findings of a 16-month long investigation into the state of competition in the digital economy, especially the challenges presented by the dominance of the "big four" tech companies: Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook. In this episode, Matt is joined by Avery Gardiner, General Counsel and Senior Fellow for Competition, Data, and Power at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Together they discuss the findings of this report and push back on what they think the HJC got wrong. 

Shorenstein Center Senior Fellows Tom Wheeler, Phil Verveer, and Gene Kimmelman join Matt this week to discuss their recent paper proposing a new Digital Platform Agency.  In their own words, “today’s exploding digital marketplace has delivered great gains to consumers. Residing amidst the wonderous capabilities of digital technology, however, are decidedly anti-consumer results.” Listen in as they explain their proposal and make the case for why it should be part of the tech policy agenda for the next Administration.  

Access their paper here. 

Phillip Howard is the Director of the Oxford Internet Institute and Professor of Internet Studies at Balliol College at the University of Oxford, where he researches how digital media affects political life and civic engagement. We talked about his latest book, Lie Machines, which investigates the impact of misinformation from bots, fake profiles, and fake news on our political system. He walks us through multiple potential policy solutions, applying existing and novel regulatory approaches to tackle misinformation on social media. 

Phillip also describes what it takes to operate a successful tech policy institute at an academic university. He shares his strategy for building an academic institution that’s capable of responding to the challenges in the tech sector.

John Godfrey is the senior vice president of public policy at Samsung, where he represents the company in Washington and covers a diverse set of issues, ranging from virtual reality to 5G. We talked in detail about the rollout of 5G networks, and he makes sense of a complex topic that’s always seemed confusing and complicated to me.  He’s passionate about the technology and passionate about its benefits.  He also responds to concerns that have been raised about potential security risks.

John also manages a team that’s been working from home during the pandemic and has some tips about how to build strong teams even when we can’t be together in person.  So let’s get started.

Link to Darrell's latest book - Turning Point: Policymaking in the Era of Artificial Intelligence

Link to Darrell's new podcast from Brookings, TechTank.

Ryan Gellert is the General Manager EMEA at Patagonia, overseeing sales, marketing, sustainability, and operations throughout the region. In this conversation, he and Matt explore the reason for Patagonia's "Stop Hate for Profit" boycott, in which they pulled all ads from Facebook and Instagram. Listen in. 

It's been a big week in the tech policy world, as the CEOs of Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook appeared before Congress to testify on the competitive dynamics in the tech sector. In this episode, Matt and Gene Kimmelman (Senior Advisor at Public Knowledge) discuss who performed well in this trial, some of the key questions that were raised, and what yesterday's hearing means for the future of tech policy. Listen in. 

It was tech company chaos in Hong Kong last week. There's a new national security law that makes the surveillance regime look more like the surveillance regime in mainland China. Tech companies scrambled to respond, and the responses varied. In this episode, Matt and Samm discuss this new regime, and Samm gives her insight as a China policy expert at New America. Listen in.